Terrified Tourists Stranded In Gondola 1,000 Feet Above India's Shivalik Mountains For 3 Hours

Tourists riding a cable car were left terrified as they ended up being stranded mid-air in the gondola 1,000 feet above India's Shivalik Mountains for three hours.

Their cable car developed a technical snag in Himachal Pradesh's Parwanoo on Monday. Eleven tourists were rescued using a trolley after three hours, reported India Today.

The rescue operation was carried out by the Timber Trail private resort staff, said Parwanoo official Chattar Singh. After the cable car got stuck, a technical team of Timber Trail operators was deployed. On the other hand, a police team monitored the situation. Also present at the spot was a team of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF). The people who are stuck in the cable car were lowered, one at a time, onto a hill below. Harnesses were used in the rescue mission.

Daily Star reported that a video from inside the cable car showed tourists discussing whether they could risk climbing down a rope to be safe. In the clip, one elderly woman could be heard saying that they couldn't go down with the help of the rope as they were old. The woman feared that they wouldn't be able to "get down and the authorities have been unable to take any action."

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur took to Twitter to share an update about the rescue operation.

Thakur said in a tweet that teams from NDRF and district administration were at the spot and "all the passengers will be rescued."

The cable car that is often used by tourists is a feature of the Timber Trail private resort in Parwanoo, so after the incident, the resort owner was booked under sections 287 and 336 of the Indian Penal Code. Back in October 1992, on the same ropeway 11 tourists got stuck and were later rescued by the Indian Air Force.

In April, three people had died when a cable car mishap took place in Deoghar in Jharkhand. Two out of the three had fallen to their death during a botched helicopter rescue mission. It happened when 12 ropeway trollies collided with each other at Tirkut hills near the Baba Baidyanath temple.

The ropeway was managed by a private company and the operators fled the area after the accident, the officials said at the time. Other 60 tourists, who were stranded after the ropeway malfunction, were safely evacuated. Hindustan Times reported that the Jharkhand government handed over cheques of Rs. 5 lakh ($6,406.27) each to the next of kin of the three people who died in the ropeway tragedy.