(TibetanReview.net, Aug31’26) – As devotees gathered to make a long-life prayer offering to him on the Shewatsel Teaching Ground in Ladakh’a capital Leh on Aug 30, the Dalai Lama invited the gathering to offer prayers for the victims of the devastating flood which had hit the border between Tibet and Nepal on Aug 26 morning. “Friends, let us all pray for all those suffering in Nepal and Tibet as a result of this dreadful disaster, both the deceased and the survivors,” he has told the gathering of some 25,000 people.
An announcement was made, inviting members of the gathering to join in these prayers at the event which was organized by the Ladakh Buddhist Association (LBA), the All Ladakh Gonpa Association (ALGA) and the Tibetan Community of Ladakh.
The Dalai Lama has also said during the long-life offering ceremony: “I feel we should also pray for the flourishing of the Buddha’s teaching in Tibet and mainland China, in other words, in places where it has prevailed but has declined, and in places where it has not yet reached.”
“We have a vast and profound tradition—let us pray it will continue to flourish among the Chinese people as well,” he has said.
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Meanwhile, there has been no change in the number of people reported killed (16) and others missing (546) on Tibet’s Kyirong side of the border by the catastrophic flood while on the Nepali side the number of those reported dead rose to 903 and the missing to 4,247 as per latest government updates on Aug 31 morning. On the Tibetan side, the total of 261 foreigners from 23 countries reported as missing included 104 from Nepal, besides 49 Indian nationals, 33 Latvians, 18 Americans and 15 British nationals, and so forth.
In the catastrophe’s aftermath, Nepal is seeking faster and more detailed disaster-related information from China after a glacier collapse triggered the devastating flash floods of Aug 26 morning, exposing gaps in high-altitude monitoring and cross-border data sharing.
The catastrophe has renewed scrutiny of a May 27 meeting in Kathmandu, where Nepali and Chinese officials discussed cooperation on floods, extreme weather and glacier-related hazards, noted moneycontrol.com Aug 31.
The discussions included proposals for joint disaster-risk measures such as inventories of glacial lakes and hazard mapping. However, Nepali officials have said they wanted more detailed information from China on glacier movements, water levels, avalanches and other hazards that could give authorities more time to respond.
“What we actually wanted from them, and still want, is if there are early movements of glaciers and early movements around that area, we would want to know a bit early,” Sauhardra Joshi, a hydrologist at Nepal’s Flood Forecasting Division who attended the meeting, has said.
The Chinese Embassy in Nepal has said the two countries had maintained “close communication on transboundary disaster management” and made “substantial progress” on cross-border disaster information-sharing during the May meeting. But he did not specify whether China had issued a warning specifically about the Aug 26 disaster, the report noted.
Nepali officials have said China had provided heavy-rain forecasts but that information on other hazards remained limited.
“When the Chinese side sees a heavy precipitation forecast in the Tibet area, then they provide us that forecast and those observations,” Binod Parajuli, a Nepal government hydrologist, has said. But “not for avalanche and water level, landslides, extreme events.”