A Vancouver man on an expedition to Mount Kailash in Tibet said he and his team passed through the Nepal-Tibet border area hours before catastrophic flash flooding on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2026.
Darren Jacklin was travelling with an expedition team preparing for a three-day pilgrimage around Mount Kailash.
About 24 hours before the flooding, their bus was travelling along a muddy road toward the Nepal-Tibet border when a mudslide blocked the route.
The group was forced to stop and eventually walk to the border crossing, where members spent several hours waiting to clear immigration.
During that time, Jacklin said they spoke with local residents, guides, porters and other travellers.
Jacklin said members of the expedition team were later preparing for bed when their local guides and porters began receiving calls and messages from family members.
“Then their phones started blowing up,” Jacklin said. “Family members being displaced, being unaccounted for, some fatalities and stuff like that. And then it got really real, really fast.”
Jacklin said the team later learned some of the people they had spoken with at the border crossing were among those killed or still unaccounted for.
“And that just guts us deeply,” he said.
Jacklin said the Nepal-Tibet border crossing is a busy area, with many pedestrians and transport trucks passing through. He said the surrounding mountains and buildings left people with few places to escape.
“It was just devastating, shock, fear, sadness, uncertainty and a lot of grief,” he said.
Jacklin said the expedition team had prepared for a range of possible scenarios before the trip but could not have predicted a natural disaster.
“This is a major natural disaster,” Jacklin said, adding the effects will be felt in the quality of life of people who have lost homes, access to clean water and their livelihoods.
With roads damaged and transportation routes disrupted, Jacklin said the team does not yet know how it will get home.
However, he said returning home is not the group’s biggest concern.
“We want to help. We want to serve. We want to make a difference,” Jacklin said.
Jacklin encouraged people to pay attention to the scale of the disaster and support humanitarian relief efforts for affected communities.
“There’s a lot of people that are hurting right now,” Jacklin said. “As a community, we have to come together as a global village to make a difference because we’re in this together and it can happen anywhere, a natural disaster.”
Dilip Chand, owner of Bay Leaf Indian Fusion, has a personal connection to Nepal, where he and his family are from.
Bay Leaf Indian Fusion will match donations for people and communities affected by the disaster dollar for dollar, up to $5,000.
Donations can be made at Bay Leaf Indian Fusion locations in Cranbrook, Fernie and Creston.
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