Rajendra Lama’s phone has barely stopped buzzing. In between coordinating rescue operations for flood survivors with the Nepal Mountaineering Association and running his travel company, he spends his days communicating with anxious tour groups, trying to persuade them not to cancel their trips.
“We have a crisis in one part of the country, but we’re open elsewhere and are not affected by the floods,” said Lama, a tourism entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience. “I’m just trying to communicate that to my clients.”
Catastrophic flooding along the Nepal-China border on August 26 grabbed global headlines, as tsunami-like waves – a mix of water, sediment and boulders – raced down from the Himalayas, submerging villages more than 100km (62 miles) downstream across northern and central Nepal.
Over 1,200 people have died, with more than 4,000 still missing – among them some 600 tourists, many of whom were pilgrims bound for Mount Kailash, a site in the Tibet autonomous region revered by Hindus and Buddhists.
Terrifying social media footage has alarmed visitors planning trips during Nepal’s peak September-October travel season, when post-monsoon skies offer unobstructed mountain views. But tourism operators stress that most of the country, including the popular Everest and Annapurna regions, remains safe and unaffected.