VIDEO: Destination wedding: Kerala couple sail over floodwaters in cooking pot to get married
Bride and groom float to a temple in a cooking vessel on a flooded road for their wedding ceremony in this screengrab taken from a video, in Alappuzha, Kerala. Reuters
An Indian bride and bridegroom defied the harsh climatic conditions of their village in Kerala state, which was flooded with heavy rain, and decided to reach the temple where their wedding ceremony would be held.
Social networking sites had a video for the couple inside a giant metal cooking pan sailing in the streets of south Kerala, submerged in water to reach the wedding venue.
The couple borrowed the pot from a temple and enlisted two men to push the makeshift boat, images and videos that have gone viral on social media showed.
The video showed them in a large cooking pot made of aluminum, while two men and a photographer kept rowing to help them sail.
“It has turned into a wedding which we never imagined,” the bride told the Asianet channel soon after the wedding. Other shots showed the couple arriving safely to the wedding place, and exchanging flowers.
The couple, identified by local media as health workers in the town of Alappuzha in southern India's Kerala state, could be seen smiling and waving in their ceremonial clothes, as two men waded through hip-high waters to steer their pot to the temple.
They were married in a Hindu ritual with only a small number of guests, while brown water lapped up at the edge of the building. Images showed cars and buses submerged by the floodwaters after heavy rains battered Kerala over the past four days.
Rescuers searched for survivors as the Indian army, navy and airforce assisted with relief and rescue operations. The government of Kerala said it had evacuated thousands of people and set up over 100 relief camps.
Meanwhile, the Indian Meteorological Department extended and widened its weather alert on Tuesday, predicting "heavy" to "very heavy" rainfall in the region over the next two days.
The weather office said several areas were drenched by more than 400 millimetres (16 inches) of rainfall on Monday, causing landslides and flooding. Authorities ordered the closure of schools and banned all religious and tourist activities in the state.
Television footage and social media videos showed residents wading through knee-deep water near Nainital lake, a tourist hotspot, and the Ganges bursting its banks in Rishikesh.
More than 100 tourists were stuck inside a resort in Ramgarh after the overflowing Kosi river deluged several areas.
