The rivers in Nepal rose without ceremony this season, and swallowed roads, villages and the ordinary calculations of people who had lived beside them for generations. 

Those floods came in a landscape that looks familiar to anyone who has watched the Jhelum climb its banks or seen winter snow fail to settle on the higher ridges of Kashmir. 

The two regions sit inside the same mountain system. What happens to one tells the other what is coming.

Kashmir already registers the same strain. Seasonal cycles have grown erratic. Sudden downpours replace the older, steadier rains. Cloudbursts and flash floods appear where they once remained rare. Landslides cut through slopes that held longer in earlier decades. 

Winter brings less reliable snowfall, temperatures climb, and the glaciers that store the region’s freshwater respond by shrinking. 

Nepal Digs Through Mud & Grief, as Families Search for Loved Ones

Death Toll Reaches 626 in Nepal Flash Floods

These ice fields are not distant scenery. They feed the rivers that........

© Kashmir Observer