Police said the vehicle went off the Prithvi Highway near Benighat, about 80 kilometers west of Kathmandu, after midnight. It rolled down a steep slope, with the BBC reporting a drop of about 200 meters before the bus reached the riverbank. Forty-four people, including the driver, were aboard.
Seventeen victims died at the scene and two more died while receiving medical care, according to a Nepalese police spokesperson cited by BBC Nepali. All 19 bodies were later identified, the BBC reported. The dead included a 24-year-old British man, a 40-year-old Chinese woman and a 32-year-old Indian man. The British Foreign Office said it was helping the man's family and was in contact with local authorities.
Foreign nationals were also among the survivors. A Chinese passenger was treated at the National Trauma Center in Kathmandu, while a 27-year-old woman from New Zealand sustained minor injuries and received treatment at a local hospital. Children were among those on the bus, though the supplied reports did not provide a full passenger list or ages for all victims.
Police, soldiers and specialist rescue personnel, including divers, were deployed to the crash site. Responders pulled injured passengers from the wreckage and transported them to hospitals. The bus landed beside a fast-moving mountain river, adding difficulty and risk to the recovery work.
The cause of the crash was still under investigation. Nepal's Home Ministry formed a five-member task force to examine the incident. Officials did not provide a definitive explanation in the supplied evidence, so broader concerns about road or vehicle conditions should not be treated as a finding in this particular case.
Serious bus accidents occur regularly in Nepal, where mountainous terrain is crossed by narrow roads and maintenance can be poor. In 2024, two buses carrying 65 people fell into the same river; most passengers were killed or remained missing. Another bus traveling from Pokhara to Kathmandu fell into the Marsyangdi River that year, killing at least 14 people.
The latest crash affected a route connecting two of Nepal's most important visitor destinations. Pokhara is a gateway for mountain tourism, while Kathmandu is the country's main transport center. The confirmed toll made the incident a major transport disaster, with the investigation tasked with determining how a routine intercity journey ended in a fall from the highway.
