Many of missing were Indian-Americans bound for Mount Kailash
Experts believe the flood was triggered when part of a glacier and the bedrock beneath it detached and plunged 4,000 feet into the valley below. The impact was so forceful that the ice “immediately pulverized into water, mixing with debris to create a tsunami of mud,” the Journal wrote, describing footage in which buildings and people at the border crossing were swallowed by the wave in seconds.
The disaster struck last week near Gyirong Port, an immigration point between Nepal and China. The Wall Street Journal reported the toll had reached at least 900 dead and roughly 4,000 missing in Nepal, with dozens more dead or unaccounted for in neighboring Tibet. Foreign diplomatic missions had been expecting heavy traffic of pilgrims this year, including Indian-Americans, according to a U.S. diplomat in the region.
The newspaper’s reporting centered on families searching for relatives who had set out on what was meant to be a spiritual journey to Mount Kailash — the 22,000-foot Himalayan peak that Hindus regard as the home of Shiva, the god of destruction and transformation. Mount Kailash is also sacred to Buddhists, Jains and followers of Bon, a pre-Buddhist religion, and pilgrims hike around the peak rather than climb it. “Many of the U.S. citizens who were there at the time were Indian-Americans,” the Journal reported. Tour agency Kailash Journeys told the Journal that 400 U.S. citizens — all of Indian origin — have taken its pilgrimage tours this year.
Archana Suresh, 46, a telecommunications engineer at Verizon who cooks meals for the homeless in her spare time, and her husband Raghu Rajan, 50, left their home outside Dallas on Aug. 17, bound for Kathmandu and onward to Tibet. They had planned the trip for more than a year and intensified their workouts to build fitness and aerobic capacity for the trek, according to Archana’s brother Ajay Suresh.
“I just want them to say they are OK,” Ajay Suresh said.
The couple were traveling with a tour group that included six other Americans and were last traced to the vicinity of Gyirong Port by mobile phone, Raghu Rajan’s brother Deepak Rajan said.
Vivek Srivastav, a 51-year-old network engineer from Atlanta, had looked forward to the Mount Kailash pilgrimage for years, his brother-in-law Gaurav Khare said.
“For Vivek, going there and seeing Kailash Mansarovar was like a life dream,” Khare said. “He was a simple person, very humble and down to earth. He used to travel with just a backpack, some shirts and jeans and his laptop.”
Srivastav had shared photographs with his family from Nepal before the disaster, the Journal reported, including a selfie of him smiling on a suspension bridge over the Trishuli River — the same river his family now fears may have swept him away.
Srishti Agrawal, whose 54-year-old aunt Rekha Shashidharan and 14-year-old cousin Rashi Shashidharan of New York are among the missing, said contacts in Nepal had been sending photographs of bodies to see if they could identify the two. Rekha and Rashi last spoke with their family at 7:30 a.m. local time from a hotel near Gyirong Port, where they were preparing for breakfast before crossing into Tibet on the way to Mount Kailash. Roughly an hour later, the flood came, Agrawal said; the family was told the hotel was washed away.
“The Nepali authorities and the tour agency, they are being extremely honest with us, saying there’s only a percent chance of survival and that we have to move forward with our lives,” Agrawal said. “But how do we do that? How do we accept that?”
Given the size of the devastation and the passing days, the chances of finding survivors are diminishing, the Journal reported.
The U.S. government said it is working to account for U.S. citizens in the region and that no American deaths have been confirmed so far. American consular teams had conducted advance trips to hospitals along the pilgrimage routes in anticipation of this year’s heavy traffic, according to a U.S. diplomat in the region.
The Mount Kailash pilgrimage was suspended in 2020 during the pandemic and remained closed as relations soured between India and China over their Himalayan border. It only resumed last year after Beijing and New Delhi repaired ties.