Kathmandu, May 19 -- Janmu Sherpa was a grandmother with a dozen goats and a tea house in Donggang in the Rolwaling Valley. Her stopover served trekkers en route to Tso Rolpa Glacial Lake and the trail over Tashi Laptsa Pass to Khumbu.

In 2018, I spent months in the Rolwaling Valley studying how mountain communities perceive climate change. Unlike my climate-anxious self, Janmu was calm, even hopeful, despite having lived through floods, landslides, and the 2015 earthquakes.

"No one knows when Tso Rolpa will burst, so we cannot stop our daily chores. Let fate decide," Janmu Sherpa had said.

Last year, fate did decide. On 22 June 2024, the Dorji Phungmo Glacial Lake burst. The resulting flood swept through the Rolwaling River, washing a...