Increasingly erratic weather patterns due to climate change mean people are losing homes, crops and livestock
As rain lashed the Pir Panjal mountains before dawn on 19 July, Haji Mohammad Latief stepped outside his home in Murrah, a remote mountain village in Indian-administered Kashmir. His daughter had asked him to move the family’s car to a safer place as the rain got heavier.
“I had only just parked it,” Latief recalled. “When I turned around, I saw the water coming.” Minutes later, a cloudburst sent mud, boulders and water crashing down the hillside.
Latief, 48, had spent years building the house, where five generations of his Gujjar family lived together. Within minutes, the torrent swallowed it, trapping eight family members inside. He survived only because he had stepped outside. By dawn, everything he had built lay in rubble.
When the Guardian reached Murrah four days later, electricity, roads and mobile networks were cut off. Floodwaters had washed away roads and footbridges, leaving the only way into the village a 90-minute walk through rain and landslide debris. Residents carried sacks of flour, cooking gas cylinders and medicines across the broken crossing.
Murrah is perched high in the Pir Panjal range above the town of Bafliaz, in Poonch district, about 125 miles (200km) south-west of Srinagar, Kashmir’s main city. The village is home to mostly Gujjars, one of the largest pastoralist communities in the Himalayas, whose livelihoods have long depended on livestock, farming and seasonal migration through the mountains.
The hillside remained too unstable for excavators to reach. Soldiers, disaster response teams and local volunteers searched the debris by hand while others combed the swollen Suran River for the missing.
Latief now lives in the house of his brother, Mohd Bashir, just above the landslide. Inside, women gathered to mourn while men quietly received visitors offering condolences. Verses from the Qur’an echoed through the house.
“I built that house for my family,” Latief said, holding up pictures of his 16-year-old son Sajjad Ahmed, an aspiring cricketer, whose body was still missing. Days before the disaster, the family recorded videos together.
As mourners gathered, news spread that another body had been found several miles down the river; the room fell silent as another funeral procession passed through the village.
Among those searching was Mohammad Razak, 45, who had spent four days combing the river with a team of volunteers. “We’ve been searching every bend of the river,” he said. “We’re still hoping we’ll find them.”
Murrah was among the worst-hit places after a series of cloudbursts, flash floods and landslides swept Jammu and Kashmir this month, killing at least 28 people. Scientists say rising temperatures are increasing the likelihood of short, intense rainfall events across the western Himalayas. In steep mountainous terrain, these rains can trigger rapid flooding and landslides, putting remote communities at increased risk. For mountain communities, the climate crisis is also exacerbating longstanding geographical and social vulnerabilities.
The destruction stretched far beyond Murrah. About 30 miles away in Rajouri, the Manawar Tawi River burst its banks, washing away roads, dozens of vehicles and the town’s main Bela bus station.
Low-lying settlements along the riverbank were submerged in mud and debris. Several houses collapsed across the Pir Panjal mountains, livestock were swept away and hundreds of families were displaced.
About 180 miles north, in Gurez Valley near the line of control with Pakistan-administered Kashmir, residents say they are seeing the same pattern. A cloudburst in Achoora village on 20 July damaged the crops of 11 families and blocked the valley’s only road.