Kathmandu, April 21 -- After attending a night-long vigil for a dead relative, Karma Tamang was taking a nap in a room in his Panorama Guest House in Kyanjin when he was woken up by violent shaking.

He staggered out into the balcony, down the stairs and outside. All around him, stone houses were crumbling in clouds of dust. Then there was another more ominous roar from the cloud-covered slopes of Langtang Lirung directly above the town.

"I knew it was an avalanche, but what we did not expect was a blast of wind so strong that it swept people and yaks off their feet and blew them away," Tamang, 55, recalls.

He ran back to the farthest room in his lodge while the dirty snow blew all around like a blizzard.

"There were people with broken...