A month after devastating floods struck the Nepal-China border, families in Ukraine are still waiting for answers about more than 50 Ukrainians who remain missing after the disaster.

Among them is 36-year-old Olena Kalynychenko, who had travelled to Tibet with a group of 56 people, most of them Ukrainians, for a spiritual retreat at Mount Kailash. She disappeared while the group was returning home from China to Nepal.

Kalynychenko’s last known location was recorded as she left China through a border post at 10:22 a.m. local time, about 15 minutes before the flood struck. She had been looking forward to returning home and sharing chrysanthemum tea she had bought in China with her partner, Oles Visich.

“She said, ‘When I come back home, we will drink the tea made from Chinese flowers,’” Visich said. He has now been waiting for information about her for a month.

The group, led by spiritual teacher Irina Blonskaya, had been travelling from the Tibet region toward Kathmandu. The plan was to continue by bus before members of the group boarded flights to their respective countries.

Their final message was sent at 8:27 a.m. Nepal time, roughly 10 minutes before a mountain slope collapsed and sent a torrent of water, ice, mud and debris through the area.

Authorities said the disaster was triggered when ice and rock broke away from a Himalayan mountain slope. The resulting flood destroyed communities and damaged Gyirong Port, an important border crossing used by people travelling to and from Mount Kailash.

The scale of the disaster has made the process of locating and identifying victims extremely difficult. More than 1,400 people were killed and more than 6,000 remained missing, with the majority reported on the Nepali side of the border.

Nepal has said that 636 foreign nationals remain missing, including 54 Ukrainians. China has reported 261 foreign nationals missing on its side of the border, including one Ukrainian.

Families in Ukraine say they have received little information about what happened to their relatives. Some have been told that their loved ones left Chinese territory before the floods, but authorities have been unable to confirm whether they subsequently entered Nepal.

The situation has been complicated by the destruction of Nepal’s immigration facilities and records in the floods. As a result, officials have struggled to establish who crossed the border before the disaster.

Stanislav Solohub, whose brother and sister-in-law disappeared on August 25, said families had largely been forced to rely on statistics released online showing how many people had been found, survived, died or remained missing.

Nepalese authorities said they had recovered 1,451 bodies, but only 112 had been returned to families. The government has also collected DNA samples from 2,035 relatives as part of efforts to identify victims, although it has not disclosed how many people have been identified.

Other families face similar uncertainty. Vladsylava Horlova said her mother was travelling with the group and initially appeared on Nepal’s list of missing people. The Chinese embassy later confirmed that her mother had left China and therefore was not included on China’s missing-person list.

Horlova, a university student and refugee living in Norway, worries that her mother may have been caught somewhere between the two countries. She has contacted the Ukrainian embassy in China, Norwegian police and the Red Cross while also submitting DNA samples to help authorities identify victims.

The uncertainty has left families questioning what happened to people who may have been travelling through the stretch of road between the Chinese and Nepali immigration facilities when the flood struck.

Chinese authorities have said that the embassies of foreign nationals will be notified when remains are identified. However, officials have not publicly provided details about how many foreign victims have been identified so far.

Despite the passage of a month, some families continue to hope that their missing relatives may still be found. Visich, who is also a psychologist, has tried to remain positive while supporting others affected by the disappearance of loved ones.

Before her journey, Kalynychenko had organized a retreat for Ukrainian women whose partners were fighting on the front lines of the war. Some of those women had gone years without hearing from their partners.

Now, Visich finds himself facing a similar uncertainty. He has written a support guide for other families dealing with missing relatives and said that, despite the circumstances, he continues to hold on to hope for Kalynychenko.

SOURCE: The Independent, Huizhong Wu, September 25, 2026.