Stories: Earthquake
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On the Roof of the World: Time Takes a Different Path in Nepal
“Nepal is 100 years behind the times,” Ang Dawa Sherpa lamented as we watched a farmer plow his potato field behind a team of cows. I couldn’t help but notice the farmer had a cell phone in his pocket. Time refuses to keep a fixed presence in a place where distances are measured in hours and the...
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Nepal Connections: Asan Bazaar a Testament to Earthquake’s Upheaval, Nepali Culture
The choice of left or right makes a world of difference when walking away from the Tibet Guest House in the capital city's famous Thamel district. Turn left, and a spider web of roads wends through a trekker's outdoor mall. Tiny shops spill North Face travel bags and down jackets, Nikon camera lenses and brass Buddha statues, Ghurka...
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Scenes From the Nepal Earthquake: One Writer Surveys the Devastation
I had just landed in Doha—my stopover en route to Kathmandu—when a friend in California texted me to ask if I was OK. Confused, I turned to Twitter, where #NepalEarthquake was trending. I rushed to my gate. Some Nepalis were speaking on their phones, others were trying to watch footage on their laptops. Still, the mood...
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Earthquake Strains Nepal’s Already Shaky, But Potentially Powerful, Electricity Sector
Reliable access to electricity was already tenuous in most parts of Nepal before last month’s mammoth earthquake. Now, with many villages and municipalities here about to enter their second week without power — and with little expectation that the outages can be addressed quickly, given the extent of damage to the nation’s already fragile...
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How Doctors in Nepal Are Getting Creative to Cope With the Onslaught of Earthquake Victims
In the earthquake's aftermath, broken bones have become one of the most common ailments in Kathmandu. The city’s hospitals have become inundated with fractured limbs and bandage-wrapped heads, in scenes that evoke the disarray of wartime. The streets are no different: limpers of all ages go about their business, albeit slower than usual, while a motorcyclist with...
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How Drones Are Helping Nepal Recover From the Earthquake
Surrounded by curious onlookers at the historic and now partially destroyed Patan Durbar Square complex, Rahat Kulshreshtha prepares what he has affectionately named his “bird” for flight. Initially slow to take off, the drone hovers near the ground before soaring above the remains of the centuries-old temples, extensively capturing the damage from the April 25 earthquake that killed ...;
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I Used to Run Toward Danger
As soon I stepped off the plane in Abu Dhabi, the heat hit me. The air conditioning in the jet-way couldn’t beat back the desert shimmering through the tinted glass. In the terminal, I joined the throngs of women in black abayas and the men in flowing white dishdash and made my way toward...
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She Survived Two Earthquakes, and a Life of Gender Discrimination in Between
In 1934, when a devastating earthquake struck Nepal, Indra Shrestha was a few doors down from where she lives now. Just over a week ago, she experienced the horror all over again. “This one was way worse,” the 84-year-old said, referring to the April 25 earthquake that killed more than 7,000 people, flattened whole villages and destroyed a cluster of...
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Nepalese Family Braves Earthquake-Ravaged Terrain to Bring Help Home
After the heaving and lurching had stopped, after the wall of his home had disintegrated and the cries had begun to rise up from the rubble all around him, Thakur Prasad Badu says he ran toward the school. He had been outside gathering corn when last Saturday's earthquake struck just before noon and leveled this remote community — one...
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A Kathmandu Crematorium Is Struggling to Cope With the Earthquake’s Dead
The blackened funeral pyres by the Bagmati river at Pashupatinath Temple, Kathmandu’s largest Hindu open air crematorium, haven’t stopped burning all week. Grey-white pungent smoke billows in the air, flecks of swirling ashes slowly fall to the ground. Stray dogs and crows wander among grieving men queuing to have their heads shaved, as the Hindu funeral...