Langtang the terrible, Langtang the beautiful

Langtang the terrible, Langtang the beautiful

Hope springs eternal on this trail.
Langtang Lirung (7227m) from Kyanjin Ri, above Kyanjin Gomba (3830m).<br />Photo: Rabi Thapa
Langtang Lirung (7227m) from Kyanjin Ri, above Kyanjin Gomba (3830m).
Photo: Rabi Thapa

I'm walking across the biggest landslide I've ever seen, and I know how I'm supposed to be feeling. But I don't feel like I'm stepping over the remains of hundreds of people, animals, and houses, buried deep under tonnes of stone. Instead, I'm experiencing something of an emotional white-out, a sense that I'm traversing a dead, empty space. The mountain responsible for the devastation just stands there, impassively peering over the grey, scoured rock that makes up the northern flank of the valley, as if it had nothing to do with the scene before me, nor the thousands of trees flattened like so many matchsticks on the south side.

Until last spring, this was the penultimate stop on a much-loved trek across Nepal's first Himalayan national park. Langtang Village was a thriving community, a genuine yak-herding and farming settlement that had taken to tourism with aplomb, and on the eve of 25 April, hundreds from up and down the valley had gathered at the monastery for a funerary ghewa for an elder. Many were caught in the monstrous landslide triggered by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake the next morning – if you can characterise a landslide as the cataclysmic brew of snow, ice and rock that buried over 70 houses and created a pressure wave that blasted anything in its path clean across the valley. Over 300 died in the Langtang Valley, and a third of the bodies were never recovered. In the aftermath, I worked on an oral history of the disaster, mostly by interviewing survivors at the Yellow Gomba refugee camp in Kathmandu, but was unable to secure a chopper ride into the valley. Well, here I was now.

The southern side of the valley, where thousands of trees were uprooted by the pressure wave created by the massive landslide. Photo: Rabi Thapa
The southern side of the valley, where thousands of trees were uprooted by the pressure wave created by the massive landslide. Photo: Rabi Thapa

The lunar landscape is unrecognisable from the pastoral scenes I'd admired three years ago. But it is mostly in the approach to the site that the flotsam of lives gone – a battered dekchi here, a pair of slippers there, a collapsed kitchen crisscrossed with timber – weighs hard on one. A local woman, solar panel strapped to her backpack, overtakes me. She's singing, and beautifully, but I can't make out whether it is a song for the lost souls or a signal to jam out the "things that play on your mind" across this cursed terrain, as someone has told me down in Lama Hotel. Pausing frequently to take photos, I turn a corner to see her but a speck in the distance, moving quickly towards the upper end of the village, where a stone-flagged path emerges from the rubble and winds between sites now busy with masons. Here, witnessing the first signs of reconstruction, optimism supplants sorrow.

The sentiment is shared by the Langtangbas who have returned to live here after a sweltering summer in Kathmandu. Trudging on to nearby Mundum, where a couple of tiny lodges cater to the few trekkers to be seen, I come across Dhindu Lama, former proprietor of a hotel in Ghodatabela, abandoned along with its army post. I last saw him in the capital, where he seemed moody, harassed. Now he grins broadly as he shakes my hand, "It's much better being up here. I felt so dull in Kathmandu." He has more than the fresh air to be happy about. He's building a hotel in Kyanjin Gomba. And the first sight of Kyanjin itself, which was spared the brunt of the catastrophe because of the rock spurs it nestles into, is a heartening one. Shiny-new blue roofs cap the cluster of stone buildings that comprise the settlement and even the famous Dorje Bakery is up and running. As we chow down on hearty portions of almond and chocolate cake, owner Lhakpa Jangba tells me that a dozen hotels have been repaired in Kyanjin. Lhakpa lost about 25 family members last year, yet even in Kathmandu, as a key member of the Langtang Management and Reconstruction Committee, he was in good spirits, as much for his community as anyone else. "I keep on talking to them to keep them mentally strong," he told me then, adding cheekily, "We need them to survive to make more population to put back into Langtang!"

Looking west towards Langtang Village (3430m) in April 2013. The landslide triggered by the April 2015 earthquake originated from the hanging glaciers of Langtang, out of view to the right of the settlement. Photo: Rabi Thapa
Looking west towards Langtang Village (3430m) in April 2013. The landslide triggered by the April 2015 earthquake originated from the hanging glaciers of Langtang, out of view to the right of the settlement. Photo: Rabi Thapa

Kyanjin had 27 hotels before the earthquake, and in addition to those already up and running this season, the rebuilding of another nine is imminent, according to Lhakpa. Five hotels are coming up in Langtang itself. All through the previous day, we tracked a helicopter swinging half-tonne loads of iron rods across to Kyanjin, and workers from Solukhumbhu and Okhaldhunga have been drafted to drive rebuilding efforts and trail improvement. Apart from some funding provided for the latter, however, the government appears to have largely redacted itself from these endeavours. At least our government has – the private sector choppers are chartered by UKAID, and the workers are organised by lodge-owners and by the local committees themselves. This has only fulfilled the low expectations of many, but does not excuse the state. As one Finjo Lopchan told me in Kathmandu: "It's a great opportunity for them, when things like this happen. Their pockets grow large." Still, Lhakpa Jangba expects to see everything back in place in about two years.

Loading content, please wait...
Himal Southasian
www.himalmag.com