Life-Preserving Food Aid Delivery By Drone in Isolated Nepalese Villages

"We’ve been operating back ‌and forth early in the ⁠morning. So yes, it’s quite hectic, because we ⁠need to have this thing right now."

"Nepal has this geography, this ‌terrain where drones would be really ​faster, quicker and cheaper."

Milan Pandey, Airlift ​Technology, drone operating company

 

"We have seen disasters, we have seen earthquakes, we have seen disasters caused by floods, we have seen war situations, conflicts."

"We have had access challenges in many of these situations [but the challenges in Nepal were extreme]."

"This is a very unique access challenge where, in some places, the only way to reach people is by helicopters." 

"It's a very, very expensive operation."

"When the first drone went up in the air with the food attached to it, I knew that it was a game-changer... It's an innovation in delivering food assistance."

"What we are learning in Nepal with the use of these cargo drones will change the way WFP reaches people in need."  

United Nations World Food Programme Nepal Country's Director Riaz Lodhi  

Using drones to provide aid in Nepal is a game changer.  Prabin Ranashat / AFP via Gety Images

 

 Following Nepal's devastating floods, the UN World Food Programme faced the most challenging of its responses to such devastation as was caused when a Himalayan glacier collapsed on August 26, causing a catastrophic flood at the China-Nepal border. The ensuing floodwaters destroyed roads, bridges and hydropower dams. The tentative figure of 1,446 dead and over 6,500 people missing across both countries is a testament to the severity of the situation.

 

According to Riaz Lodhi, head of the World Food Programme in Nepal, the tsunami-like flood and its aftermath produced a situation that distinguished itself as being among the "top three most challenging disasters" ever faced by his agency. Rescue teams faced arduous journeys to reach  the isolated regions where the worst impact of the flood was situated. As a result of the altered landscape, efforts to reach the afflicted saw journeys that took two hours normally, became ordeals lasting a full day.

A drone carrying relief supplies to a flood-affected area takes off in Trishuli, Nepal's Nuwakot district, on September 4, 2026. Credit: PRABIN RANABHAT / AFP via Getty Images

 

Even so, there are many communities close to the epicentre of the flooding event that remain cut off, even yet. The World Food Programme decided to deploy cargo drones in delivering food to isolated communities. In 2015 during a previous deadly earthquake, the delivery of life-sustaining materials relied on the use of mules, yaks and porters hauling food on their backs. These missions could take two to three days before those in need were reached.

 

The drones are capable of carrying between 30 and 100 kilograms, given operating conditions. "People in need, they didn't have to wait for days", stated Mr. Lodhi. "The food was reaching there immediately", making the difference between death and survival under challenging conditions. 

 

Technicians prepare a drone before it carries relief supplies to a flood-affected area in Trishuli in Nepal on 4 September 2026 (AFP/Getty)

 

 

 

 

Nepal's Flood-Rescue Plight

"There are too many challenges. There are no roads, they have all been washed away, and many areas are just not accessible."

"It is very difficult for my men. The area is still flooded, and elsewhere it is all marshland."

"Once my men are dropped, they have to roam over large distances to conduct search and rescue. But the helicopters have to return because there are not enough of them."

"For example, an area that was dry yesterday is completely flooded today [as the swollen river changes course]."

"It is unpredictable. Floods can come at any time."

E. Hawadi, Nepali police coordinator of rescue efforts, Nuwakot district 

 

"This is the Himalayas."

"We have to be very careful when starting any rescue operation or relief operation."

"The gorges are very deep and steep, so that's the difficulty."

Nepali Foreign Ministry spokesman Lok Bahadur Poudel Chhetri  

Structures partially submerged in mud brought in by flash floods stand at the banks of the Trishuli river in Nepal's Nuwakot district, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

 

More than a week after catastrophic flooding killed over 1,200 people in Nepal when an unstable glacier broke off and plugged a river to swell into a lake, then went on to cause massive flooding near the border between Nepal and Tibet, rescue work is continuing, with the fading hope of finding some of the 4,471 estimated missing still alive. 

 

Teams of rescuers face treacherous marshlands and an unpredictable river as they search for survivors. Nepal has suffered the majority of deaths and those missing, while Tibet saw 15 dead and 546 people missing, according to Chinese state media.

 

The fate of hundreds of missing hydropower project workers where the full force of the torrent occurred stands at 639 people unaccounted for. According to the Nepalese disaster agency, there remain 3,333 missing citizens. Among them are 45 Nepali army soldiers, 38 police officers, and 18 customs and immigration officers.  

 

Another project the floods hit, the Upper Trishuli 3A facility took rescue workers six days to locate the tunnels encased in the thick mud. Roughly 30 to 40 people stuck in the tunnels there are believed to be alive. "We are expecting survivors in there because we are told there is a dry space inside. We are trying to break into the tunnel now", a Nepali army spokesperson explained. 

A week after the flash-flood hit the Nepal-Tibet border, some officials believe trapped workers at the Rasuwagadhi hydropower plant could still be alive. Photograph: Naveen Srivastava/X/Reuters

 

Where floodwaters have receded, the ground has been transformed into deep, slippery mud whose effect complicates rescue operations, slowing down movement. In other areas floodwaters remain high. Families have been left homeless in heavy rain as entire communities were swept away. Some have found shelter in temporary facilities. Mass graves are receiving unidentified bodies.  

