Nepal Has Two Rivers Called Bhote Koshi, and Only One of Them Flooded

Every traveller watching Nepal this autumn has heard the name Bhote Koshi. On 26 August 2026 a flash flood on that river, triggered by a landslide and glacier collapse on the Tibetan side of the border, destroyed the Rasuwagadhi customs office, swept away the Miteri Bridge and left hundreds of people unaccounted for. What almost no one mentions is that Nepal has a second, completely unconnected river with the exact same name — and it is the one carrying the country's oldest and most famous bungee jump.

Both rivers are called Bhote Koshi — literally 'river from Tibet' — because both cross into Nepal from the Tibetan plateau, at two different points along the border about 100km apart. The Rasuwa Bhote Koshi flows south past Rasuwagadhi and Timure before joining the Trishuli River, which becomes the Narayani and eventually the Gandak in India. The Sindhupalchok Bhote Koshi flows south past the old Araniko Highway trade route near Kodari before joining the Sun Koshi, which becomes the Sapta Koshi. The two never touch. A flood on one tells you nothing about the other, but the shared name has been enough to blur the two on social media through a month of flood coverage.

Where the bungee actually sits

The Sindhupalchok river is the one adventure travellers know. In 1998, a New Zealand-designed operation called The Last Resort strung a 166m steel suspension bridge across the Bhote Koshi gorge and opened Nepal's first commercial bungee jump — a 160m freefall that is still one of the highest bungee drops on earth. It made Nepal a bungee destination years before Nepal's second, taller jump opened at Kushma in Parbat district, where a platform 228m above the Kali Gandaki gorge now ranks as the world's second-highest bungee jump, behind only the AJ Hackett tower in Macau.

What this means for trekkers

Nepal's bungee sites sit alongside a wider adventure roster out of Pokhara and the hills east of Kathmandu — everything from the Kushma jump itself to ziplining and ultralight flights over the Annapurna foothills, all of it separate from the flood-affected Rasuwagadhi corridor. If a bridge-jump over a Himalayan gorge is on your list, our Bhote Koshi bungee day trip runs out of Kathmandu on the Sindhupalchok side.

Sources: Nepal Tourism Board; Nepalnews.com flood explainer; Vajiram & Ravi current affairs brief on the Bhote Koshi River; The Last Resort/Nepal Tourism Board bungee jump listings.

Cover photo: Nick Kwan via Pexels (Pexels License).