The daughter of a woman missing in Nepal has told how she traced her mother’s location through a TikTok video posted hours before the devastating flash flood hit. The catastrophic flash floods that hit Nepal and Tibet on Wednesday, thundering down valleys and sweeping away entire villages, have killed at least 675 people, while more than 3,000 remain missing. Among the missing are 33 British nationals, including a 13-year-old, NHS workers and a priest.
A team from the UK will arrive in the Nepali capital, Kathmandu, on Saturday. Tulshi Patel’s mother, Hemangini Jitendra Patel, and her aunt, Hema Sunil Amin, set off on a pilgrimage in which they had planned to travel into Tibet but the pair have not been contactable since the flash floods hit. In an interview with LBC’s Matt Frei, Patel said the two women had been talking about the trip since the start of the year and the journey had been “on their bucket list”.
She said she had last spoken to her mother and aunt on Monday, had received a photo of them on Tuesday, and their last known location had come from a GPS signal from the tour group at a place called Friendship Bridge at the Nepal-China border. Patel, a pharmacist from Milton Keynes, said: “We did our own deep-dive research and we found a TikTok video that verified and showed my mum and auntie and three other people from the tour at the border waiting to cross, I guess, that the local Nepali tour guide had made.” Of the video, Patel said: “It was Wednesday morning, just before 6am, Nepal time. Patel said her mother and aunt had been in good health and had prepared well for the trip.
This is all they wanted,” she said. They’d been talking about this from the beginning of the year. It was something that was on their bucket list that they really wanted to do.” Patel said she had messaged the two women “in the hopes that maybe we’ll see a tick to say they’ve seen it or read it” and had attempted to contact the tour guide.
Get all of them out and safe.” Patel said the family had considered travelling to Nepal to join search efforts but had decided against this as they did not know how close they could get to the region in order to help. Some of those missing were visiting Kailash Mansarovar, a high-altitude site in Tibet revered by Hindus and Buddhists. Neetu Goyal Tiwari, 51, was on her “dream” trip to complete a pilgrimage when the flash floods hit.
The family have been desperately phoning contacts in Nepal in an attempt to find her, though they increasingly believe her to still be in China. As many of the family members are based in India, it is difficult for them to obtain visas to search for her. Her brother, Naresh Goyal, said Neetu’s husband and daughter remained in the UK for now.
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