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A tourist enjoying a zip line ride in a picturesque valley inadvertently captured chaos in the background as militants opened fire below him.
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May 1, 2025Updated 4:24 a.m. ET
Rishi Bhatt donned a blue helmet as he prepared to slide down a zip line across the Baisaran Valley in Kashmir, a “mini Switzerland” where hundreds of tourists from India were enjoying a sunny April afternoon. Holding the rope in one hand and his smartphone in the other, he took off from the platform as the camera began recording.
Video filmed by Mr. Bhatt and verified by The New York Times shows panic unfolding as militants can be heard opening fire on tourists, killing at least two dozen people. His smile and shouts of glee are a jarring juxtaposition to the terrorist attack happening below him.
As Mr. Bhatt, who was visiting with his family from Ahmedabad, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, starts his ride down the zip line, the camera pans across an open meadow. Crowds of people are gathered around what appear to be yellow and blue tents next to a tall structure, which serves as the entrance to the valley. Others are taking a stroll or picnicking on the grass, out in the open to enjoy the spring sunshine.
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Then a gunshot can be heard in the video. Two more shots ring out in quick succession as Mr. Bhatt passes over children jumping on a trampoline.
Below him, people are panicking and there is nowhere to take cover. Some tourists are standing next to Zorb Balls, clear inflatable balls people get inside of and roll. As the gunshots continue, some people look behind their shoulder toward the entrance. An adult swiftly picks up a child. One person crouches and starts to sprint in the same direction as many others: toward a dense forest of cedar trees.
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The footage does not appear to show the gunmen. It is toward the end of Mr. Bhatt’s nearly 40-second ride down the zip line that he starts to look around, realizing something is wrong.
“For about 20 seconds I did not realize; I was deep in my fun in the zip line,” he said in an interview with India Today, a leading mainstream news channel. “Then I realized that firing was going on and people were dying below, and I saw five or six people had been shot.” After he got off the zip line, Mr. Bhatt said he found his family, and they fled, managing to escape the attack unharmed.
A lot remains unclear about last week’s terror attack that took more than 26 lives and injured 17 people. It has escalated tensions between India and Pakistan, the neighbor that India accuses of supporting terrorism, to the verge of military confrontation.
Mr. Bhatt’s video has gone viral in India, becoming one piece of evidence as investigators piece together the details of the security lapse and what happened as a picturesque day turned into one of horror.
Suhasini Raj is a reporter based in New Delhi who has covered India for The Times since 2014.
Mujib Mashal is the South Asia bureau chief for The Times, helping to lead coverage of India and the diverse region around it, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.
Jiawei Wang is a video journalist for The New York Times based in Seoul.
