Flash floods in Nepal’s Gorkha district have left more than 100 foreign trekkers stranded on the popular Manaslu trail, officials said. A pre-dawn landslide on Sunday 12 October 2026 blocked the Budhi Gandaki River, and the surge that followed swept away bridges, trails and more than 200 homes.
Gorkha is about 100 kilometres west of Kathmandu. According to Al Jazeera, the landslide blocked the river early on Sunday and triggered flash floods downstream, which destroyed bridges, parts of the hiking trail and homes along the Manaslu trekking route. Three hydroelectric plants were also damaged, the report said. Other outlets cited a smaller figure for homes, saying more than a dozen houses and bridges were washed away, so the reported scale of the damage differs between sources.
Rescue teams have been working since the weekend. Authorities rescued 321 people on Monday, including 12 foreigners, and the army said the operation would continue on Tuesday as the river level fell. No deaths had been reported as of Tuesday, but five villagers were out of contact.
The stranded trekkers are spread along the trail in different places because parts of the path were swept away. A Bangladeshi trekker in the village of Jagat told Al Jazeera that he and others had been stuck there since Monday and that “food supplies are gradually running short”. Officials said that restaurants and tea houses along the route are safe places for those waiting to be rescued.
An official, Bhuwan Raj Ojha, set out the plan: “Those hikers who want to return because of the flood need to be rescued. Those who want to continue their trekking can do so from locations that are safe.” In practice, that means army teams moving people who want to leave, while others can continue trekking from safe points.
The Manaslu Circuit is a popular trekking route. According to Wikipedia, it covers about 177 kilometres around the Manaslu massif, follows an ancient salt-trading route along the Budhi Gandaki River and reaches its highest point at Larkya La, at 5,106 metres. The Nepalese government permitted trekking on the circuit only from 1991. Manaslu itself, at 8,163 metres, is the eighth-highest mountain in the world and the highest peak in Gorkha district. Because the trail follows the river, damage to bridges and paths can cut off whole sections of it.
Manaslu was first climbed on 9 May 1956 by Toshio Imanishi and Gyalzen Norbu of a Japanese expedition, and the area around it was declared the Manaslu Conservation Area in December 1998. Trekking there depends on the same river valley now hit by the floods.
What happens next depends on the weather and on how quickly bridges and trails can be restored. The reports do not give a timetable for reopening the route. Authorities have not said how many people are still waiting for evacuation beyond the “more than 100” foreign trekkers, and Delima News has not seen an official count of Nepali trekkers, guides and porters on the trail. We will update this story as the army and local authorities issue new figures.
Image: The Budhi Gandaki river valley on the Manaslu trek in Gorkha, Nepal (file photo, not from the events described). Photo: Jay Ramji from UK / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
