( CNN ) -- Indian authorities scrambled to rescue thousands of people trapped after floods and landslides ravaged the Himalayan region , leaving up to 1,000 feared dead . The exact number of those killed will not be clear until the muddy waters are cleaned up and the bodies recovered , said Vijay Bahuguna , the chief minister of Uttarakhand state , which is the worst-hit . `` Certainly , the number of the dead is much higher than 550 ... and it could be around 1,000 as figures coming in suggest , '' he said Saturday . Emergency operations include the military and all forms of transportation , including trains moving people for free . About 70,000 have been evacuated since the floods hit this month . Barrages of water , mud and rocks have hit scores of towns and villages in the Indian state , inundating homes , shrines , roads and vehicles . Bahuguna , has described the disaster as a `` Himalayan tsunami . '' Dotted with temples and often referred to as `` the Land of Gods , '' Uttarakhand attracts large numbers of pilgrims from around India to its mountainous reaches . Those travelers , many of them far from home and short on belongings , are now caught up in the destruction . Thousands of rescue workers are trying to reach more than 50,000 people cut off by the waters . Bahuguna told CNN 's sister network CNN-IBN on Friday night that the death toll was 556 but could rise . The bodies `` were either buried or floating in slush , '' he said . It will take 15 days to complete evacuations in the province , he added . Other parts of northern India , including New Delhi , have also been hit by flooding , but Uttarakhand has suffered the worst of the devastation . The rains over the region have eased in the past few days , aiding in the rescue of about 30,000 people , Bahuguna said . Gurjit Singh , who had traveled to the town of Gobindghat with his 12-year-old son , described a chaotic scene as people tried to escape the flooding last week . `` There was nothing but death in front of us , '' Singh said Thursday after getting out of a crowded car ferrying people to dry , flat land . `` Now that we 've got out , we feel like we 've got a second life . '' His son , Rana Udesh Pratap , said the trek to safety was long . `` I held my father 's hand and walked and walked and walked on a narrow path , '' he said . The two had made a pilgrimage to Uttarakhand from the nearby state of Punjab to visit the Sikh Hemkunt Sahib shrine .
The exact number of those killed will not be clear until the mess is cleaned up . This one is the worst - case .