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It is easy to understand why Langtang is such a popular destination for trekkers. The valley is breathtakingly beautiful. The crashing river that carved it out snakes through the high Himalayas, a pine forest on either side.
But I was anxious as I flew back in a small helicopter a few days ago. The last time I had been here I had found a community in terrible trauma.
The main town, also called Langtang, had been utterly destroyed. The scale of the devastation was so complete it was hard to work it out when flying over it. My eyes were drawn to the wreckage of the buildings standing on a small hill, not to the great plume of debris fanning out into the valley.
But that was where the busy little tourist town had been.
The earthquake had triggered an avalanche and a landslide which had buried the entire place under who knows how many hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rocks and boulders, and snow and ice.The locals here are ethnically Tibetan. They’re tough mountain people but as we hiked down from where the helicopter had dropped us, everyone I spoke to burst into tears.
“We have lost everything,” Dendup Lama told me, his eyes red raw. “Everyone has lost family here.”
Just one house remained, sheltered under a great shoulder of rock.
But I was anxious as I flew back in a small helicopter a few days ago. The last time I had been here I had found a community in terrible trauma.
The main town, also called Langtang, had been utterly destroyed. The scale of the devastation was so complete it was hard to work it out when flying over it. My eyes were drawn to the wreckage of the buildings standing on a small hill, not to the great plume of debris fanning out into the valley.
But that was where the busy little tourist town had been.
The earthquake had triggered an avalanche and a landslide which had buried the entire place under who knows how many hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rocks and boulders, and snow and ice.The locals here are ethnically Tibetan. They’re tough mountain people but as we hiked down from where the helicopter had dropped us, everyone I spoke to burst into tears.
“We have lost everything,” Dendup Lama told me, his eyes red raw. “Everyone has lost family here.”
Just one house remained, sheltered under a great shoulder of rock.
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