On the morning of 26 August, there had been no prolonged rain over the settlements along Nepal’s northern border. Yet far above them, at around 5,200 metres in the Langtang range, the first trigger of a devastating disaster was already taking shape.
A mass of glacier ice and rock broke away from the mountain and plunged down the slope, gathering rock, sediment and debris before entering the Lhende river system.
What began high in the Himalayas quickly became a disaster for communities far downstream. The mountain collapse triggered a sequence of events that moved faster than many settlements below could respond: an ice-rock avalanche, a surge through the river, a debris-filled flood and, eventually, a destructive flow through the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli river systems.
In places, the river rose with frightening speed. The Trishuli climbed by nearly nine metres in about 30 minutes.
The initial assessment found that 19 bridges and roughly 40 kilometres of roads had been damaged or destroyed. More than 430 MW of electricity-generation capacity was knocked offline.
At the time of writing, the death toll had crossed 1,000, while thousands remained unaccounted for. Rescue teams continued searching areas cut off by collapsed roads, damaged bridges and debris.
The numbers capture the scale of the disaster. The way it unfolded tells us something equally important.
A mountain disaster can begin with ice and rock thousands of metres above a settlement. It can enter a river, gather more material as it travels and turn that watercourse into a corridor of destruction.
For India, that brings the warning much closer home.
As roads, towns, hydropower projects and tourism infrastructure expand across the Indian Himalayas, are we designing them for the hazards these mountains could face in the future?
‘Are we developing the Himalayas as though they were the plains?’
When disaster strikes the Himalayas, familiar questions usually follow. Was there too much rain? Did a landslide trigger the flood? What caused the river to rise?
Architect, urban planner and socio-environmentalist Dikshu C Kukreja believes India needs to ask another fundamental question: are we developing the Himalayas as though they were the plains?
Speaking to The Better India, Kukreja argues that India needs to approach Himalayan development on an “urgent war footing”. For him, roads, tunnels, towns, tourism and energy infrastructure all need to be planned around the realities of one of the world’s most fragile mountain systems.
“The Himalayas are not the plains. The topography of mountains is completely different, and it affects the whole landscape,” he tells The Better India.
That difference has to shape decisions on the ground. It influences where a road is built, how a slope is cut, where a town expands and whether a river valley can safely carry another highway, hydropower project or tourist influx.
VIDEO | Manali, Himachal Pradesh: Heavy rain triggers flash floods damage apple orchards in Manali.
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— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) July 31, 2026
India’s Himalayan Region sits firmly within the country’s development story.
NITI Aayog describes the Indian Himalayan Region as stretching about 2,500 kilometres across 13 States and Union Territories, with nearly 50 million people living there. Roads, towns, tourism economies, hydropower projects, forests and rivers all occupy the same narrow geography.
That is what makes Nepal’s disaster relevant to India.
People have lived in these mountains for generations. Today, the scale and speed of development are changing at the same time as the hazards themselves are changing.
Before drawing a road, understand the mountain
From a distance, the Himalayas can appear immovable. Geologically, they are anything but.
They are a young mountain system, still being shaped by tectonic forces. Steep slopes, fractured rocks, complex drainage and unstable terrain make the region naturally susceptible to landslides, erosion and other geological hazards.
Climate change adds another layer to that instability. For Kukreja, this geological reality needs to become the first principle of Himalayan planning.
“We need to understand that the Himalayas are still forming. They are fragile and young. Yet much of the development conversation still begins with the infrastructure rather than the landscape.”
Smaller, distributed infrastructure and better traffic management could reduce the need to widen Himalayan roads into four- or eight-lane highways. Photograph: (PTI)
Those conversations often begin with practical questions. Where should the highway go? How quickly can a journey be shortened? Where can another hotel be built? How much hydropower can the river generate?
Kukreja wants another question to enter that conversation much earlier: what has that intervention done to the mountain?
He says, “the point is not that roads, bridges or power projects should disappear. It is that the mountain should not have to be treated as an obstacle to be engineered away.”
When shorter journeys require bigger mountain cuts
“Consider the highway,” Kukreja says.
“A road that cuts several hours from a journey is easy to measure as development. The economic benefit can be counted. Travel time can be compared before and after construction.”
The effect of cutting into a mountain, however, can extend well beyond the edge of the road. One intervention can place additional pressure on another part of the landscape.
Kukreja is particularly critical of treating reduced travel time as automatic evidence of better mountain planning.
“Tourism departments are proud when they can say they have cut travel time by flattening mountains.”
This is where the difference between planning for the plains and planning for the mountains becomes crucial.
“We cannot keep building Bengaluru and Delhi in the Himalayas.”
A mountain town requires infrastructure designed for its own terrain. The ecological and geological cost of a four-lane road, for instance, can vary enormously from one landscape to another.
The road itself can also become vulnerable to landslides, flash floods or debris flows. When connectivity fails during a disaster, the infrastructure meant to connect a community can leave that community harder to reach.
A road upstream can affect villages downstream
Nepal’s disaster also brings another reality into focus: a river does not recognise administrative boundaries.
