Nepal earthquake relief visit, 6 - 12 October 2015

Robert Tyabji, Shah Alam, 5 November 2015

Nepal suffered a series of catastrophic earthquakes in April 2015 and aftershocks continue to this day to plague the already bewildered and traumatized population. An early CNN report went thus:

Kathmandu, Nepal, 28 April 2015 (CNN) : More than 4,800 people dead. More than 9,200 injured. Eight million affected across Nepal. One million children urgently in need of help.

Those are the startling numbers that indicate the scale of the devastation from the huge earthquake that struck the Himalayan nation on Saturday.

And some of the grim figures are likely to get even worse as hopes of rescuing any more survivors diminish every hour.

Heartbreaking scenes of suffering and loss are playing out across this shell-shocked nation as it reels from its deadliest natural disaster in more than 80 years.

As the country coped with the fallout of the quake, another natural disaster struck Tuesday afternoon in a popular trekking area north of Kathmandu, and up to 200 people were feared missing as a result of a landslide, a trekking association official said.

Our visit to Nepal, 6-12 October 2015

When is a vacation also not? When you revisit a country, you've lived in and loved, but have a mission to complete, with deadlines.

This was the case last October when Hootoksi and I traveled to Nepal with the intention to help rehabilitate a few earthquake-devastated families.

Hootoksi had written to many of our friends and relatives about our intention to help earthquake victims, and they very generously contributed to our fund. By the time we were ready to leave for Nepal, we had collected a cool USD 10,000 in cash. With this and the assistance of Nepali friends, we were able to travel to a remote part of the country to visit hard-to-reach communities devastated by the earthquake. We were able to contribute to the rebuilding of a school, a student-initiated fund to help low-caste kids attend school, rebuilding the destroyed homes of women whose husbands were killed by the earthquake, and a community centre. Click HERE for the full report..

With mission accomplished, I have posted my collection of photos taken during the trip on Flickr (click here).