Thirty-two pilgrims vanished as Nepal floods swept through; families wait for answers

Manoj Marahatta learned of the catastrophe through calls that would not go through, through silence where voices should have been. More than 30 of his neighbours boarded a bus in Gurkha for a pilgrimage on the morning the Rasuwa River came. Five jumped clear. Thirty-two did not return. There is no trace of them.

“These are my neighbours and they have not returned,” Mr Marahatta said, his voice carrying the weight of absence. He knows the bus driver. He knows the people who were inside. They left in the morning heading toward the same direction from which the flood arrived, as if the river had reversed its course to meet them.

The devastation unfolded across the mountain valleys of Rasuwa and Dhadhing districts when a massive rock-and-ice avalanche triggered flash floods that swept through towns with unstoppable force. In Gurkha, where Mr Marahatta’s family lives, a hospital, a bank, and rows of houses in low-lying areas simply vanished. Photographs taken before and after August 26 tell the story in stark contrast: homes that lined either side of the town bridge, then mud-caked debris where those houses had stood minutes before.

“There are no roads, just mud,” Mr Marahatta said of the landscape now. A bridge in Dhading district is gone. On the lower levels, entire city blocks have been washed away. The upper hillside, where his family shelters, remains, but below them the world has transformed into something unrecognizable.

Rescue teams working through the wreckage describe scenes of desperate final moments. People tried to climb metal rods atop buildings. They scrambled into trees. The water reached them anyway. In some cases, rescue workers have found only limbs. The teams continue searching for those still alive, though hope narrows with each passing hour.

More than 900 bodies have been recovered. More than 4,200 people remain missing, among them more than 500 foreign nationals, according to Nepal’s disaster authority. Prime Minister Balendra Shah has characterized the crisis as “unimaginable and heartbreaking.”

The Nepali community in the United Arab Emirates has felt the tremors of this catastrophe across the distance. Nearly everyone knows someone who has lost relatives or friends. Santosh Khanal, president of the Federation of International Nepali Youth Entrepreneurs in the UAE, described the moment the news arrived: “When we first saw the news and images, I was lost. This level of a catastrophe is beyond imagination, with mountains washed away, boulders the size of mountains flowing down.”

That shock has transformed into action. A cricket tournament organised by the Nepali community in Dubai this past weekend proceeded not as celebration but as fundraising. Organisers faced the question of whether to cancel, whether sitting quietly was the appropriate response. They chose otherwise. The proceeds and cash prizes from the games will go to the Nepal Prime Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund. “We decided there was no point sitting quietly and getting more depressed,” Mr Marahatta explained. “We decided to be action-orientated and give back to Nepal.”

Meanwhile, Nepali residents in the UAE have coordinated with registered volunteers inside Nepal to identify what is needed most urgently: food, clothes, torches, medicines. These items are then distributed through official channels to reach survivors. The Nepali embassy in Abu Dhabi has stated that the government has mobilised all resources for search, rescue, relief and recovery operations, with particular attention to locating missing persons, both Nepali and foreign nationals.

The embassy has directed contributions toward the Prime Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund and the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund, emphasizing that such support would contribute to both immediate relief operations and longer-term recovery efforts. The UAE itself has committed substantial resources, providing a $10 million humanitarian aid package to Nepal. On Sunday, an aid plane carrying 83 tonnes of food and shelter supplies departed for Nepal as part of that support.

The response from the Nepali diaspora has been immediate and substantial. “The response has been massive because the scale of the damage is unimaginable,” Mr Khanal said. For those connected to Nepal by family, by memory, by the knowledge that the people buried in that mud are their own, the crisis has become personal in ways that distance cannot diminish. As rescue teams continue working through the wreckage and the missing numbers hold steady above 4,200, the question of how many more will be found alive grows harder to answer with each day that passes.