Rescuers, as a result of the difficult conditions they face in the remote settlements, must rely on helicopters presenting as the sole means of reaching those stranded communities. 40 bridges have been washed away in the floodwaters. Teams are dispersed across the sprawling disaster zone, with reinforcements being brought into the small town of Bidur on the banks of the Trishuli River. The problem of supplies reaching those who need them rests in the town, now the main hub for rescue operations.

An aerial view shows vehicles lying amid debris at Timure Bazar following the deadly flash floods and mudslides in Rasuwa, Nepal, Sept. 3, 2026.   Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters

Some 93,000 people are felt to have been affected by the floods, according to the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent. Declaring that "many homes have been destroyed or severely damaged".  Both India and China are sending quickly-assembled prefabricated Bailey bridges where no heavy equipment is required.

The UN World Food Programme is shipping in 2.4 tonnes of high-energy biscuits to sustain homeless families lacking the capacity to cook food. "Damage to roads, bridges, settlements, and critical infrastructure has severely disrupted access to affected communities, creating significant challenges for relief operations", they explained. 

 

The swollen river responsible for widespread destruction changes course from time to time, and rescuers are forced to reassess their plans, while struggling with a lack of adequate equipment. Flotation devices are required to safely operate in floodwaters. Nighttime operations have been made impossibly hazardous in many areas, resulting from that unpredictability, while pressure to accelerate the search continues.

 

Nepal army personnel prepare to construct a bridge across Trishuli river at Devighat in Nepal's Nuwakot district on Sept. 3, 2026.    Arun Sankar/AFP via Getty Images

 

 

Nepal's Changing Climate

The mountain range of Mount Everest from South Col. AFP via Getty Images

"Most of the tourists come to Nepal to see snow-filled mountains, but if these mountains turn into black hills that will ultimately affect tourism."

"But the erratic snowfall seen in present days has made us question if that plan [to promote snow-based tourism; e.g. skiing holidays] will succeed."

Dhananjay Regmi, chief executive officer, Nepalese tourism board

"Seeing no snowfall at this time of year in Nepal is a very strange thing."

"Climate change is something that I heard was happening in other countries, but now we are experiencing it in front of our eyes."

Sushil Raj Poudel, president, Trekking Agencies Association of Nepal, western region

 

"From our ancestors' days there has been the belief that there would be a bumper crop in a year that saw enough snowfall."

"Now I have to buy food from outside [as warmer temperatures hit his fields]."

Shanta Bahadur Bishowkarma, Dhampus region farmer

 

"Due to rising temperatures in higher regions, insects are shifting from the lower belt, so new pests are seen in higher regions these days."

"The mountainous districts are already struggling with food insecurity and these things make the problem more serious."

Arjun Rayamajhi, plant protection officer, Agriculture Knowledge Center, Darchula 

 

Extreme adventurers from abroad have traditionally gone to Nepal to register and pay the fee for climbing permits  to enable them to set out on expeditions in the great Himalayan mountains representing the earth's crust's primal upheaval with mountains emerging that became the ceiling of the world stretching to the sky and beyond. To access K2 or Mount Everest is a lofty ambition of many extreme athletes and adventurers setting out on their own, with a small expedition, or those paying handsomely to be taken up the mountains by accredited expedition crews guided by sherpas.

The Himalayas play a more fundamental, utilitarian role in the region when its vast burden of seasonal snow begins to melt in the spring bringing down torrents of water in Nepal, India and China to communities living at the base of the mountains to irrigate farmers' fields and to provide potable water to those same communities and beyond. It's next-to-impossible to imagine any of these great giants of immense and vast geological formation without accumulated depths of snow.

It is that snow, along with the granite of the majestic mountains, their impressive heights and extreme weather conditions and rarefied oxygen that awe and thrill expeditions planning to achieve their summits in these realms of drama and beauty of these landscapes. Tourism and the dollars it brings in is a huge asset to these countries where so many of its people living in isolated splendour also live in poverty, reliant on the landscape's natural resources for water, and the draw of the tourism trade.

Hotels in the region, catering to snow-enthusiastic tourists are now lacking reservations; no one to come along and stay awhile in close view of the imposing mountains backgrounding the villages that host the tourist trade. "The snowfall we had five years ago we more than two-feet-deep -- but we didn't have significant snowfall after that", observed owner Baburam Giri in front of his Hotel Yama Sakura.

Of course, worldwide hotels in tourist spots that normally draw hundreds of thousands of people have been facing a similar dilemma during the global pandemic. In Nepal, however, the additional problem of a lack of snow in a landscape synonymous with snow has created an especial dilemma. Eventually tourists will return to those other places of immense tourist attraction; Nepal, however is facing a special situation that only nature herself can remedy.

