Five friends from Chhattisgarh were travelling through Nepal when a tea break changed the course of their trip. The group from Raipur stopped at a hotel in Malekhu town in Nepal’s Dhading district around 9:30-10 am on August 26. A short while later, they learnt that a bridge ahead had been washed away in a flood. Had they continued their journey instead of stopping for tea, they could have been on the road when the flash floods struck.“We were lucky that we stopped for tea on August 26 when the flash floods struck. If we had left 10-15 minutes earlier, we might have been trapped,” 53-year-old Narayan Sen, who runs a salon, told PTI after the escape.
They had left Raipur on August 21
The five men, Narayan Sen, Dinesh Ojha, Prem Singh Jagat, Yatendra Prakash and Dinesh Singh Thakur are residents of the Mana Camp area in Raipur. All are aged between 50 and 60. They had left Raipur on August 21 and reached Nepal the next day. The group had hired a car and planned to visit the Pashupatinath Temple, Manokamana Temple and other tourist spots.They were around 50 km from Pashupatinath Temple when the floods struck, Thakur, a 55-year-old police head constable, told PTI. The tea stop at Malekhu was not planned as a shelter. But it kept the five friends away from the road at the crucial moment.According to media reports, they learnt at the hotel that a bridge ahead had been washed away. The hotel was owned by an Indian, who also helped the group with food.
“We saw cars being swept away…”
They were around 50 km from Pashupatinath Temple when the floods struck.(Photo credit: Reuters)
The men soon realised the scale of what had happened. They saw vehicles being swept away by the swollen Trishuli river. They also saw bodies and other debris being carried by the current, Sen told PTI. “We saw cars being swept away in the Trishuli river. Bodies and a lot of other things were also being carried away by the current,” Sen said.What they saw from their location was difficult to forget. The amount of water and debris was so large that it was sometimes difficult to identify what was being carried by the river. He said small and large vehicles, animals and human bodies could be seen in the water.The group moved to a higher location in Malekhu and spent the night inside their vehicle. There was little certainty about what would happen next. Thakur said they were told by local authorities that they were at a higher place and should not worry. The men later went towards the bank of the Trishuli river to see the situation themselves. “What we saw is very difficult to describe in words,” Thakur told the media.
No electricity or water, but they stayed in touch with home
On 26 August 2026, devastating flash floods struck Nepal’s Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading districts along the Nepal-Tibet border. (Photo credit: PTI)
The group remained in Nepal for two more days after the flood. According to the reports, there was no electricity or water in the area where they were staying. Local residents and authorities helped them, while the five men used an Indian government helpline to share their location.They were also able to remain in contact with their families through the internet. “Internet service was working well there, so we remained in contact with our families and did not panic,” Thakur told PTI.For Dinesh Ojha, however, the uncertainty remained. “We slept in our car, but we could not really sleep. There was always the fear that another flood might come,” he said.
A Rakhi moment in the middle of the crisis
Amid the destruction and uncertainty, the group experienced an unexpected moment of comfort. Local women security personnel tied rakhis on their wrists during Raksha Bandhan. The five friends had originally planned to return from their Nepal trip after the festival, and their sisters had already given them rakhis. The women security personnel deployed in the area tied those rakhis on the men’s wrists, Thakur said.“That was the most comforting moment,” he told the media.
When the group finally left Nepal
The five friends remained in Nepal until August 28 and then returned to India. They reached home in Raipur last Saturday. For Ojha, the images from those two days will remain difficult to forget. He said they saw people searching for missing family members in the aftermath of the floods. “We will never be able to forget what we saw,” Ojha said.