The collapse began high in the mountain system. Its consequences travelled through different landscapes and settlements downstream.
The same principle applies in India.
A road project may be approved in one district. A hydropower project may sit further downstream. A forest may lie beyond another administrative boundary. A town may depend on the same river system.
The landscape connects all of them, even when different authorities make decisions about each one.
Kukreja argues that future climate projections need to be considered alongside the geology of individual landscapes. Photograph: (PTI)
“You cannot have administrative boundaries for the Himalayas. We have to look at the overall development of the Himalayas.”
For Kukreja, infrastructure therefore needs to be assessed as part of a connected mountain system.
A new road, tunnel, hydropower project, tourism facility or settlement cannot be understood only within its individual project boundary. Planners also need to examine the combined pressure these interventions place on an entire valley.
The question then becomes larger: is the combination of roads, tunnels, hydropower projects, tourism facilities and settlements increasing risk across the landscape they share?
Can yesterday’s records prepare us for tomorrow’s Himalayas?
For decades, infrastructure planning has relied heavily on historical records: past rainfall, past floods, past temperatures and past river behaviour.
Those records tell us what a landscape has already experienced. Kukreja argues that planners also need to understand what it may face in the years ahead.
“We need to understand future trends rather than historical data,” he says.
Future climate projections, he argues, need to be considered alongside the geology of individual landscapes.
“We have to carefully study the repercussions of the geological situation.”
Nepal’s disaster shows why this matters. The trigger occurred high above the settlements, while the destruction travelled through a river corridor far downstream.
Infrastructure built anywhere along such a corridor therefore has to account for risks that may originate far beyond its immediate surroundings.
How do we decide where construction should stop?
After a catastrophe, attention often turns towards drawing lines on maps and identifying areas where construction should be restricted.
But where should that line begin? What should determine it?
Kukreja believes these decisions require a detailed understanding of individual landscapes.
“No-build zones alone make no sense.”
He argues that authorities need to examine the condition of each area before deciding where development can safely take place and where restrictions are needed.
“How much loose soil there is, how much erosion has already happened, and how much tree cover these areas have lost, all these factors have to be checked.”
That makes decisions about construction deeply local. The condition of the slope, its soil, erosion, tree cover and geology all become part of understanding how much development a particular landscape can carry.
Mountain communities need development. What should it look like?
Any conversation about Himalayan infrastructure eventually returns to the people who already live there.
Mountain communities need roads. They need hospitals, schools, electricity, jobs and communications. Tourism supports livelihoods, while connectivity can reduce isolation and improve access to opportunities.
Kukreja is clear about their right to that progress.
“People living there have every right to progress economically.”
Having worked on several government projects over the years, I have identified key challenges within such projects.
Here are my thoughts on navigating bureaucracy, dealing with regulations, and effectively collaborating with stakeholders — all while prioritising the public good. pic.twitter.com/DifD73G4WH
— Dikshu Kukreja (@DikshuKukreja) January 21, 2025
The important question, for him, is the form that progress takes.
“Development must happen, but it must be micro-development, not mega-development.”
That could mean smaller, distributed interventions rather than concentrating enormous infrastructure within narrow valleys.
It could mean asking whether every tourist destination requires a larger road, whether every peak needs unrestricted access, whether parking and traffic can be managed before another highway is widened, and whether infrastructure can respond to the terrain rather than forcing the terrain to conform to it.
That brings the discussion back to one of the most visible symbols of Himalayan development: the highway.
“There is no need to create four- or eight-lane highways everywhere. We need to do better traffic management.”
For Kukreja, better traffic management can sometimes reduce the pressure to keep adding concrete to mountain landscapes.
Can smaller projects offer another way?
Kukreja points to examples beyond India to make his broader argument about scale.
He cites Albania’s mountainous border region with southern Greece, where hydropower development has included multiple smaller projects rather than relying entirely on mega-scale sites.
“They understood the ecology.”
For Kukreja, the example points towards the possibility of distributing infrastructure, reducing the scale of individual interventions and working within ecological limits.
“There are enough examples in the world to learn from. We have to find smart solutions to coexist with nature.”
What should an Indian Himalayan town of the future look like?
The question may ultimately come down to where planning begins.
Instead of starting with the infrastructure India already knows how to build and asking the Himalayas to accommodate it, planners can begin with the landscape and ask what kind of infrastructure it can safely support.
That means studying the whole valley rather than a single project boundary.
“We have to look at upstream and downstream development together.”
Nepal’s disaster has made that connection visible in the most difficult possible way.
Some mountain hazards will remain beyond human control. The amount of exposure created through development, however, is something India can influence.
Kukreja sees this as an institutional and social challenge.
“We cannot hold back development. But we have to change the mindset of the authorities and also the citizens.”
“We need to get out of bureaucratic lethargy and take a unified approach.”
For India’s Himalayan towns, that shift asks planners, governments and citizens to look at development through a different lens: begin with the mountain, understand the valley around it, and then decide what can safely be built there.
Because the infrastructure rising across the Himalayas today will have to live with the mountains of tomorrow.
