‘I knew I was going to die’: Bay Area couple recalls escaping Nepal flood
Anjana Raja and Pattabiraman Venkatesan, a couple from the San Francisco Bay Area who were on a pilgrimage to Tibet. (Photo: AP/X/@CBSNews) Nepal’s flood disaster has claimed at least 734 lives, with nearly 3,000 people still unaccounted for, as rescue teams continue combing through debris and disrupted communities. Among those who narrowly escaped were a Bay Area couple who said they thought their lives were over as a wall of water bore down on their tour bus near the Nepal-China border. The country’s prime minister said 4,451 people have been rescued so far, while the scale of humanitarian need keeps growing.
Among those caught in the disaster were foreign travelers on pilgrimages and treks near the Nepal-China border, including a couple from the San Francisco Bay Area who described a harrowing escape to CBS News.
Hundreds of the missing are foreign nationals who were in the area to work, trek or take part in a pilgrimage to a sacred peak on the Tibetan side of the border. Among a group of roughly 80 pilgrims from the Isha Foundation still unaccounted for, organizers said the missing came from 19 different countries.
The United States has one of the largest numbers of citizens affected. The State Department said 90 Americans remain missing, with five rescued so far, and 22 of the missing pilgrims from the Isha Foundation group are American nationals.
A sudden turn
Anjana Raja and Pattabiraman Venkatesan, a couple from the San Francisco Bay Area on a pilgrimage to Tibet, told CBS News correspondent Ramy Inocencio that they had just passed Timure, heading toward the Nepal-China border, when what looked like a tsunami struck their tour bus Wednesday.
“I knew I was going to die.”
Anjana Raja and Pattabiraman Venkatesan, a couple from the San Francisco Bay Area who were on a pilgrimage to Tibet, told CBS News’ @RamyInocencio that they had just passed Timure headed to the Nepal-China border when what looked like a tsunami… pic.twitter.com/2yRAEIHsTL
— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 29, 2026
Raja said she and her husband had been busy chatting with other travelers on the bus and weren’t looking ahead when the driver suddenly turned uphill off the main road. When she looked up, she said the driver, the guide and three other passengers near the front of the bus were gone, having jumped out. She said the door had been left open, which let her husband grab the driver by the collar and pull him back in to get everyone moving.
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A wall of water
Raja said that within seconds, she saw what looked like a 60- to 70-foot wall of dark, muddy water bearing down on them, close enough that she estimated it was only about 50 feet from the bus. She said she first mistook it for smoke or dust, unsure at that moment whether it was fire, before realizing it was floodwater.
The couple ran uphill, climbing higher with each step as the wall of water and debris closed in behind them. Raja said a police base camp nearby was washed out completely as they watched.
‘I knew I was going to die’
In that instant, with the wall of water closing in, Raja said she was certain her life was over. She said the thought was immediate and overwhelming: she was not going to survive.
The couple eventually made it to a mountaintop, where they sheltered overnight in a goat shed with other survivors before being airlifted out the next day. Raja called their survival nothing short of a miracle.
