Deepak and Madhu Ahuja of Texas disappeared during catastrophic flooding along the Nepal-Tibet border just hours after completing a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mount Kailash, and their two daughters say they still have no answers.
Ashna and Shreya Ahuja have spent days gathered with relatives at a family member's home, working the phones to two U.S. embassies and contacts on the ground in one of the most remote disaster zones on Earth. Their parents had just finished the sacred trek and were heading toward the Nepal-Tibet border crossing with their tour group on August 26 when flash floods tore through the Himalayan region, obliterating communities, roads, and bridges with a wall of water, ice, rock, and debris.
By Friday morning, Nepalese officials reported at least 472 people dead and more than 1,500 missing across Nepal and Tibet. The U.S. State Department confirmed that 90 Americans remained unaccounted for across Nepal and China. No American deaths had been confirmed, but three U.S. citizens had been rescued. The Ahujas were not among them.
Deepak Ahuja had dreamed of completing the Mount Kailash pilgrimage around his 60th birthday. He did not know how his body would change as he aged, and the trek is physically demanding. Madhu, his wife, was nervous about the journey but determined to support him.
Shreya Ahuja, their daughter, told CNN she last spoke to her parents on August 26. They had just finished the pilgrimage and met with the spiritual leader who led the trek. They were proud of what they had accomplished. The sacred peak of Mount Kailash draws Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims from around the world, and the Ahujas had traveled from Texas to reach it.
Ashna Ahuja described the trip's significance in an interview with CNN:
"He wanted to do this trip before or, you know, right when he turned 60. He didn't know how his body would change as he grew older. And it's a pretty tough trek."
Madhu filmed a video of Deepak meditating at Lake Manasarovar, near Mount Kailash. One of the daughters recalled that she could see how happy he was just being there at the lake. Ashna said her mother "really, really wanted to support him and make sure that he got the best 60th birthday possible."
Shreya went to sleep that night in the United States thinking nothing of it. Hours later, the region was consumed by disaster.
The scale of destruction along the Nepal-Tibet border is staggering. Enormous quantities of water, ice, rock, and debris roared through the mountainous region, and waters in Rasuwa District, the hardest-hit area, reportedly reached up to 650 feet high. Villages in the Langtang mountain range, the Himalayan border zone between Nepal and southern Tibet, were decimated. Aerial images showed houses in Devighat, at the confluence of the Trishuli and Tadi rivers, deluged in sludge and floodwaters.
Rescue helicopters pulled more than 3,250 people to safety. Over 150 injured survivors were transported to hospitals in Kathmandu and the districts of Rasuwa, Nuwakot, and Dhading. The Nepal Tourism Board said it had rescued at least 27 foreign nationals, including two Americans. But Nepalese officials warned that the death toll and missing-persons figures could keep changing as rescue teams push into isolated communities and communications are restored. Unstable debris and landslide dams still threaten further flooding.
The disaster did not stop at the Nepalese border. Chinese state media reported three deaths and 558 people missing in Gyirong County, Tibet, including 260 foreign nationals. Hundreds of tourists and pilgrims from countries including Canada, Britain, and Australia were also caught up in the catastrophe. The flood disaster spanned both sides of the border, compounding rescue challenges across two countries with vastly different levels of transparency.
The Ahujas are not the only American family in limbo. Ramesh Sharma, 65, and Neelam Sharma, 64, a New York couple, are also missing. They had retired last year and were finally traveling, a Mount Kailash pilgrimage of their own. Their daughter, Dr. Radhika Sharma, told the Daily Mail that her parents had been wanting to make the trip for a long time.
"My parents have been wanting to do this for a while. They had retired last year, and they just started traveling and really living their life."
Dr. Sharma said the couple was believed to have been near the border at approximately 8 a.m., about one hour before the flooding hit. She did not know why they had been delayed. "We are hoping that they made it to the Tibet side," she said.
In a separate interview with the BBC, Dr. Sharma was blunt about the void of information: "I am just trying to find them, I don't have any answers. No one has any answers." A third missing American, Lata Samala of Richmond, Virginia, was identified by a relative. Beyond her name and city, no further details about her status have emerged.
The climbing death toll and the sheer number of missing Americans, 90, spread across Nepal and China, underscore the scale of the crisis for U.S. families waiting thousands of miles away.
President Trump addressed the disaster on Thursday, saying the United States had reached out directly to Nepal's leadership:
"We are sending aid and we've spoken to the leadership. And we let them know anything they want, we'll have."
The pledge of assistance is welcome, but for families like the Ahujas and Sharmas, the immediate need is information, and that has been agonizingly scarce. Ashna Ahuja told CNN that the situation had barely changed in two days.
"The latest honestly hasn't changed too much in the past two days."
She described reaching out to both the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and the U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu, as well as people on the ground, "to see what the efforts are looking like to rescue and save our parents, hopefully." The fact that her parents were traveling near a border between Nepal and Chinese-controlled Tibet means two governments, two bureaucracies, and two sets of rescue operations stand between the family and any news. The early days of the disaster left communications across the region severely disrupted, and connectivity has been slow to return.
Ashna acknowledged the difficulty of the rescue conditions even as she held out hope:
"It's definitely a terrifying situation. We know that the people on the ground are doing their best efforts, and we hope that they stay safe as they continue to do so."
Shreya Ahuja's final phone call with her parents was upbeat. They had just completed the trek. They were happy. They were ready to come home.
"They had just finished the pilgrimage. They were feeling really proud of themselves for having completed it."
"They were ready to come home."
Shreya went to sleep that night without worry. "I thought nothing of it," she said. Hours later, the region her parents were crossing was unrecognizable. The initial reports of the flooding described a disaster of a scale that few in the region had ever witnessed.
Both sisters told the BBC, simply: "We just love them a lot and want them to come home."
Ninety American families are waiting for phone calls that have not come. The roads are gone. The bridges are gone. Whole communities are buried. And the people who went to the Himalayas seeking something sacred are now at the mercy of a disaster that has left governments, rescue teams, and their own children grasping for answers that nobody seems to have.
When American citizens are stranded in a disaster zone that spans two foreign countries, the federal government's job is not just to offer aid, it is to move heaven and earth to bring its people home.
