For Anjana Raja and Pattabiraman Venkatesan, a spiritual pilgrimage to Tibet nearly became a final journey. The couple from the San Francisco Bay Area were traveling through Nepal’s Rasuwa District when a collapsing Himalayan glacier unleashed a wall of water and debris that tore through the mountainside. Describing the moment the disaster struck, Venkatesan recalled seeing a massive, dark wave roughly 70 feet high rushing toward them. At first, he was so stunned by the sight that he couldn’t tell if it was water or a raging forest fire.
As the surge approached their tour bus near the village of Timure, instinct took over. Raja grabbed Venkatesan by his collar and urged him to run just before they leapt from the vehicle. They joined hundreds of others in a desperate scramble for higher ground, sprinting up narrow, slippery paths made of mud and stone while watching homes crumble around them. Raja recounted hearing the screams of those being swept away by the current, admitting that in those moments of absolute chaos, she felt certain she was going to die.
After a grueling climb guided by a local leader, the pair reached a plateau where they spent a harrowing night huddled in a goat shed alongside other survivors. While they were eventually airlifted to safety the following day, the scale of the tragedy remains staggering. Nearly 600 people have died in the floods and approximately 2,500 remain missing, including an estimated 90 Americans according to the U.S. State Department.
Despite the devastation surrounding them, both members of their tour group managed to survive. Reflecting on their escape from what felt like an inevitable disaster, Venkatesan called their survival nothing short of a miracle. He said the experience left him with a profound sense of gratitude and a renewed philosophy on existence centered on kindness and faith in things beyond human control.