This picture taken on March, 24, 2020 shows mules carrying empty gas cylinders along a path in the Mt. Everest region. The Himalayan hilltown of Khumjung should be bustling with foreign trekkers gearing up for one of Mount Everest's biggest weeks of the year, but the coronavirus shut down the mountain and threatened the livelihood of the sherpas who rely on it. AFP via Getty Images

"Many domestic and local tourists come to this area to play in the snow whenever there is snowfall. But (now) the hotel is almost empty", the hotel owner mourned. Not only tourism is affected, but agronomy as well, along with industries that have their base in the mountainous regions of Nepal; all suffering a steep drop in income in recent years linked to a lack of heavy snowfall; their problem held by environmental and climate  scientists to be linked to rising global temperatures reflecting climate change.

 

At the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, depending on remote sensing technology for data acquisition, studies show that snow cover has decreased steadily in Nepal and the Hindu Kush Himalayan region. "The temperature of Nepal is rising at the rate of 0.6C per decade", the regional program manager explained. Nepal's Department of Hydrology and Meteorology released a report in December that predicted the average temperature this winter would be above normal; the average precipitation below normal.

On agricultural land the snow and cold helped maintain crops free of pests,with cold temperatures killing off predatory insects and disease with the potential to destroy plants, failing to flourish in the extreme cold. It's a double disaster; since there is now insufficient melting snow to irrigate crops as there has always been, in the past. Low temperatures have the effect of diminishing pest reproduction. Pests that once could not survive in Nepal's icy mountains now are beginning to thrive there.

 

According to climate researchers, those familiar snow-full winters are set to become increasingly rarer in Nepal over decades to come. Leading Sushil Raj Poudel of the Trekking Agencies Association of Nepal to explain that group members no longer are able to rely on the tourist boom that would always materialize after heavy snowfalls.

 

A sign points towards the Everest base camp in Solukhumbu district 140km northeast of Nepal's capital Kathmandu    AFP via Getty Images

Disciplined, Tough, Motivated, Drukpa Nuns, Nepalese Himalaya

Nepali Buddhist nuns practise kung fu at the Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery on the outskirts of Kathmandu. Dressed alike with matching shaved heads, the women and girls finish their daily exercise and move on to their other duties as part of the Kung Fu Nuns of Nepal, a name they have proudly adopted. Prakash Mathema/AFP via Getty

"The biggest challenge has been explaining to people how dangerous this virus is."

Jigme Konchok Lhamo, 28, Buddhist Drupka nun

 

"We are scared ... But fear can't stop us."

"We can't change the whole world by ourselves but even if we manage to help one life, that's a big success. We feel happy about it. We feel encouraged."

Jigme Yeshe Lhamo, 30, Buddhist Drupka nun 

"They are a new generation of women who are not afraid to break century-old taboos and stereotypes."

"They took their practice off the meditation cushion and into the world -- often times against criticism and threats to their safety."

Carrie Lee, former president, Live to Love International

A Kung Fu nun hands a woman face masks. Thomson Reuters Foundation/Handout by Live to Love International

 

These nuns are different than how nuns are traditionally conceived. For one thing, His Holiness, The Gyalwang Drupka, leader of the thousand-year-old sect, a decade ago gave encouragement to the nuns to learn Kung Fu martial arts reasoning it would give them exercise for better health, and confidence in themselves and their mission. Ever since, they have been dubbed the "Kung Fu nuns". 

 

Women of the Drukpa lineage representing the sole female order in the Buddhist monastic system are also unique in that they share equal status with monks.

They broke ranks with tradition when they eschewed expectations of focusing primarily on cooking and cleaning, and set aside the injunction not permitting them to exercise. And now, during the global pandemic they set out to break old taboos and search for new horizons in their zeal to do good in their world through influencing the actions of others prone to superstition and surrender to what they deem to be preordained fate.

The Drukpa nuns have undertaken the dangerous and arduous work involved in trekking through the oxygen-thin altitudes of the Himalaya to reach small, isolated tribal villages where COVID-19 has struck, just as it has elsewhere in the world. Bearing weighted backpacks, hundreds of the Buddhist nuns garbed in maroon robes dispense health advice to villagers sickened by COVID, and destitute.

The vital aid they offer consisting of sacks of staples; rice and lentils, toiletries and face masks hauled on their backs is meant to save the lives of the helpless villagers, to convince them first of the dire threat that COVID-19 poses to their well-being. The dedicated nuns' activities in delivering aid has benefited villagers on both sides of the India-Nepal border. About two thousand indigent families have so far been supported by the nuns.

 

Villagers line up to receive aid from the Kung Fu nuns. Thomson Reuters Foundation/Handout by Live to Love International

 

They do their best to convince the villagers that the virus is not "just a cold". Without access to news sources taken for granted elsewhere in the world, villagers tend to shrug off the nuns' efforts through training sessions on social distancing, hand washing and mask wearing. Nonetheless, the nuns have taken to working industriously with little attention to the hours they sacrifice to ensure food and hygiene items are delivered to COVID-struck villagers in the mountains.

The Indian district of Lahani is home to half the global network of roughly 700 Drukpa nuns. The inhabitants of the village in its entirety have all been infected by the virus, including relatives of some of the nuns. The nuns have also realized that for women, the pandemic has highlighted added challenges. 

"When I spoke to my cousin, she said maintaining menstrual hygiene was very difficult because sanitary pads are not available and even if they are, they don't have enough money to purchase them."

"It's a very big issue for women."

