For generations, residents of Thawang had watched the monsoon arrive with its familiar torrents. On the night of August 12, however, the rain brought something they had never seen before.

A landslide of mud, boulders and uprooted trees swept through Kotlabara settlement in Uwa, in Rolpa district, carrying 13 villagers with it. Twelve bodies were recovered two days later. One person remains missing.

“This is something neither had we heard of nor witnessed here in generations,” said Rishi Keshab Budha Magar, chairman of Thawang Rural Municipality. “The flood caused huge damage to life and property.”

The landslide struck Ward 5, an area with a population of 1,932, leaving an entire settlement washed away.

In neighbouring Jajarkot district, four people were killed and ten injured on August 15 when a landslide struck Risyang in Bheri municipality after heavy rain, according to officials.

About 800 people from 200 households were affected and moved temporarily to safer ground. Rescue workers were forced to walk several kilometres to reach them after a landslide blocked the road.

The two districts are among Nepal’s more remote and vulnerable areas. Rolpa was once the heartland of the Maoist insurgency, while Jajarkot is still recovering from the earthquake that struck the district in 2023.

For people accustomed to the monsoon, the scale of the destruction has been difficult to explain.

“We have no idea why there was such destructive rainfall,” Budha said. “These kinds of landslides seldom happen here.”

He said the scale of the loss of life and property had shocked local residents. The disaster, he added, was entirely unexpected, and he hoped it would not be repeated.

Nepal’s monsoon began on June 20, and authorities have warned that continuing rain is increasing the danger of landslides in the mountains and hills, as well as floods, flash floods, debris flows and inundation elsewhere.

The western region has generally been less affected by the monsoon this year. In mid-June, the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology had forecast a drier-than-normal season, and officials say the overall impact so far remains less severe than in previous years.

Yet the recent deaths have prompted renewed concern.

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said at least 16 people had been killed in monsoon-related landslides in western Nepal in recent days. It warned that further heavy rain could trigger more landslides and flooding.

The authority has urged residents to remain vigilant throughout the monsoon and ordered preliminary geological assessments of several disaster-hit areas, including parts of Rolpa, Bajura and Jajarkot.

Officials have also called for emergency relief, temporary accommodation and medical care for affected families, alongside repairs to roads, drinking-water systems and irrigation infrastructure damaged by the disasters.

In Thawang, the question remains why a phenomenon as familiar as monsoon rain could, in a single night, become so destructive.

For villagers in Kotlabara, the hope is simpler: that they will never see anything like it again.