Heritage expert Rajan Khatiwoda in a recent report in this paper, described how families along the Trisuli asked whether an effigy woven from sacred grass could be used in funeral rites when the bodies of their loved ones could not be recovered.
That detail captures what disasters take beyond buildings. When a temple, shrine, or cremation site disappears, so do places where people have worshipped, mourned, and gathered for generations. Rebuilding a structure may be possible, recovering the knowledge attached to it is another matter.
The Nepal Heritage Documentation Project (NHDP) of Heidelberg University has been listing monuments and living traditions across Nepal for the past eight years. Along the Trisuli corridor it recorded more than 80 temples, shrines, and cremation sites, 21 of them completely destroyed by the flood in August. Nationwide, there were 2,000 monuments. This first of its kind inventory can support research, conservation, and the identification of objects recovered after disasters.
NHDP has now winded up. The project had a timeline, but heritage does not. The records remain, and the responsibility now falls to the state — the Department of Archaeology (DoA) cannot carry it alone.
TRISULI CORRIDOR
Rasuwa and Nuwakot form part of a historic corridor connecting Tibet with India through Kathmandu. Trade brought people and ideas through, while Hindu, Buddhist, shamanic, and folk traditions shaped its religious landscape. The temples here are not just old buildings, their histories are intertwined with rivers, routes, communities, and rituals.
At Devighat, the annual Bhairavi Jatra procession travels from Nuwakot to worship Jalapa Devi at the confluence of the Trisuli and Tadi. Its significance lies in the destination and in the people who take part, the route they follow, and the ritual that brings them together. A photograph can record a shrine, but cannot convey what makes that journey meaningful.
The flood damage was a different challenge from the 2015 earthquake which damaged monuments while leaving it on its original site. The flood swept away entire temple complexes, displaced people who maintained it, and altered the riverbank. The physical and social landscape changed at once.
Engineers may identify a safer place to rebuild, but safety alone cannot determine whether a new location holds the same meaning for those who worship there. Some families may want to rebuild in the same area, others may prefer to resettle elsewhere. People may disagree about whether a temple should be rebuilt, relocated, or left alone while more urgent needs are addressed.
Nor is there necessarily one community view. A temple may be associated with a particular clan, maintained by a guthi, and used by a wider group of worshippers. Families, caste groups, religious practitioners, and local custodians may have different relationships with the same site. Community participation raises its own question: who speaks for a community, and whose wishes count when people disagree?
Rituals can help people process trauma by providing familiar structures when ordinary life has been disrupted. But rituals depend on people and places too. When their setting disappears, practices may have to change.
NHDP's conclusion raises a practical question: what happens when a time-bound project ends but the need for its work continues?
Nepal still lacks a comprehensive national inventory that can be reliably updated and used for conservation. The DoA operates the Cultural Heritage Information Management System (CHIMS), an online database intended to provide public access to information on monuments, interventions, documentation, and research. NHDP's datasets are meant to be mirrored there.
Rajan Khatiwoda says technical problems and bureaucratic obstacles have prevented planned updates. CHIMS is no longer functioning as intended, and parts of the inventory remain incomplete. The DoA could clarify the system's status, if datasets have been integrated, and how the inventory will be maintained going forward.
Submitted records include photographs, architectural details, maps, drawings, and information about religious practices and custodianship. This may help the Nuwakot Museum and the DoA match recovered objects to their original sites such as this idol of Karunamaya from Machhindranath temple in Trisuli Bazar (pictured above). But transferring records is not the same as securing their future.
Documents must be catalogued, checked, cross-referenced, and kept accessible. A scanned document is of limited use if nobody can identify it, understand its context, or locate it when needed. This less visible work of data curation is what keeps years of fieldwork from becoming an archive in name only.
Director General Suresh Saras Shrestha has tried to address the problems with CHIMS, but bureaucratic hurdles remain. One official's commitment may not be enough, the issue is whether the institution can sustain work beyond individual appointments and projects.
The DoA has a central responsibility for heritage protection, but it need not carry out every aspect of documentation itself. NHDP has established methods, collected extensive data, and trained researchers. The department could build on this work by engaging a wider range of specialists to manage, verify, and expand the inventory.
The Department cannot gatekeep, they need to collaborate with others, Khatiwoda told me. The department could benefit from strengthening what he described as "social engineering” — building relationships, bringing people together, and creating conditions for people outside the institution to contribute.
Qualified professionals should have fair opportunities to contribute, with transparent processes for submitting findings, cross-referencing records, and correcting mistakes.
Heritage conservation in Nepal has been shaped partly by Western theories and methods. These have contributed valuable tools, but cannot automatically determine how Nepal's living heritage should be understood or preserved. The country needs approaches grounded in its own histories, social relationships, and ways of transmitting knowledge, while remaining open to learning and debate.
This does not mean accepting every tradition uncritically. Cultural practices in Nepal continue to carry caste and gender inequalities, and communities may disagree about what they want to preserve or change. Documentation should make these histories and debates visible, not freeze culture into a single authorised version of the past.
Nor should national ownership mean restricting who may contribute: researchers, practitioners, and communities should be able to examine, challenge, correct, and enrich existing records.
NHDP’s legacy will depend on whether Nepal maintains those records, develops a functioning national inventory, and puts the expertise built through the project to use.
Documentation cannot decide whether a displaced family in Trisuli returns, whether a shrine is rebuilt, or how a ritual changes after its original setting is lost. Those decisions belong to the people who will live with the consequences. Reliable records can, however, help them understand what stood before and what was connected to it.
The families asking Khatiwoda about honouring relatives missing now for nearly two months points to a purpose of preservation beyond saving buildings. People hold on to meaning when the familiar world around them has been taken away.
The river has taken temples, shrines, and parts of the landscape along the Trisuli Valley. NHDP has recorded what it could. The next step belongs to the state, to guard that work and keep it alive by sharing the knowledge and the responsibility.
A national heritage cannot be safeguarded by gatekeeping. It requires institutions willing to work together before the next disaster, not after it.