Nima Sherpa, 28, northern Nepal

This situation has informed the nuns what their next mission would do well to focus on; women's health, including hygiene specifically addressing menstruation. Teaching villagers as well, how to perform breast self-examinations for cancerous lumps.

Family members of Kung Fu nuns in India sew cloth face masks. Thomson Reuters Foundation

The Human Toll of Traditional Religious Chauvinism

"This is what makes me upset. Even people who consider themselves very sophisticated, very educated, very cultured, they are still doing this."
"What this is, is segregation. And we as a society don't talk enough about it. We don't talk about dignity, we don't talk about women's rights."
Radha Paudel, social activist, Nepal

Women in a chhaupadi hut during their menstruation periods in western Nepal, in February. A tradition of isolating menstruating women in huts persists in rural areas despite the dangers and a 2005 court order. Credit Prakash Mathema/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Gauri Kumari Bayak, 22 years of age, was a woman determined to be of social use to her community. She was a woman with a social conscience who also had ambitions of her own. One of them was to complete her high school education. And she also took to earning her own money by sewing dresses for people who could pay for the service. She attended school during the day and in her spare  hours taught illiterate women to read. In the evening she did her sewing.

And now, thanks to a tradition in Nepal where menstruating women are accustomed to sequestering themselves away from others until such time as they were no longer 'unclean', she is no longer around to teach women to read, to sew dresses on contract, much less to complete her aspirational challenge of obtaining her high school matriculation before moving on to other things in her life. She died on January 8 of asphyxiation.

She had built a small fire inside an isolated hut on a cold night, to keep warm. She was in that hut where she gathered firewood nearby because she was impure as a menstruating woman, and was prepared to spend the night in a cold hut. Ms. Bayak is not alone in her victimization by a tradition that rural Nepalese honour. Dozens of women and girls in recent years have met their death upholding this tradition.

There are campaigns to end the practise and the Nepalese government itself has legislated against the tradition. Still, menstruating women prepare to bed down at night outside the family home for fear of offending tradition. They go into grass-roofed huts, or rough stables to sleep with cows or goats. Many of these women have been raped by intruders and some of them die from exposure to the cold.

The tradition was given illegal status last summer when the Nepalese government legislated against anyone forcing a women or girl to leave her home lest it be polluted by her menstruating presence. But the threat of violators being subject to imprisonment or fines does not appear to have made inroads into a tradition that people have been long accustomed to honouring when it comes into effect in August.

In Ms. Bayak's instance, poverty and ignorance could not be blamed since she and others of her family were relatively educated by standards of one of the poorest countries in Asia. Her Hindu religion, strictly enforced particularly in rural areas, must take most of the blame for influencing believers that women are unclean during the periods of their menstruation activity lest they infect others.

In some parts of Nepal, women sleep in huts like these during their periods   AFP

Menstruating women were  held to be toxic, that their presence could pollute a temple, that in handling the family food everyone would become ill, and if they touched a tree it would never again bear fruit. The young woman aspired to become a tailor in Kathmandu. Her village in western Nepal where she lived with her husband's show-owning family, would have expected her to honour ancient tradition. She herself insisted it was her duty to do so.

Her husband, a police officer working in Kathmandu, the nation's capital, now grieves her absence. He had never insisted that his wife follow the chhaupadi tradition, he said. But she was herself faithful to it, in a geography where the temperature drops almost to freezing as it did the night she died. The shed she sought shelter in, according to police accounts, had no windows. Police found fresh embers near her body where she had built a small fire.

It isn't just the environmental elements but the biological hazards as well that can threaten women who follow tradition. Last summer while honouring the chhaupadi ritual of ancient Hinduism, another young woman who banished herself to a small hut died after she was bitten by a poisonous snake.

Women in Nepal face systemic discrimination across a host of issues.  CNN

Child Trafficking in Nepal

"This is a bad time during the emergency; trafficking is a problem. Watch out for unaccompanied kids."
"If you're suspicious call this number."
Child trafficking alert, Siundhupalchok, Nepal

"Watch out for people who give you false dreams of education, food, jobs. Don't believe it. They're taking advantage of our honesty."
"Are you alone? Who is with you?"
Sangeet Girio, handling out pamphlets, Shakti Samua group

"These kids were told they were going to school in India. They were genuinely excited about leaving home and getting an education and a chance for a better life."
"But when asked where they wrote the entrance exam, they didn't know anything about it."
"We have 600 registered care homes (orphanages) in Nepal. The requests to open more after the earthquake have tripled. Some of them are in fact scams for religions that are using the kids to raise money."
"In the name of children, these people are stealing money."
Tarak Dhital, executive director, Central Child Welfare Board, Kathmandu

A child lines up with her mother in a temporary shelter during food distribution at Tundikhel in Kathmandu, Nepal. After the earthquake campaigners warned that girls and young women were vulnerable to human traffickers. Photograph: Hemanta Shrestha/EPA

Nepalese find themselves in a parlous state of governmental inability to cope with the after-effects of the seismic shocks that killed thousands and left a million people without shelter. Schools were destroyed and children were shut out of classrooms until such time as new, temporary replacements could be opened. A country always on the brink of economic failure and governmental dysfunction finds itself in a desperate situation, despite the response of international aid organizations.

