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The sun was shining brightly on a hot mid-afternoon in late June when the residents of Lindur, a village perched at an altitude of 3,328 meters in Lahaul, Himachal Pradesh, heard the loud sound of rushing water.

Jahlma Nallah was flooding again!

“The sun was so hot, I knew Jahlma will flood soon,” noted Jagdish prophetically, a resident of Lindur whose home and fields are adjacent to Jahlma Nallah, a glacial stream that comes down from the Pir Panjal range to meet the Chenab river below.

In a matter of minutes, the usually thinly flowing stream transformed into a terrifying, debris-laden torrent. Brown sludge raced towards the Chenab and nearly blocked the river with its brute force.

A month earlier, repeated flooding had led to the collapse of the only bridge across the nallah connecting hundreds of mountain villages to Manali and the world beyond. The flooding occurs in the afternoon without rain, snowfall or even cloud cover. 

While the Himalayas have been repeatedly inundated by floods and landslides as soon as monsoon starts in the past years, Jahlma Nallah’s flooding in the absence of rain is a considerably more curious and less understood phenomenon, recurring for the last five years. 

Residents recount how the bridge’s collapse each year heightens hardships

Lindur’s drinking and irrigation water comes from the glacial melt that flows through Jahlma Nallah. However during May and June, instead of being a source of sustenance and life, the nallah threatens the land and livelihoods of people in Lindur and other villages downstream like Jahlma, Jasrath and Jobrang.

“Every year, one month of connectivity is being lost to the floods of Jahlma Nallah and its only increasing,” said Govind Phurpa, whose village Phura is located on the banks of the nallah.

The bridge across Jahlma Nallah, part of the Sansari-Kilar-Thirot-Tandi (SKTT) road, connects several villages to markets in Manali through the Atal Tunnel. 

Collapsed section of an apple orchard in Lindur. Photo: Abhay Kanvinde. 

When flooding destroys the bridge, like it did this June, the consequences extend beyond transportation, with remote farming communities suffering substantial economic losses. 

The region has only one farming season and the precious cauliflowers, lettuce and peas grown and harvested during this time wilt within days if they do not reach the market on time.

Even villagers from Pangi Valley, more than 100 kms away from Jahlma Nallah, are affected by this disruption in connectivity and have asked the Border Road Organisation (BRO) to repair the Jahlma bridge to prevent losses to their harvests.

The bridge collapsed in the last week of May.

“It has been hammered by floods the last five years. This year there were landslides from Jahlma repeatedly. The foundations just gave way,” said Rahul Rajput from Lindur.

Now, the backwater and........

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