Deadly catastrophic flash floods that swept through a mountainous border region straddling southwestern China and northern Nepal have left hundreds dead and triggered an urgent search effort, with roughly 90 U.S. citizens still unaccounted for as of Thursday, one day after the disaster struck. As of Thursday afternoon, U.S. State Department officials confirmed that no American fatalities have been confirmed, while three U.S. nationals have already been pulled from flood-affected areas to safety.
A large share of the missing U.S. citizens were part of religious pilgrimages to Mount Kailash in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, a site considered deeply sacred across multiple faiths including Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Bon. By Thursday, worried family members and friends had begun sharing posts across social media platforms begging the public for information and updates on their missing loved ones, who range from a Virginia woman traveling with an organized tour and a Texas couple celebrating a birthday to a mother accompanying her 14-year-old daughter on the trip.
One of the unaccounted-for U.S. citizens is Venus Rajnikant Patel, a 45-year-old Indian-born American who had recently relocated from St. Louis, Missouri, to Cincinnati, Ohio, to be closer to and support his family. Patel was traveling as part of a guided tour when the floods hit, according to his friend Jolene Gosha. Gosha told reporters she and other close friends knew Patel was traveling in the border region, but were devastated to discover he was staying at a hotel directly in the path of the rushing floodwaters.
“We’re just holding out hope, hoping that by some miracle he managed to climb to safety and get out,” Gosha said in an interview. “I try not to let myself build up false hope, because I know the terrible reality is that he’s likely not with us anymore.”
Gosha described Patel as a passionate adventure traveler with a joyful, outgoing personality, who loved dancing and often organized surprise flash mob performances to celebrate his friends’ weddings and birthdays. “He’s always grinning from ear to ear, and he’d dance in the silliest way without a care in the world who was watching,” she added.
Indian spiritual leader Jaggi Vasudev, more widely known by his followers as Sadhguru, revealed in a post on the social platform X that 77 pilgrims returning from their Mount Kailash trip with groups organized by his non-profit Isha Foundation were at an immigration facility in Gyirong, Tibet, when the flash floods hit. In a subsequent comment to ABC News, the Isha Foundation confirmed that 22 of the 77 pilgrims at the center during the disaster are U.S. citizens. The Isha Foundation is an India-based spiritual organization that runs a U.S. yoga and meditation retreat campus, the Isha Institute of Inner-sciences, located in the mountains outside McMinnville, Tennessee.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, former U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed that senior U.S. officials had already held talks with Nepalese government leaders, and that the U.S. had extended an open offer of assistance to support response and recovery efforts. “We have offered them anything they want, any help they need,” Trump said. He also noted that initial estimates placed between 50 and 60 U.S. citizens in the affected area, adding that a full, formal accounting of all foreign nationals in the region was still ongoing.
This report included contributions from Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Collin Binkley based in Washington, D.C.