Where some NGOs rush in to aid at times of national catastrophes to help bring a country back to a state of normalcy, other groups also rush in, to take advantage of the havoc and the desperate plight of people in shock. In Nepal, destroyed homes, collapsed schools and dead parents leaving behind orphans create the perfect junction for human traffickers to move in and ply their odious trade; this time in corralling for their nefarious purposes children left in desperate straits.

The United Nations has estimated that twelve to fifteen thousand girls are victimized by human traffickers in Nepal every year. The pace has accelerated with the advent of this new tragedy in an already beleaguered country and society. The trafficked girls end up in India, in South Korea and South Africa. Humanitarian agencies, recognizing the plight of these children, joined forces in a scheme meant to rescue children before they are taken out of the country.

A local child rescue group, Shakti Samua, has volunteers waiting at bus stops in Sindhupalchok, the district known for representing the highest rate of trafficking of children. An intersection of switchback roads in Bandeu is the venue where buses and trucks drive out of the mountains on their way to Kathmandu. The bus stop is monitored by local police. The volunteers with the charity await their opportunity to board the buses as they stop to let off passengers or take them on, pamphlets at the ready for hand-outs.

Travellers sit three to a seat on the buses, the aisles are packed. The volunteer boarding swiftly with the handout pamphlets explaining the crisis in human trafficking of vulnerable Nepalese children knows there is a mere pause available before the bus resumes its journey; they must speak quickly, delivering the essence of the message, and scattering the pamphlets among the passengers to alert them to the situation, then disembark and wait for the next buses to arrive.

At one stop in the Kathmandu Valley, 19 children; eleven boys and eight girls between the ages of ten and thirteen from Dolakha, were rescued from three men from India. The parents of the children were called and informed that their children were meant to be sold by the traffickers, and not, as the parents and the children believed, taken to safe houses where access to good schools would be made available to them. They are sometimes sold as slave labourers. The children were returned to their parents.

Another 45 children placed in a similar plight were rescued as well. The Nepalese government on May 26 brought forward a new law, that children under 16 are not permitted to travel without a parent or another adult approved by the district's child welfare board, outside their home district. International adoptions have been halted until September. Radio advertisements warn the public: "Trafficking is a problem. Keep your kids close."

Poor families in the mountains had been convinced by unscrupulously smooth talkers that their children would be exposed to a good education and better food than they could give them if they were placed in a care home in Kathmandu. The children ended up stuffed ten to a room, fed paltry quantities that led them to scavenge for food on the streets. But they were used in a campaign asking for charity to give them a better life.

"We have rescued 26 children from the clutches of human traffickers in the past 20 days and sent them to rehabilitation centres."
"Following the Nepal disaster, the fear of children and women falling prey to the human trafficker gangs has increased manifold and so we are keeping a strict vigil along the Indo-Nepal border to prevent such happenings."
Sanjeev Kumar,  senior labour official, Bihar’s East Champaran district, India.

Nepalese Aiding Nepalese

"I didn't know what I was doing. I've never saved a cat, much less a human being. I'm not a relief worker. I'm just a mom from Arlington."
"He was willing to go where others would not. He was willing to land at altitudes -- 13,000, 14,000, 20,000 feet - that others would not. He said, 'If we don't get to them, who will?'"
"I was there, in Nepal, when a second earthquake hit after the first one, and the morale just sank. There was this sense of hopelessness. Subek's death was similar. I paced around the house for two days. I didn't want to do anything."
"I have a master's degree, but I'll wait tables. I need a morning shift. I'm going to do it in memory of Subek. My little brother."
Samisha LaMeyer, Arlington, Massachusetts

Samisha LaMeyer

Samisha LaMeyer (center), with Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita (left) and helicopter pilot Subek Shrestha.

Twenty years ago, Samisha LaMeyer left her home in Kathmandu to become an American citizen. In May she returned to Kathmandu, a loyal Nepalese, and loving daughter to aid her mother who had established a school in the capital of Nepal and who her daughter wanted to see with her own eyes that she was alive and well. Leaving her husband and two daughters behind she left for Kathmandu with 300 pounds of protein bars and other items packed into bags, to take along with her.

She found her mother well. Her mother, Gauri Rana, was sheltering with thousands of others in fields around the school her mother operates for poor students. Knowing her mother would be occupied with looking after things as best she could under the circumstances, Samisha thought of the thousands of Nepalese trapped in out-of-the-way mountain villages, many of which had been destroyed, residents killed and others desperately waiting for subsistence supplies to arrive.

She decided while in Nepal to begin raising funds through her Facebook friends to initiate a method on her own of giving aid where it was most needed. She went to a number of sources looking for helicopters for hire, but found most private helicopter companies charging outrageous sums to make the kind of humanitarian drops she was thinking of. One pilot, Subek Shrestha, was different. He was 28, and a crack pilot, infused with the same sense of needing to respond to the tragedy to aid people.

He had been busy retrieving bodies of the mountains. When he understood what Samisha LaMeyer was intent on doing, he volunteered his services, to return to the mountain villages with rice and supplies. There was an instant rapport between them, and he spoke of the Nepalese woman from the United States as his 'big sister'. She, in return addressed him as little brother: Bhai, to his Didi. And they occupied themselves flying food and supplies to the isolated villages in the mountains.

