Floods in Nepal devastate Himalayan pilgrims, raising climate change concerns

Two sisters sit on chairs, apparently stunned.

In halting sentences, in an Instagram post, they explain: "Our parents Shubhakshi and Sumit were in Nepal," one young woman, who introduces herself as Varnika says, "when the floods hit."

Since the devastating floods in Nepal last Wednesday, social media has been awash with appeals from people searching for their loved ones. Most posts include photographs of those missing people, with phone numbers to call for more information.

Many had one thing in common: They were pilgrims on a sacred journey to Mount Kailash, a Himalayan peak located in Chinese-held Tibet, and at the moment of disaster they were at, or near to, a once-popular border crossing, one of the worst impacted locations.

Deadly incidents at pilgrimages are not unusual: from a stampede at a religious gathering known as the Kumbh Mela in India that killed more than 30 people in 2025, to a panicked crush in the Muslim holy city of Mecca during the Hajj that killed more than 2,400 people in 2015.

But a flood sweeping away worshippers on pilgrimages centered in the Himalayas is rare. Even more so that it was triggered, in part, by climate change — an ominous sign for the future of pilgrimages in the region.

It's unclear how many pilgrims remain unaccounted for by local authorities, but they appear to be a large cohort among the 853 foreigners that China and Nepal have reported as missing.

Indeed, according to posts on social media and interviews with journalists, they may represent many of the 287 missing Indian nationals reported by the Indian government on Aug. 29 — the most recent date such figures were released — as well as the 80 missing U.S. citizens.

They include Vivek Srivastav, according to his brother-in-law Guarav Khare, who initially posted about Srivastav on X. He told NPR that Srivastav had settled in Atlanta decades ago.

A biotech scientist, he became an American citizen five years ago; the kind of person who believed that "life is all about serving people." Since the floods, "we have been in search for him," Khare says, of Srivastav's wider family.

Holy mountain draws devotees

Srivastav had been on a pilgrimage alongside 10 others to the same Himalayan mountain, Mount Kailash, which is sacred to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and indigenous Tibetan religions.

Visiting Mount Kailash for the faithful "is one of the most important things that they will do as they approach the last leg of their life," says Hindol Sengupta, a historian of religion.

Hindus believe Mount Kailash "is the ultimate abode of Lord Shiva," one of the most important deities in Hinduism and a god associated with power and destruction.

"Gods walk among men in these mountains," Sengupta says. "This is very deeply embedded in what I would call the Hindu imagination of the world."

Mount Kailash is considered so sacred that scaling this mountain is prohibited, according to Sengupta. For generations, pilgrims have instead walked some 33 miles around its base. It's a roughly three-day trek that is made harder by the extreme altitude.

The physical exertion required is why Shubham Kumar says he and his wife had begged his parents-in-law not to go. Sanghamitra and Debarshi Banerjee were in their 60s and part of a group of 32 pilgrims who are now missing. "It is a very difficult route," he recalls telling the older couple. "But they were destined to go."

As is the case with many of the missing pilgrims, Sanghamitra and Debarshi Banerjee's last contact with Kumar came as they reached a border crossing between Nepal and Chinese-held Tibet. "After that, there is no communication," he says.

That crossing was close to where part of a glacier broke away and smashed into a river valley 4,000 feet below. Fast-flowing water pushed forward the ice and accompanying rock. Footage from that border area captured Wednesday showed a furious wave of material engulfing a multistory border facility known as the Gyirong Port Immigration Office.

Pilgrimage group confronts disaster and mourns

"A well-constructed concrete building just vanished," lamented Jagadish Vasudev, widely known as Sadhguru, who leads a global spiritual group known as the Isha Foundation.

That foundation lost contact with three guides and 77 pilgrims from 19 countries, including the U.S., Canada and European nations.

During a solidarity event with Nepalis in Kathmandu on Sunday, Vasudev said the foundation's tours functioned with a "silly discipline," and he said, "we have to be the first group, because of the immigration center between Tibet-Nepal border." This was all about avoiding delays, he explained: "If you come a little later, it'll take hours to pass through."

So when Praven, the volunteer guide leader for the foundation's group, reported they had reached the border crossing at 9:05 a.m., "I said: good," Vasudev recalled. "I only wish we didn't have so much discipline."

He urged followers to accept that their fellow pilgrims had died. "Death is a resounding silence," he said. "The only thing left right now is rescue, relief, reconstruction."

Vasudev also encouraged people to accept why the pilgrims had died. "Don't try to find mystical solutions to this," he said. "This is the reality of our existence right now."

"It's important we understand," he said, that "human activity" had caused "all this," and he called on countries that straddle the Himalayas to save the mountain range.

Global warming has been causing the glaciers to lose ice at a rate that has doubled in the past quarter century, according to ICIMOD, an environmental advocacy organization that focuses on the high mountains of Asia, including the Himalayas.

At stake, warned Vasudev, wasn't just the physical mountain range, but the heart of Hindu culture and civilization. "Going to Kailash is not a death wish," he said. "It's important for our culture, it's for our civilization." It is also, he added, "very important for Nepal's economy."

Awareness of climate change's role in Himalaya disaster

But the increasing popularity of the pilgrimage now forms part of the broader pressures on the Himalaya range, says Sengupta, the historian of religion. For generations, he says, "people have had to go through a lot of arduous trekking," he says, to reach the base of Mount Kailash. "Part of devotion was this journey."

But as Hindus grow wealthier, particularly in India, "obviously many more people now wish to go there, and therefore roads have to be built and faster and bigger cars go through those roads," he says.

Such infrastructure is popular with long-deprived locals and, he says, it has allowed "tens of thousands of more people to go to these shrines." But perhaps not all are meant to come, Sengupta says. "The ecology is getting destroyed."

It was not over-tourism, per se, that triggered the collapse of a glacier and the subsequent flash floods that have so far killed hundreds of people. But the way tourism numbers are managed could benefit from a broader respect for the fragile mountain ecosystem, says Sengupta — and perhaps for the pilgrims too.

With something that is genuinely sacred to so many, visitors and locals alike may need to do a better job, he argues, "ensuring that pilgrims don't have to die when they march out, as it were, to fulfill their devotion."