Postcard from the Himalayas: Hard rain is already falling

Pasang Yangjee Sherpa on how climate change is affecting the people of Nepal

The World Today Published 1 October 2021 2 minute READ

Pasang Yangjee Sherpa

Seattle-based anthropologist from Mount Everest region in Nepal

Laxmi Gurung

Tourism entrepreneur from Mustang district in Nepal

I was sitting on the kitchen floor with my baby daughter in Seattle, when I found out about yet another climate change-induced disaster back home in Nepal. 

On July 12, my friend Laxmi shared an emotional post on her Facebook page about a disastrous flood. She is a fellow Himalayan woman from Kagbeni, a village lying in the Mustang district of Nepal. She runs a successful tourism business there. 

‘It looks like a glacier outburst,’ Laxmi wrote. The villagers had seen chunks of ice and snow floating in the muddy flood waters that engulfed 250 fully grown apple trees and 100 juniper and pine trees overnight. There was nothing the villagers could do. 

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