Kathmandu, July 24 - A 55-year-old bicycle mechanic from India's Birsinghpur village recounted in stunned disbelief how a pilgrimage to Nepal turned into death and pain in pre-dawn darkness.

Ram Bahadur Gupta was one of the lucky passengers in the bus from Madhya Pradesh that began the pilgrimage 29 days ago with 30 passengers, most of them Indian pilgrims from the same state who were in their 60s and older.

'I was among the younger passengers,' Gupta told IANS. 'It was a pilgrimage of a lifetime covering the Badrinarayan temple in Uttar Pradesh and the Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu.'

On Wednesday, the pilgrims, who were travelling by road, prayed at the Pashupatinath temple and headed back home.

'We had been travelling throughout the day and night and around 2 a.m. Friday, when our bus stopped by the side of a bridge (in Gaidakot town in Nepal's Nawalparasi district), many of us were fast asleep.