A Suwanee, Georgia, couple says a spontaneous decision to visit Mount Everest saved their lives when catastrophic flooding killed more than 1,300 people across Nepal, and left dozens of their fellow American travelers still missing.
Mita and Hemant Parikh had spent fifteen years planning a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash, one of the most sacred sites in Hinduism, tucked deep in Tibet. They joined a group of 47 travelers from the United States, Australia, and other countries, accompanied by seven local guides. The trip was the fulfillment of a lifetime of faith and patience. Then Hemant floated an idea that wasn't on the itinerary.
He wanted to see Everest. Not climb it, just stand close enough to look at the highest peak on Earth. Mita agreed almost immediately, skipping their usual back-and-forth over cost and logistics. A separate guide took the couple on a detour through Lhasa to Everest Base Camp while the rest of the group continued toward Kailash. That unplanned side trip, as the couple recounted, put them miles from the disaster zone when the flooding hit on August 26.
A massive section of overhanging glacier and rock broke free from Lantang Lirung mountain that day, sending a wall of water, ice, and debris roaring downstream. The flood obliterated homes, roads, and infrastructure across wide stretches of Nepal. The town of Devi Ghat was torn apart, with livestock left rotting on top of the mud. In Trishuli Bazar, in Nepal's Nuwakot district, houses sat partially submerged in muddy water along the riverside.
When the Parikhs made it back from their Everest detour, the hotel where their group had been staying was gone, destroyed by the floodwaters. They could not reach their fellow travelers. Several families from the group remain missing. All seven guides are unaccounted for.
Officials say at least 1,400 people died in the flooding. More than 5,000 remain missing. At least 85 of those reported missing are American citizens.
The scale of the disaster has driven massive rescue operations across Nepal, with teams battling ruined infrastructure just to reach survivors.
About a month after the flood, CBS Atlanta sat down with the Parikhs at their home in Suwanee, a suburb north of Atlanta. The couple described a decision that, in hindsight, feels impossible to explain rationally.
Mita Parikh, described as a woman of deep faith, said she and her husband talk about it every day.
"That's what we talk to each other every single day. Why did we decide this way?"
The couple's usual pattern would have killed the idea before it started. Mita said they typically argue over expenses and inconvenience before committing to any change of plans. This time, neither one pushed back.
"Usually we argue, or tickets are expensive, no, let's not go. But I don't know why we both agreed."
Hemant put it simply when he recalled the impulse behind the detour:
"Mount Everest is the highest peak in the world, and I said, at least, I cannot climb, but I can go and see from a distance."
Recovery teams have continued pulling bodies from the wreckage weeks after the flood. Workers have recovered remains from flooded hydropower tunnels even as thousands of people remain unaccounted for across the region.
What followed the Parikhs home to Georgia was not relief. It was guilt. Both struggle to understand why a spontaneous whim spared them while friends, families, and guides from their own group remain missing or confirmed dead.
Hemant Parikh told CBS Atlanta he cannot stop asking the same question.
"I ask myself why? And I don't have an answer."
Mita described the images that follow her into sleep, the sacred mountain, the faces of people she traveled with, the not-knowing.
"As soon as I close my eyes, I see Kailash, and I see the people. I don't know what happened."
Some survivors of the broader disaster have emerged against extraordinary odds. One worker trapped underground for nine days eventually made it home. But those stories remain the exception, not the rule.
For the Parikhs, the weight sits in a question that has no clean answer. Mita framed it in the language of faith:
"That's what keeps me awake. Why? Why God chose us to live. So there has to be some purpose, right?"
The Nepal flooding ranks among the deadliest natural disasters to affect American travelers in recent memory. With at least 85 U.S. citizens still missing, the scope of the crisis extends well beyond the Parikhs' personal story. The 47-person pilgrimage group alone included families from the United States and Australia, and several of those families have not been heard from since August 26.
Rescue operations have stretched on for weeks. Search teams found survivors twelve days after the floods even as the confirmed death toll climbed past 1,300. The full accounting may take months, if it comes at all.
No information about U.S. consular involvement with the Parikhs or the broader group of missing Americans has been made public. The tour company or organization that arranged the pilgrimage has not been identified in available reporting.
Mita Parikh summed up the strange, unwanted lesson of the trip in a single line:
"Everybody has a bucket list, but this bucket list, you don't choose it."
Fifteen years of planning. One unplanned detour. The Parikhs are alive because they broke from the schedule, and the people who kept to it are gone. Some questions don't come with answers, but the ones that matter most rarely do.