They formed a triangular team with an experienced climber from Colorado, Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita, and with a veteran aid worker, Max Khatri. Subek Shrestha knew from his experiences where the need was great and for three weeks the team worked together to deliver aid to desperate survivors. When Samisha LaMeyer returned to the U.S. and her family after that period of time, she and Subek Shrestha kept in touch by email.

He was making profit from chartered flights, and using that profit to plow back into relief efforts. It cost $2,500 as an hourly rate to hire helicopters. "I would love to fly your helicopter, Didi", responded the  young man, when his friend in Arlington informed him she intended to buy a helicopter of her own. And this was the last message that passed between them. Flying a mission with three doctors from Doctors Without Borders, the helicopter Shrestha was piloting crashed.

All aboard were killed. As a tribute to the young man LaMeyer contacted his family for permission to go immediately back to the work of helping people in Nepal, rather than wait the customary 13 days as a memorial to the dead. Now, she and a network of volunteers have dedicated themselves to evacuating 200 students from a monastery 18,000 feet high up in the mountains where Shrestha had dropped rice.

The monsoons are expected to arrive in the near future, and the removal of the students from the monastery has become an emergency project they have committed themselves to. To raise the kind of money she needs to continue working on aid for the earthquake victims of Nepal, Samisha LaMeyer is determined to work any kind of job that will bring her closer to fulfilling her goal. In memory of her 'little brother'.

Arlington resident and Nepali native Samisha Joshi LaMeyer, at left, delivers supplies to the Gorkha district of Nepal. Courtesy Photo

Striving for Normal

"The children are having nightmares; they're irritable, they cry a lot and want to stay near to their mothers."
"We're also working with the teachers who survived the quake. They're anxious, they need support and they also need to know what to say to the kids."
Anita Querirazza, Italian child psychologist, Nepal

Tents dot the landscape in Kathmandu following an April 25 earthquake. (Peter Bregg for National Post) - See more at: http://news.nationalpost.com/features/aftershock-heres-how-nepal-is-coping-after-two-earthquakes-left-nearly-9000-dead-16800-injured#sthash.cQBue50T.dpuf

Photo: Peter Bregg -- Tents dot the landscape in Kathmandu after the April 24 earthquake

Nepal suffered two devastating earthquakes between April 25 and May 12, with numerous aftershocks in between. Terrified Nepalese were unable to find peace of mind, fearful of yet other tremors that would wreak further havoc in what has already made their lives a misery of panic and fear. And these are the survivors. A death toll of 9,000 is still being assessed. Hospitals and aid workers from the international community are still coping with the 6,800 injured.

A half-million homes were destroyed and an additional 270,000 homes were damaged. The convulsed earth continues to produce massive landslides that destroy entire villages, make roads impassable and ruin crops. The affected zones continue to experience massive tremors up to 6.8 magnitude on the Richter scale, on a daily basis. Little wonder the population is traumatized, the children in a state of perpetual confusion and fear creeps into their sleep patterns turning them to little-understood nightmares.

The state of emergency that prevails is estimated to extend into two months at the very least, as authorities and their foreign partners attempt to cope with the destruction of the massive earthquakes. Some of the villages in the steep mountain regions have not yet been reached by emergency workers. Landslides have cut off access through roads. Helicopters make their daily flights dropping basic emergency rations of food, water and tarpaulins.

People collect rice and tarpaulins from Plan International at a distribution centre in Shikharpur -- Photo Peter Bregg

Of the 75 districts in Nepal, thirty are damaged, and of those fourteen have sustained utterly critical disarray. Two districts, Dolakha and Sindhupalchok, have been the worst affected. The capital has seen dreadful damage but the city remains open to business routine even while it desperately attempts to recover its equilibrium. Parks in Kathmandu are crowded with tarpaulins sheltering people too intimidated by fear to return to their fragile homes; that is, those who still have homes.

New buildings built to modern standards were able to withstand the quake's effects for the most part, while the old structures built of sand and river stones quickly collapsed. There is a need to move ahead to replace them as swiftly as possible so people can move into them with the confidence that they will shelter them safely in the event of further tremors, for when the monsoon season arrives on the near horizon, the tarpaulins will be ineffective at sheltering people.

Already severely damaged mountain roads will become vulnerable to complete washout when the monsoon rains arrive. With that rain will come mosquitoes and then malaria will loom as a threat. If flooding ensues with the rain, given the compromised water system, the threat of cholera will present itself. Nepalese farmers in vulnerable areas must spur on their activities to get their crops in, to rebuild their homes in case roads leading to them become impassable.

The government had assured that schools would reopen toward the end of May. Local authorities are still struggling to be able to open schools that were destroyed, collapsing in the earthquakes, and requiring to be replaced. Their replacements for the immediate future will be temporary until such time as more permanent structures can be built, enabling children to return to school and a scheduled routine in their disrupted lives.

Anything You Can Do . . .

