News from Nepal

May 4, 2015

By Mandil Prad­han, lead guide of our Trea­sures of the Himalaya Ride in Nepal

As you all know already, a mas­sive earth­quake M 7.9 ripped through my coun­try Nepal a lit­tle over a week ago. Although my imme­di­ate fam­i­ly and I are safe, many oth­ers were not as for­tu­nate. I am also very relieved to inform you that all of our local staff are safe and account­ed for. Some have lost their homes and are stay­ing in tem­po­rary loca­tions, but most impor­tant­ly, they are safe. The beau­ti­ful Mus­tang, where we oper­ate a good por­tion of  our Rides, is one of the least affect­ed areas of the coun­try and only minor dam­ages have been reported.

While the offi­cial death toll cur­rent­ly stands at 7,000, with more than 15,000 injured, it is believed these num­bers will increase sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the com­ing weeks as more of the miss­ing are account­ed for and more remote regions accessed. A large earth­quake had been expect­ed for years, yet nei­ther the gov­ern­ment nor the major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion was pre­pared for the impend­ing dis­as­ter. We had received warn­ings about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an earth­quake in this region for a num­ber of years now, but a major­i­ty of my the peo­ple here, includ­ing those in gov­ern­ment were not pre­pared at all for a dis­as­ter of this mag­ni­tude that would rip through the heart of my coun­try. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of homes have been destroyed and thou­sands of peo­ple are left home­less. Luck­i­ly, the earth­quake hit on a Sat­ur­day when most peo­ple, includ­ing school chil­dren, were home. I shud­der to think how much more dam­age would have been inflict­ed had it not been the weekend!

In addi­tion to the mas­sive loss of lives, health, and prop­er­ty, we also lost a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of our her­itage sites last Sat­ur­day. The his­toric medieval town of Bhak­ta­pur, which was believed to have more tem­ples than hous­es, has been severe­ly destroyed while the ancient palace com­plex­es of Kath­man­du, Patan and Nuwakot have also been heav­i­ly dam­aged (see drone footage of the dev­as­ta­tion here). Our very iden­ti­ty has tak­en a hit.

How­ev­er, it’s not all gloom and doom here in the Himalayas and there have been many heart warm­ing sto­ries of inspi­ra­tion, sur­vival and sol­i­dar­i­ty. For­eign gov­ern­ments, vol­un­teers, med­ical teams and donors have come out in force to help the peo­ple of Nepal. Our secu­ri­ty forces, with their lim­it­ed skills and resources, have come to the front and have been con­duct­ing res­cue and relief mis­sions all over the coun­try. Even a week after the quake, sto­ries of peo­ple res­cued from under the rub­bles con­tin­ue to pro­vide hope in this time of great cri­sis. Cit­i­zens with stand­ing hous­es have wel­comed their neigh­bors into their homes, and peo­ple from the cities have dri­ven in num­bers to pro­vide relief sup­port to the less fortunate. 

My fel­low guides, Rajesh and Suraj, along with oth­er local moun­tain bik­ers have been scout­ing remote vil­lages around Kath­man­du Val­ley on their moun­tain bikes and report­ing the scale of dam­age to the emer­gency ser­vices. Even though these vil­lages are in short dis­tances of Kath­man­du, they don’t have prop­er road access and heli­copters are in very short sup­ply in Kath­man­du at the moment. Hence, their mobil­i­ty on bicy­cles has turned out to be incred­i­bly use­ful. In addi­tion, the dri­vers of our bike car­go truck, Rabi and Babu, have been using the trucks to trans­port relief mate­ri­als (con­sist­ing main­ly of tents, food, water, and med­i­cines) to vil­lages near and far.

As for myself, I spent the first few days after the quake to dri­ve a team of Turk­ish Search & Res­cue vol­un­teers to the epi­cen­ter of the quake in Gorkha vil­lage — about 7 hours away from Kath­man­du. Then I trav­elled to Ever­est Base Camp, the site of an avalanche that killed 25 peo­ple, with a news crew in order to max­i­mize inter­na­tion­al aware­ness of the dis­as­ter that has befall­en our coun­try. In the process, we were also able to res­cue 3 Japan­ese hik­ers who had been strand­ed in Pheriche (4,100meters) for 4 days.

As the ini­tial wave of media cov­er­age dies, crowd sourced fundrais­ing cam­paigns slow down, and peo­ple set­tle into their tem­po­rary tar­pau­lin homes, we need to start look­ing at a longer term solu­tion that will help peo­ple return to their per­ma­nent homes as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. Mon­soon has­n’t arrived yet, and the dirt roads are still nav­i­ga­ble, but it will start rain­ing soon. The urgency to rebuild is  real. We need to start as soon as possible. 

Reput­ed inter­na­tion­al aid orga­ni­za­tions such as Red Cross, Oxfam, Inter­na­tion­al Med­ical Corps, UNICEF and Save the Chil­dren have strong ongo­ing relief efforts here and are accept­ing tax-deductible dona­tions. I urge you to pick an orga­ni­za­tion of your choice and donate what­ev­er you can to help the peo­ple of Nepal. Here is some infor­ma­tion on the things you need to know before you donate to Nepal (or any oth­er future caus­es): http://distractify.com/beth-buczynski/things-to-know-before-you-donate-to-nepal/.

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