24-year-old Bibek Kumal was digging a well in Bidur, Nepal, when he heard a strange whistle.
His colleagues shouted and ran before he did. By the time Kumal managed to climb out of the meter-and-a-half-deep hole, it was already too late: a wall of water, mud and rocks swallowed everything in its path, as if the mountain itself had come undone. “I started running. Then it came crashing down like an earthquake”, he recounted from his bed at the National Trauma Center in Kathmandu.
The current swept him through the debris until he became entangled in the branches of a mango tree. From there, injured and clinging to the bark, he watched as the house where he worked disappeared completely beneath the water. Police rescued him hours later. The floods have already left at least 650 people dead and thousands missing near the border with Tibet.