California couple recounts surviving deadly Nepal flood: “I knew I was going to die”

Updated on: August 29, 2026 / 3:30 AM EDT / CBS News

A couple from the San Francisco Bay Area who were on a pilgrimage to Tibet told CBS News on Friday that they thought they were going to die when they saw a mountain of water coming toward them earlier this week.

"I knew I was going to die," Anjana Raja told CBS News. "I knew I was going to die."

The catastrophic flash flooding that struck a mountainous border area of Nepal and Tibet on Wednesday — when a glacier in the Himalayas collapsed and sent torrents of water into the valleys below — has killed nearly 600 people, with an estimated 2,500 more believed to be missing as search and rescue crews frantically scour for survivors.

The U.S. State Department said Friday that about 90 Americans are estimated to be among the missing.

When the avalanche of powerful waters ripped down from the high Himalayas, the melting glacier and debris first hit the Nepali village of Timure, near where Raja and her partner Pattabiraman Venkatesan were with their tour bus.

The couple were making their first pilgrimage to Tibet, an autonomous region of China that shares a…

Original source: https://www.cbsnews.com/world/