While rereading the news and reviewing the videos on Langtang Valley, a notification from the platform gives me some news: on September 28 and 29, Kathmandu is devastated by torrential rains, rains that cause the flooding of the Bagmati River that crosses the city. Result: two hundred and forty dead and four thousand seven hundred displaced. It is a national catastrophe, never like this since 1970. Landslides everywhere. The entire area around the city is an open sewer. Debris and carcasses of buses and cars and human bodies dragged by the fury of the mud currents. All the main arteries that connect the city to the rest of the country are blocked by mud and collapses. For three days, life in the city and in the Bagmati Valley is paralyzed. Slowly, the civil defense and the army get to work first of all to recover the hundreds of missing people, then to restore regular traffic to the main roads. The circulation of goods, especially food, is collapsing, prices are soaring by ninety-five percent.
I read all this with shivers. And resignation. My departure is set for October 16, my trip is naturally compromised. Patience, I tell myself, I can only hope for luck, with all those deaths, then there is little to hope for. But I overlooked an important detail: Durga - Khalì, the goddess who symbolizes the triumph of good over evil, consort of Shiva, one of the most important of the Hindu pantheon. And I overlooked Dashain, the most important religious celebration of the Hindu calendar dedicated to Durga - Khalì, a celebration that every year moves millions of Hindus and is held in the first half of October. This year it is scheduled from October 3 to 14. It has the flavor of Christian Christmas, it is the celebration of the domestic hearth, in which Hindus leave the city to reunite with their families in the villages. The celebrations for Durga - Khalì accelerate the work of civil protection and the army on the roads. The main arteries that branch out in all directions from Kathmandu are gradually being returned to traffic.
Contact Mr Kesh, my agent in Nepal: Dear Mr Kesh, Namaste! What is the situation in Langtang Valley, thank you for your email, sir, the situation is calm, a group has just returned from there, the roads are as before the floods. Your trek is safe.
My trek is safe. Langtang Valley is safe too, at least this. In 2015 it was devastated by an earthquake that razed entire villages and caused hundreds of deaths among tourists and natives. This time Durga - Khalì has done mercy.