The landslide month

In northern Nepal, they call late August and early September a "landslide month". After two months of intense monsoon rain, with the soil soaked, and with steep mountain slopes all around, it's not difficult to guess why.

The two earthquakes didn't exactly help the things of course - but landslides are something that happen every year in this period of time. Every year, mountain communities get simply cut off - often for weeks or even months. Even main roads get blocked, though usually those landslides are (impressively) cleared within hours or days.

Landslide remains along the road started to proliferate in the last month

Though clearly, it happens every year

I've not been moving between Kathmandu and Dolakha/Chautara that often, but even so several times I had to postpone the trip because the road was impassable - because of a landslide or a bridge washed away.

A temporary bridge after the real one was taken down by a landslide... thankfully, I never had to cross this

It's of course even better if, after several hours on the road, you're told that the way ahead is blocked by a new landslide, and you're faced with the options of 1) going all the way back to Kathmandu and waiting for another day, 2) taking the 10-hour back-road, or 3) climbing over and waiting to be picked up on the other side. In the circumstances, we went for the climb over - but it was not exactly pleasant to see the mass of rocks above you as you scramble over the huge stones which just a few hours ago were an innocent-looking slope.

Miraculously, they made this road passable again within hours

Same place, a few weeks later

What I find fascinating here is how people are just used to coping with all these harsh conditions... monsoon, landslides, mountain terrain, inaccessibility, winter, it all just seems part of life and something they just deal with. My sincere respect.