Indian tourists escape Nepal flood by climbing on a saree

Three buses in Rasuwa

A group of 57 travellers from India, moving through Nepal's Rasuwa area in three buses, was caught by a sudden flood of water, mud and debris, BBC News Hindi reports. The group had booked its trip through an agency in Kumbakonam.

Among them were Naavu Kabirdas and his wife Vijaya Bhuvaneshwari, from Murugu Nagar in Velachery. They were part of a group of 21 people who arrived in Chennai from Kathmandu on Friday night.

The buses had been travelling on a winding road between two mountains. "Suddenly there was a loud noise like an explosion and stones began falling on the vehicle," Kabirdas told the BBC. "Then floodwater started rushing in, as if a dam had been opened." Of the three vehicles, only the second escaped the water.

A saree lowered down a slope

Bhuvaneshwari said their bus had got stuck in mud shortly before and stopped for repairs. "Those few minutes saved our lives," she said.

Their driver was a local Nepali man familiar with a hill area where landslides and avalanches were frequent. He told everyone to get out of the vehicle and move to higher ground, then ran for safety himself.

Most of the 21 survivors were over 50. They had to climb a slope covered in mud and silt, roughly the height of one storey of a building. Bhuvaneshwari slipped twice. "My legs were caked in mud and there was nothing to hold on to," she said.

Her relative Poongodi had already reached the top. She was wearing only a saree that day, so she put on a sweater, took off the saree and lowered it down. "We pulled ourselves up holding that saree and a cable nearby," Bhuvaneshwari said. The climb up the mound of earth took an hour and a half. What happened to the rest of the group of 57 is not stated in the reporting.

Disputed death tolls on the Chinese side

The same flooding and mudslides hit the Nepal, Tibet border. AajTak reports that images and videos from Gyirong port in Tibet are being removed quickly from social media, with state media showing only official rescue pictures.

Chinese cyber security police say they have exposed 10 cases of alleged rumour spreading about the landslide. Under Chinese law, AajTak says, deliberately spreading disaster rumours can bring up to 10 days in detention and a fine of up to 1,000 yuan, with three to seven years in prison in serious cases.

According to AajTak, users identified as Q, Liu and Zhang were penalised for posts claiming figures such as more than 3,000 dead or over 1,000 people swept away. China has put the death toll from the incident at 16. AajTak calls that figure implausible for an accident of this size. The sources do not give an independent toll.