Photos: Nepal flood survivors find little trace of former lives
Nepal’s floods displace thousands, with survivors mourning loved ones and searching for belongings amid the debris.
When Anusa Thapa Magar rushed home from her job in the Maldives after hearing of Nepal’s devastating floods, she clung to the hope that her grandmother had somehow survived.
Instead, when she reached Betrawati, the small riverside town where her family lived, she found only a flat expanse of hardened grey silt.
“If my house is buried underneath, that means my Aama is still here underneath too, right?” the 23-year-old said quietly, standing where the family’s two-storey home once stood. Her grandmother, who could barely walk, was last seen resting on her bed.
To reach what used to be Betrawati, survivors now climb a steep hillside, cross a narrow ridge and descend into a wasteland. Along the route lie scattered shoes, school ties and children’s backpacks – “silent evidence”, residents say, of the panic as people scrambled to flee the surging floodwaters.