Nuns practising kung fu at the Druk Gawa Khilwa Buddhist nunnery in Ramkot, Nepal. Photograph: Simon De Trey-White/Eyevine

"None of us shrieked in fear or crouched on the floor crying. We moved quickly, dodged falling pieces of the wall and escaped."
"Community duty is also a form of spiritual exercise, and our strong limbs are now trained to work hard and for long hours."
"Kung fu is not meant to attack people or fight with them. It prepares you for enduring difficult situations, like this earthquake. It is also a form of meditation because it helps us concentrate, keep our minds still and body nimble and light."
Jigme Konchok, 21, Buddhist 'kung fu' nun, Kathmandu

Buddhist nuns practise kung fu at Druk Amitabha nunnery in Kathmandu.  File Photo: AFP

But the women at this 26-year-old nunnery excel at other occupations viewed as the gender-specific monopoly of masculine skills, particularly in the monastic order. They have learned to do plumbing, electrical fitting, computers, bicycle riding, speak English, and pray just as well as any monk who prides himself on practical and spiritual skills such as these. And with those skills they exit their Druk Amitabha Mountain nunnery to offer their services to the villagers living below.

All the more so since the devastating earthquake that shook the western valley of Kathmandu, inflicting violence on the nunnery just as it did other buildings throughout the area in the Earth's cataclysmic upheaval in Nepal. None of the nuns was crushed, became injured, died as a result of the building's response to the tremblor. Though the windows shattered, staircases collapsed, and doors rattled as walls buckled, the nuns leaped to their own salvation.

And they were inspired by their order and their considerable acquired skills to help in providing aid to victims of the deadly earthquake. Structural damage to their sanctuary was assessed and the nuns determined that their duty lay in looking beyond the nunnery for the moment, to offer assistance to those whom they felt required it far more than they did. And so, every day, wearing their distinctive maroon robes nuns travel to nearby villages to give aid.

They help to remove the rubble from people's shattered homes, to dig up, salvage and return objects to their owners, and to clear trails and pathways. These nuns are living examples that traditional gender roles need not necessarily spell out the manner in which women should tend to womanly chores of a menial nature, leaving to men more overtly masculine tasks, including occupying positions of influence and power.

Before the quake: The Druk Gawa Khilwa nunnery in Kathmandu teaches martial arts and meditation to empower young women -- Photo, Mail on Line, India

The 300 nuns have refused invitations for evacuation assistance, to ensure their safety. Their self-confidence and self-reliance leads them to use their energy and their skills to help others. The leader of the Ladakh-Based Drupka order, the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa, stated: "I was expecting the nuns over there to be under trauma. Many people were saying that they should be evacuated but they decided to stay back and help others.

 

"It's raining continuously, earthquakes are repeatedly happening, the walls are falling and none of them can go back to their rooms so they have had to camp in the garden. Despite all these problems, they are willing to help." They are not called the "Kung fu nuns of Kathmandu", after all, for no reason. They began their training years ago, in anticipation of responding as they have, to situations such as this.

They use the ancient Chinese martial art for many reasons, not the least of which is meditation. But they also engage themselves deeply with a sense of obligation, in community work, campaigning as well against toxic waste, and are exponents both in voice and in deed for women's empowerment. They have engaged in walkathons to protest the prevalence of plastic products and the wastefulness of thoughtless everyday life.

They are the "kung fu nuns of Kathmandu".

In Perspective

"There are more Western doctors, more facilities, more medical supplies and more equipment to manage that situation in the Everest Base Camp than anywhere else in Nepal."
"Any climber who has any sense of attachment to Nepal, or any sense of fairness or right or wrong would agree."
"Those climbers are up there because of a chosen avocation, or sport, and they're fine. And I think they all know that. You might see some occasional pleas or cries for help, but they have to think, 'I'm up here by choice."
"It's with manual labour and toil and engineering and risk that the sherpas go in there [Khumbu ice fall infrastructure] and put the ice screws in and fix the lines and position the ladders. That's why we hear reports of climbers being trapped. Some of the climbers I talked to today said they can't go down to get this thing fixed."
"Some are talking about taking helicopters to shuttle them back and down across through the icefalls so they don't have to climb. But I sure hope somebody is saying they should use those helicopters elsewhere in Nepal because there should be a great deal of demand for that equipment elsewhere."
Wally Berg, Canadian mountaineer

In this photo, released on Monday, a rescue helicopter is shown at Mount Everest’s south base camp. (6summitschallenge.com/Reuters)

"We all rushed out to the open and the next moment a huge wall of snow just piled on me."
"I managed to dig out of what could easily have been my grave. I wiggled and used my hands as claws to dig as much as I could."
"I was suffocating. I could not breathe. But I knew I had to survive."
Bhim Bahadur Khatri, 35, sherpa cook, Everest Base Camp

What Mr. Berg, who operates an adventure company out of Canmore, Alberta, and who has himself climbed Mount Everest repeatedly feared, has in fact occurred. A handful of helicopters was diverted from search-and-rescue operations in Nepal's earthquaked zone, to rescue the estimated 170 people who were on the slopes of the world's tallest mountain. A relative handful remain, and will be taken off the mountain by Wednesday.

