8 October 2014

The current state of the Sunkoshi landslide in Nepal

Posted by Dave Petley

The Sunkoshi Landslide

After the breach and the reconstruction of at least a rudimentary road, the Sunkoshi landslide in Nepal has dropped off the radar screen.  Inevitably though the legacy of such an event lives on.  An interesting insight into the state of play can be gleaned from a blog post put up by the “This World Ahead” team, two German nationals who are undertaking a 15 month long round the world motorbike tour.  They reached the landslide this week and put up a blog post about it yesterday, with some very high quality images.  The pertinent section of the post says:

“After crossing the Chinese-Nepalese border in the north of Kathmandu we where facing the incredible dimension of the recent landslide. Tons of rocks, sand and mud, disrupting the green jungle. The massive slide, now calmly lying in the valley, tore a huge hole into the mountain, as if a giant had turned over the earth cover with a shovel and buried hundreds of people under it. It took us approximately four hours and hard work to pass the provisionally, three kilometers long path over the landslide.”

I have reproduced two of the images below.  The first shows the landslide itself:

Sunkoshi

http://thisworldahead.com/2014/10/07/along-the-way-the-nepalese-landslide/

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Note the state of the track on the foreground.  This image shows the track itself:

Sunkoshi

http://thisworldahead.com/2014/10/07/along-the-way-the-nepalese-landslide/

 

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The fact that it took four hours to get two trail motorbikes a distance of three kilometres over the landslide, and the lack of vehicular traffic apart from motorbikes in the images, is very informative about the state of play at the landslide site.  The impacts on the livelihoods of the population in this area must be profound.