Four Bicholim girls planned their first trip without their parents, but they never took off

Panaji: For months now, four Goan girls, whose lives usually revolved round studies, had planned a well-deserved break from the sweltering Goan summer. The girls, aged between 10 and 17, were set to embark on their first-ever trip without their parents, and the destination was Kashmir.
Purvi Teli, 17, from Bicholim, planned the trip with her 10-year-old sister, Shreeda and their family friends, 16-year-old twins Vedi and Vritti Karia, who wanted to travel before they would get busy with their Class X studies. The timing of the seven-day trip coincided with one girl’s desire for a break following her SSC examinations, and thus, plans for the seven-day trip began to take shape.
The plan — drawn up with the help of a travel agency run by a relative — included visits to Srinagar, Gulmarg, and Pahalgam.
"Over the past year and a half, I wasn’t able to go anywhere as I was busy with studies, preparing for the SSC exam. I was extremely excited to visit Kashmir. We wanted to make reels and take good photos,” Purvi, who recently passed her Class X exam, told TOI.
She said that all four of them were scheduled to leave Goa on a flight scheduled to depart at 9.30am from Manohar International Airport, Mopa, on Wednesday.
“We always had doubts in our minds about safety in Kashmir, but still we wanted to enjoy and planned to visit Kashmir,” said Purvi, the eldest in the group.
The youngest member of the four-teenager group, Shreeda, who actively engages in cultural activities in her school, said, “I am very sad. I wanted to enjoy the trip. I wanted to play in the snow and make reels. It was my first time travelling without my parents.”
When the news of the terror attack broke on TV on Tuesday, both families encountered a tense situation at home, deciding whether to allow their children to go on the trip. “After my mother told me about it, the four of us decided on Wednesday morning not to travel to Kashmir,” said Shreeda.
The Karia family is originally from Gujarat, but the twins were born in Goa. Vedi said that it was their first trip without their parents too. “When the news broke on Tuesday and before we eventually cancelled our trip, my mother told both of us not to speak Gujarati in Kashmir, only Konkani and English, else ‘they may target you’,” said Vedi.
The Karia girl’s mother heard on the news that one terrorist told a victim to “go and tell PM Narendra Modi”.
“We had high expectations for our trip, thinking we would enjoy it. Now we have reached Class X, and for the next three years, we will be busy with studies, so we wanted to have this trip,” said Vritti.