Twenty-five April 2015 and the years after
Before 2015 Langtang was a long village of stone houses with flat roofs, a gompa, water-driven prayer wheels and terraced barley fields, with lodges that had grown up since tourism arrived in the 1970s. The Langtangpa were agropastoralists: they grazed yaks and crossbred cattle on high pastures in summer, grew potatoes and barley, and traded with Kerung in Tibet. In the valley census before the earthquake, about 670 people lived in the Langtang Valley.
The earthquake struck just before noon on a Saturday in the spring trekking season. The avalanche that followed was estimated at two to three kilometres wide and buried Langtang and smaller settlements such as Chyamki, Mundu and Thangsyap, and hit Ghora Tabela. Figures vary between reports, but hundreds of people were killed or never found. Many survivors were away, in Kathmandu or herding, and came home to find there was no village.
Rebuilding was done mainly by the Langtangpa themselves, with help from friends, former trekkers and organisations. A memorial with the names of the dead was raised near the old site, and new lodges, many funded by families taking on loans, reopened within a few seasons. In 2016 the International Astronomical Union named a crater on Mars Langtang as a tribute. When you walk across the grassed-over debris to the memorial, you are walking over the old village.
