Along Himalayan Floods’ Path, Wiped Out Towns and Mounting Grief

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Along Himalayan Floods’ Path, Wiped Out Towns and Mounting Grief

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/13/world/asia/nepal-tibet-floods-school-children.html

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Along Himalayan Floods’ Path, Wiped Out Towns and Mounting Grief

Survivors tell the stories of the people and places buried under the mud after a disaster in Nepal.

Along Himalayan Floods’ Path, Wiped Out Towns and Mounting Grief

Survivors tell the stories of the people and places buried under the mud after a disaster in Nepal.

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!Binod Ghimire!Lam Yik Fei

By

Mujib Mashal and Binod Ghimire

Visuals by

Lam Yik Fei

Over three days, Mujib Mashal and Binod Ghimire traveled along the path of destruction cut through Nepal by violent floods.

Sept. 13, 2026

Taking a break from the noisy work of leading a school of over 500 students, Madhav Lamichhane would ride his motorbike down to the riverside Betrawati Bazaar every week. The principal skipped the busy shops around the town’s clock tower, preferring a quiet moment by the Ram temple to take in the “very beautiful flow” of the Trishuli River.

But on Aug. 26, as he was in school preparing for the first morning bell, the river below suddenly became a violent torrent that obliterated much of the town of Betrawati, erasing its square from the map. It left no trace of the temple, the market or the concrete bridges, and only fragments of the hundreds of homes that dotted either side of the river.

Mr. Lamichhane and the school, up on a hillside, escaped its wrath.

But about 200 students did not. The younger children, ages 5 to 11, had been waiting in the riverside town for a yellow school bus. The oldest, backpacks strapped on, had been slowly making their way uphill to the school when the deluge swallowed them.

“What can I say to the river?” Mr. Lamichhane sighed. He said that fewer than a third of the town’s families had scraped through without losing anyone, with many wiped out entirely.

“It was very beautiful previously,” he said. “It is a cultural and historical place, too. But all that became the past.”

Image

!A muddy river flows through a landscape, with damaged buildings and an overturned yellow bus. Several people walk on a debris-filled road, green mountains in the distance.

*The Trishuli River became a violent torrent that obliterated much of Betrawati Bazaar.*

CHINA

TIBET

Avalanche site

NEPAL

Last reachable point before border

Area of flooding

Detour around steep hills toward Betrawati

Reporters’ journey

Kathmandu

Route starting point

CHINA

TIBET

Avalanche site

NEPAL

Area of flooding

Betrawati

Dhunge Bazaar

Reporters’ journey

Kathmandu

CHINA

TIBET

Avalanche site

NEPAL

Flood site where a

Buddhist monk’s

family members

were lost

Thulo Bharkhu

Area of flooding

Reporters’ journey

Kathmandu

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