How a visa rejection saved Bengal woman Tapati Singha from Nepal flood fury

Days before embarking on the trip of a lifetime to the Kailash Mansarovar in Tibet, 61-year-old Tapati Singha found her Chinese visa application rejected.

This forced her to cancel the trip she had planned with the Chalo Jaai Travel Club in West Bengal after the death of her husband. The company has been organising yearly trips to the Kailash Mansarovar since 2008.

At the time, she told The Telegraph that she was "very sad" that her 13-day journey—which she had planned since May by attending preparatory meetings, shopping trips, and trekking sessions with the group—was cancelled.

She also claimed that the Chinese authorities did not even give her a reason for the cancellation, which left her devastated and forced her to change her trip destination to Ladakh after the death of her husband.

However, just days after the cancellation, Nepal was hit by devastating flash floods, destroying life and infrastructure on a large scale. So far, at least 359 people have been killed while hundreds more (including 288 Indians) are still missing.

Her 33-member tour group from the Chalo Jaai Travel Club have also gone missing in Nepal amid the floods, of which only one person has been rescued so far.

The travel company speculates two possibilities—that the stranded tourists had already crossed over the danger zone and were not able to communicate with anyone due to network issues after the floods, or that they are missing.

Singha later said that the visa rejection that had once left her sad now weighed on her differently, as she realised she had been narrowly saved from a massive disaster.

“I was shattered then. Now I am thinking about all of them,” she said, as per the report.