Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Aug 30
Flash Flood Leaves Pilgrims, 3 Nepalese Guides Missing Near Nepal-Tibet Border
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Aug 30

Flash Flood Leaves Pilgrims, 3 Nepalese Guides Missing Near Nepal-Tibet Border

3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Aug 30

Summary

  • A pilgrimage group to Mount Kailash, including 67-year-old New Yorker Amita Amin, lost contact near the Nepal-Tibet border after a flash flood swept through the area Wednesday morning.
  • About an hour after the group's last communication, glacial runoff triggered the flood, according to Dipak Lamicchane, whose tour company organized the trip.
  • The missing party includes the pilgrims and three Nepalese guides, one of them Lamicchane's son-in-law, and no contact has been made since.
  • Mount Kailash draws Hindu pilgrims seeking a once-in-a-lifetime spiritual journey that can require months of planning, high costs and strenuous travel through remote Himalayan terrain.

Insights

With hundreds missing in the Himalayas, could this catastrophic glacier collapse permanently close the sacred route to Mount Kailash?
What happens when a spiritual journey collides with a deadly 9-meter wall of glacial water at the edge of the world?