Elena Gross, Corinna Leins & Marit Neumann (University of Heidelberg)
In September 2025, a three-week field trip took place to the Langtang Valley in Nepal, a major trekking destination in the Himalayas. The central theme of the field trip was the development trajectories before and after the devastating 2015 earthquake, during which an ice and debris avalanche completely destroyed the village of Langtang. The socio-economic shift from traditional agro-pastoral land-use systems toward a tourism-oriented economy was examined, based on repeated mapping of building structures in the two settlements of Langtang and Kyanjin Gompa. Furthermore, glacial and periglacial processes, as well as the effects of glacier retreat, were central to the field trip.
Image: © S.Schmidt