A 23-year-old British man is among 19 people dead after a tourist bus veered off the Prithvi Highway in Nepal and plunged 650 feet into the banks of the Trishuli River. Another 25 passengers were left injured after the overnight crash near Benighat, roughly 50 miles west of the capital Kathmandu.
The bus was traveling from the tourist city of Pokhara to Kathmandu when, shortly after midnight, the driver left the road for reasons that remain unknown. Around 44 people were on board.
Rescue teams were forced to rush to the crash site in darkness, pulling survivors from the wreckage as Nepal Army officers and the nation's armed police mobilized to carry out recovery work. Police spokesman Abinarayan Kafle confirmed 17 people died at the scene, with two more dying while undergoing treatment.
The British national killed in the crash has been identified as Dominic Stewart, 23, who had just completed the Annapurna Circuit. His family described him as a "very loving and caring young man who was happiest trekking."
A spokesperson for Britain's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office confirmed the loss:
We are supporting the family of a British man who has died in Nepal and are in contact with the local authorities.
Senior local police officer Prakash Dahal said that nine victims had been identified so far. Among the injured, according to local reports, were multiple Chinese nationals, a New Zealand man, a Japanese woman, and a Dutch woman. The international scope of the passenger list underscores the bus's role as a common transit link on one of Nepal's most popular tourist routes.
This is not an isolated horror. According to the U.S. Sun, Nepal's mountain highways have claimed lives with grim regularity. In 2024, two buses carrying 65 passengers plunged into the same Trishuli River. Twelve wedding-goers were killed in 2022 after a minibus crashed off a mountain road.
The pattern is impossible to ignore. Narrow highways carved into steep terrain, limited guardrails, overnight travel, and questions about vehicle maintenance and driver fatigue combine into a recurring formula for disaster. Investigations into what caused the driver to veer off the highway are ongoing, according to local administrator Mohan Prasad Neupane, but the broader infrastructure problem doesn't require an investigation. It requires political will.
For Western tourists drawn to Nepal's extraordinary trekking and natural beauty, the risk rarely registers until something like this happens. The Annapurna Circuit, the route Dominic Stewart had just finished, is a bucket-list adventure. The bus ride back to Kathmandu is supposed to be the easy part.
Identification efforts continue for the remaining victims. Recovery work at a crash site 650 feet below a highway, reached initially in total darkness, is painstaking. The injured are being treated, but details on the severity of their conditions have not been released.
The investigation will eventually produce a proximate cause: mechanical failure, driver error, road conditions. But the deeper cause is structural. Nepal's roads kill because they are built and maintained for a level of traffic and risk that no longer matches reality. Tourist buses packed with 44 passengers run these routes daily.
Dominic Stewart was 23 years old, fresh off one of the great treks in the world, heading home. That bus ride should have been unremarkable. For 19 families, it was the last ride that mattered.
