Safety & Advisories

Nepal Has 21 Glacial Lakes Scientists Call Time Bombs, and One Already Burst This Year

A region-wide survey has flagged 47 Himalayan lakes as potentially dangerous, 21 of them inside Nepal, and 2026 has already shown what happens when…

By Laxman Rawal · Aug 31, 2026

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Every trekker who has stood in Dingboche and looked up the side valley toward Island Peak has walked within a few kilometres of Imja Tsho. It barely existed a century ago — it was a scatter of meltwater ponds on the Imja Glacier. Today it is over a kilometre…

Travel Himalaya Nepal · News

The lakes on the watch list

Nepal has not ignored the problem. In 2000, engineers cut a 70-metre canal into Tsho Rolpa's moraine dam and lowered the lake by three metres — an operation that, at the time, was one of the highest-altitude engineering projects on Earth. In 2016, a joint…

Travel Himalaya Nepal · News

What this means for trekkers

What this means for you A dangerous lake is not a reason to cancel an Everest or Annapurna region trek — the risk is specific to particular valleys, not the whole Himalaya, and none of the watch-listed lakes sit directly on the standard trekking trails to…

Travel Himalaya Nepal · News

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