There were nineteen climbers whom the avalanche killed -- triggered by the 7.8- magnitude earthquake that devastated Kathmandu and surrounding area -- whose bodies will be taken off the mountain for return to their families and burial. The injured are being treated. The death toll in Nepal itself, with many of its isolated villages still to be reached by rescue crews, has surmounted five thousand, with countless thousands of people having sustained injuries, some very serious.

Mr. Berg's observation that the mountaineers take risks when they decide to trek up Mount Everest is quite correct; most of them are fairly well provisioned, with food enough and medicines to last them weeks. But in the event of emergencies and when natural events occur of such disastrous proportions people tend to lose perspective, knowing that many have died and there is no guarantee that aftershocks causing other avalanches will not recur, and they prefer to be evacuated, their aspirations of summiting shattered.

The reality is, as Mr. Berg has observed, people die on the mountain year on year. As did 16 sherpas last year, in one fell swoop in the Khumbu Icefield area, cancelling that season's climbs. The Khumbu Icefall, a perilous portion of the climb, just above Base Camp, has become infinitely more treacherous since the avalanche began with huge rocks being dislodged from a promontory directly above the Icefall, rendering all the preparatory ascent/descent work done annually by sherpa volunteers useless, and stranding mountaineers on the slopes above.

Some climbers posted appeals on social media for help. "Huge disaster. Helped, searched and rescued victims through huge debris area. Many dead. Much more badly injured. More to die if not heli ASAP", wrote Romanian climber Alex Gavan. The response to his appeal ensured that those on the mountain were taken away from the area posing such potential danger to them.


A rescue chopper carrying people down to Everest base camp on Monday. (Nima Namgyal Sherpa/AP)

Mr. Berg's long experience in Nepal and his care for the country and its people were front and centre in his statements, that many from within the climbing community have been assailed with grim sadness and yet a sense of inevitability. Seated on a major fault line, Nepal is quite simply vulnerable to the tectonic shifts taking place in the bowels of the Earth where an Indian plate and a Nepali plate grind against each other, gradually shifting Nepal itself under Mount Everest in incremental steps long into the geological future.

There is a "long and deep sentimental and emotional attachment to the people. They are humble; they have great integrity and inner spiritual strength and resilience. We care for them and we're thinking about them. A lot of us from the developed world who have been to Nepal and love it, I know, are wrenched with this loss of those ancient medieval streets that we used to walk", stated Wally Berg, of a country and a people that have taken his heart.

A Day In The Life of Nepal

"Villages like this are routinely affected by landslides and it's not uncommon for entire villages of 200, 300, up to 1,000 people to be completely buried by rockfalls."
"It will likely be helicopter access only."
Matt Darvas, World Vision aid group

"We don't feel safe at all. There have been so many aftershocks. It doesn't stop."
"I've watched hundreds of bodies burn. I never thought I'd see so many ... Nepal should learn a lesson from this. They should realize proper buildings should be built."
"There should be open spaces people can run to."
Rajendra Dhungana, at Pashuputi Nath Temple, Kathmandu

Volunteers and emergency workers search for bodies buried under the debris of one of the temples at Basantapur Durbar Square on April 27, 2015 in Kathmandu, Nepal. (Omar Havana/Getty Images) 

Many countries of the world with special units aligned with their military set up for just such emergencies, have sent along to Nepal their specialized groups of search-and-rescue specialists, doctors, nurses, field hospitals and technicians, to help the Himalayan country cope with the devastation brought about by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit the capital Kathmandu and surrounding areas on Saturday afternoon.

A series of aftershocks, the worst of which occurred the following day with a magnitude 6.7 shock had residents of the city rushing again for wide open spaces to protect themselves from the crush of falling debris. The nation is in shock, not only for the thousands who have died and all those many more thousands who have been injured, but also for the irreplaceable loss of its heritage sites. Nepal has the most heritage sites of any other country listed with the UNESCO World Heritage group.

Aid workers have warned that the situation, devastating enough as it is where humanitarian aid can reach, may be far, far worse in those isolated and now difficult-to-reach areas closer to the epicentre of the quake. This was an earthquake that was the most violently powerful in more than 80 years to hit Nepal, destroying swaths of the most ancient portions of the city of Kathmandu. It was powerful enough that people also died in India, Bangladesh, Tibet and Pakistan.

Niranjan Shrestha/Associated Press  Trailokya Mohan Narayan Temple, Kathmandu, Volunteers help remove debris of a three-story temple.

Rescuers, including international teams of search specialists, spent Sunday looking for survivors under the rubble of buildings with the wreckage of concrete slabs, bricks, iron beams and wood, complicating their efforts and breathing air full of chalky concrete dust. In one neighbourhood, a backhoe was digging through what was left of a budget-rate guest house, finding six people dead, and extracting a dozen others. Still, 20 people are believed to be trapped under the wreckage.

India, Israel, Canada, the United States, Germany, France and the United Arab Emirates have all sent support to Nepal. The capital city is rife with warrens of small brick apartment buildings of poor construction. Those modern structures that are part of the city landscape by contrast managed to survive intact, while other buildings became piles of rubble.

Tens of thousands of people, fearing the results of further aftershocks spent Sunday in the streets, crowded and frantic with shock and fear.

People burn the bodies of earthquake victims at a mass cremation at Pashupatinath in Kathmandu on April 26, 2015.