If you have trouble reading this slideshow, the names can be read clearly on the full resolution images you can scroll through in my Flickr album. All of their names are now recorded on a memorial mani wall that has been built among the wreckage. This tiny village in the Langtang Valley accounted for 243 of them: 175 villagers, 27 local tourism staff (guides and porters), and 41 foreign trekkers. It produced a gust of wind so powerful that the air pressure flattened every tree on the opposite side of the valley for many kilometres downstream.Īround 9,000 people died during the Nepal earthquake of 25 April 2015. An estimated 40 million tons of rock and ice was funnelled down the couloir, straight onto the village. It was as though an entire section of mountainside came off, bringing with it giant boulders, much of the glacier, and the entire frozen lake. When a 7.8-magnitude earthquake shook Nepal that morning, a vast landslide fell off Langtang Lirung. This glacier and lake were the source of a river which ran down a wide couloir or gulley, past the western end of the village to join the main Langtang valley. Langtang village lay directly beneath the south face of Langtang Lirung, where there was a large glacier and a frozen lake sitting in a hanging valley high above. This all changed in an instant at 11.56am on Saturday, 25 April 2015. It used to be a thriving community of teahouses sitting in a bowl, a wider haven within one of the narrower sections of the gorge. The largest of these was Langtang village, at 3,400m. There are several villages and teahouse communities between Syaphru Besi and Kyanjin. Most trekkers go no further than Kyanjin, but the valley continues east, right up to the high glaciers of the Tibetan border region. The valley ascends steeply, and gradually widens before emerging into wide open spaces at Kyanjin Gompa (3,850m), where the last teahouses can be found. For much of its length it is less than a kilometre in width, and the mountains rise sheer on either side. The Langtang Valley starts from an altitude of 1,500m beside the road at Syaphru Besi, disappearing up a narrow, forested gorge. It’s one of the few areas of Nepal where treks of two weeks or less are practical. This and its proximity to Kathmandu has made it more popular with travellers on a budget or shorter timetable. This means that it’s possible to trek there without needing to hire staff and logistics for a camping trek. While not as popular or developed, there is sufficient infrastructure for single and independent travellers to teahouse trek, travelling from village to village and staying each night in accommodation along the route. Langtang is a narrow valley running east to west, and hemmed in by high mountains, including 7,227m Langtang Lirungįor many years it has been consider Nepal’s third main trekking region after the Khumbu (Everest) region and the Annapurnas. Its western end can be accessed by road, five or six hours’ drive from Kathmandu, or by a four to five day trek through the forested hills of Helambu. ![]() It’s a narrow valley running east to west, wedged between dramatic 6,000 to 7,000m snow-capped peaks, the highest of which is 7,227m Langtang Lirung. ![]() The Langtang region sits on Nepal’s border with Tibet, a short distance north of Kathmandu. Yesterday was the second anniversary of that terrible event, so it seems like the right moment to remember what happened, describe what I saw two years on, and see what the future holds. There is no doubt that one of the most jaw-dropping experiences of my recent visit to the Langtang Valley in Nepal was passing through Langtang village, the site of a devastating landslide during the 2015 earthquake.
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