California family reacts to missing couple in Nepal
(NBC, KYMA) - A California family is hoping for a miracle as days turn to weeks in the search for a San Diego couple missing in the deadly Nepal mudslides.
Gaurav Menon and his wife Alka Malhotra are all smiles in New Delhi, India, as a video of them was taken the night before they headed to Nepal for a spiritual trip of their dreams to Mount Kailash.
The pilgrimage is a sacred 33-mile trek for Buddhists and Hindus.
"He was spiritually very enlightened, in the sense that when you hear of monks giving up the luxuries of life. He was not attached to things," said Anu Peshawaria, Menon's aunt.
Those well wishes are haunting now in hindsight as hours later, the San Diego couple became two of at least 75 Americans unaccounted for after a glacier collapse in the Himalaya unleashed deadly flooding that annihilated Nepal.
"The mud, the way it all came at one time...Never, I've [seen] such a thing. I've only seen it in Universal Studios," Peshawaria, who lives in Northern California, expressed.
Peshawaria has been in contact with family in India where he was born, before coming to the states for graduate school.
Menon is a 50-year-old electrical engineer who holds multiple patents and works in the tech industry while Alka, 49, is a scientist.
The family's now worried now that Menon's phone no longer ringing.
"They may be somewhere under the mud, or there may be somewhere gone in the water," Peshawaria spoke.
Families of the missing U.S. citizens now bonding together over their shared loss, petitioning the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to increase family support, as well as search and rescue efforts.
"We are requesting for setting up units, sending drones, asking them to send them specialized people, having to organize things in both in India, Tibet, and Nepal," Peshawaria remarked.
As the drumbeat for help gets louder, and the days continue to pass, the family is remembering the couple as lovebirds while holding on to a sliver of hope.
"They were always together. And that's how probably we feel they went together," Peshawaria said.
