Overwhelmed by bodies, hope is fading in Nepal
Along the Trishuli River, which winds through central Nepal, almost all houses have disappeared.
Bridges have been swept away, paddy fields along its banks turned to mud, and boulders the size of buildings sit in the water.
In Dhunge village, on the left bank, residents trace their fingers across photographs and point into the empty distance, gesturing to where their homes once stood.
More than 1,000 people are confirmed to have died after last Wednesday's catastrophic floods. Some 4,000, including 33 Britons , are still missing.
The search continues, but hope is fading .
Mortuaries are overwhelmed and mass burials have begun. Bodies are wrapped in plastic bags, tagged and lowered into shallow graves in the hope that, eventually, loved ones will be able to rebury them properly.
The land bears the scars of what Shisir Khanal, Nepal's foreign minister, described as a "Himalayan tsunami".
Mud, rocks and shrubbery have piled up 20ft high in places. In some patches, the ground is rock-hard; in others it is soft and marshy.
Villagers believe bodies may lie beneath it and want authorities to start digging.
People look for usable materials in the debris in Trishuli - Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty
"I believe bodies of my nephew and sister-in-law are somewhere under this rubble," said Ashok Chaurasia, a cloth merchant, while pointing towards the mud accumulated along the banks of Trishuli River.
His nephew Rahul, 18, and sister-in-law Usha, 51, were swept away by the water as they ran for their lives.
Officials say that searching beneath such deep mud and rock will mark the final phase of their operations. The rescuers say the priority is to find people who might still be alive, mostly in hydropower tunnels.
A rescue operation at a hydropower project in Rasuwa - Nepal Army/Reuters
The Independent Power Producers' Association of Nepal said 898 people working on 11 hydropower sites, including some under construction, remained missing. About 500 of them were believed to be trapped inside power plant tunnels.
Balendra Shah, the Nepalese prime minister, said on Monday that 279 people had been rescued from the sites.
An international team of Chinese and Nepalese military staff is leading the rescue operation, while experts from India, Korea and Australia are also involved.
At Chilime tunnel, the rescuers hit the foothill of a mountain on the other side but could not find any survivors, said Umesh Pattak, an engineer who works at the tunnel.
"The tunnel was filled with slush and rocks. I hoped my six colleagues might be alive inside, but unfortunately we found none there," he said.
At another tunnel in Trishuli, a manhole was drilled allowing rescuers to abseil down and search in person. Rescuers also sent oxygen into the tunnel by drilling holes, but there have been no signs of life.
At Batar, an army camp about 50 miles from Kathmandu, survivors have been flown in by helicopter . Relatives gather outside, waiting impatiently for news about their loved ones, now missing for a week.
They scan through the dozens of sheets of paper carrying the names of survivors and pinned on the walls of barracks.
When Surya Tamang, 48, reaches the notice board, he runs his finger down a sheet of paper looking for his brother's name.
On and on he reads.
A Buddhist monk looks at photographs of missing and deceased people outside Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu - Monika Malla/Reuters
Like the others who crowd behind him, the 48-year-old driver is hoping to find his loved one on this regularly updated list of survivors. But he is not there.
"I am losing hope, but I am still looking for him," Mr Tamang told The Telegraph, on the verge of tears. For now, 34-year-old Sonam Tamang remains among the more than 4,000 people whom authorities have not been able to trace.
Similarly, British families are also losing hope of finding their loved ones alive a week after floods swept through Nepal, with none of the 33 missing Britons found.
A woman, whose husband is missing, said: "With every passing day, we are losing hope. We keep telling ourselves that they may still be alive, but the longer this goes on, the more grief it will be when we finally have to face the truth."
Mother Muna Khadka, centre, is consoled after discovering she has lost her son, Aayush - Dar Yasin/AP Photo
A delivery driver from London flew to Kathmandu on Saturday after his parents went missing during the floods while on a Kailash pilgrimage near the Nepal-China border.
"I want to find them, whatever condition they are in, whether they are breathing or not," he said. "I am stuck. I have no idea what's going on here. I don't know what's next for me and what next to do."
His parents were travelling with a group of pilgrims with Leaf Holidays near the Nepal-China border. He travelled to Nuwakot on Sunday with a friend, whose parents are also missing from the same pilgrimage group. The journey to the flood-hit area left him fearing the worst.
"I had a hope that I will find them but after visiting the flood affected area of Nuwakot, and after seeing the damage, my hopes are fading. Deep down I still hope that she might be alive.
"I had never expected I would find my mother in such a situation. I am just sweating, dreading to think about my mother and in what condition she might be."
Mr Khanal, Nepal's foreign minister, said: "This was not a standard flood.
"With wave heights reaching 20m-30m and speeds clocked at 180kmph, this was a disaster of tornado-like velocity – what many are rightly calling a 'Himalayan Tsunami'. It is a scale of disaster that is entirely outside the living memory of Nepal," he said.
A resident salvages materials from his home in Nuwakot - Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP Photo
In Bidur, one of the worst-affected towns, even a light drizzle scares residents into seeking higher ground, frightened that flooding could hit again.
Parvati Adhikari, 40, from Dhunge, had built a temporary shelter higher up the mountain. She said she could not imagine returning to the place where her home once stood.
She now lives there with her husband and two cows. The flood took her house. It also took almost everything she owned. "I have nothing except these clothes I am wearing," she said.
Even the richest families in the town, with businesses worth millions of rupees, are dependent on relief camps for food and shelter.
A police helicopter transporting relief supplies stops in Rasuwa for flood victims - Prabin Ranabhat/AFP
At Devighat relief camp, people fought with police and civil officials, angered at their failure to bring the missing home. Officials admitted to struggling with managing the growing number of bodies.
With mortuaries overwhelmed, authorities have directed all district administrations to turn to mass burials after collecting DNA samples.
Decomposition and the risk of infection, combined with a lack of morgue capacity, had made mass burial necessary, Rajendra Prasad Dhamala, a Bagmati police spokesperson, told The Telegraph.
The flood also physically divided families.
In some places, relatives were stranded on opposite sides of the river because the roads and bridges had disappeared.
Sujata Tamang is stuck in Kolani village near Trishuli town with her two children. She has sent her mother, Tika Maiya, who lives in Kathmandu, to find her missing husband Santa Bahadur.
Mr Bahadur, 59, was plumbing in an under-construction house along with three other workers when the floods hit. Since then there has been no trace of him.
His relatives are pinning his posters on hospitals in Kathmandu to find him.
"We are going to all hospitals, where injured are brought to put these posters so we can find him. We are hopeful that he is alive and might have jumped to a safer space to save himself," Ms Maiya said.
