By Deepak Adhikari
CHAUTARA, Nepal
The once bustling town of Chautara, nestled in Nepal's lush green hills, offers a breathtaking view. But the cement and concrete buildings clinging to both sides of the only road, now resemble a ghost town.
With half of its buildings collapsed and almost all damaged by the devastating quake that hit Nepal last Saturday, its residents have abandoned their homes and camped in an open field near government offices. A makeshift hospital has been set up, where dozens of injured, mostly children and women, have been brought in from remote villages that have been cut off from the outside world.
In this devastated headquarters of the worst-hit district, Sindhupalchok, one of 75 administrative units of Nepal, everyone is pleading for help.
On Thursday afternoon, a group of men stopped a United Nations car, and enquired if it was carrying relief for the survivors.
They were visibly angry and frustrated when the answer came from inside the luxury vehicle: No.
Two siblings trekked for several hours afterwards, from their village where 150 mud and stone houses lay in ruins.
Pravin Shrestha, 20, a storekeeper at a Kathmandu hospital, who drove for three hours to his home in the hamlet of Irkhu Chalaune, said his neighbours have no food and no shelter.
"We don’t have anything to eat. More than a dozen families including ours have been living under a plastic shack," he told The Anadolu Agency.
As Pravin and his brother walked uphill towards the district administrative office, they peered through the aftermath of the destruction: a framed photo of Sai Baba, a late Indian spiritual guru, amid piles of scraps, homes abandoned by their occupants, the belongings scattered and unguarded.
Further up, a library run by a local youth group beckoned. A peek inside it revealed its conditions in eerie detail: books covered in dust, empty chairs, cracked walls.
Surrounded by security officials and a handful of aides, Krishna Gyawali, the haggard-looking chief district officer of Sindhupalchok, sat under a large canopy, guiding the relief and rescue efforts; a formidable task for this diminutive man.
The death toll in this district, the worst-hit, has reached 1,677 and Gyawali said 614 people have been rescued until Thursday.
Concerns are growing about the Araniko Highway, Nepal’s only road link to China, after an earthquake-triggered landslide blocked a section of it.
"Ninety percent of the roads in the district have been blocked. This is affecting the supply of goods from China," he said, adding that the damaged portion of highway was 35 kilometers north of the town.
Gyawali, who wore a baseball cap and spoke slowly, has been affected by the earthquake. His aging mother was injured when one of his two houses collapsed in his native district of Gulmi, in the Western region.
Visibly shaken, Gyawali spoke over a cell phone, instructing his colleagues to send heavy machinery to retrieve bodies from the sites and coordinate with local officials to aid the survivors.
At Harre Danda, Bhakta Bahadur Shrestha, a 30-year-old daily wage labourer, watched as his wife dug through the ruins of their small mud and stone house.
His one and half year-old daughter, whose body was retrieved a few days ago, was the only victim in this settlement, along the road connecting Chautara to capital Kathmandu.
Shrestha was in Kathmandu and his wife had just cradled the toddler to sleep and left for a neighbour’s when the earthquake hit.
When she returned, it was too late to save the little one. She was injured on her knee and back when the tin roof of her house hit her.
Shrestha’s two other children escaped unhurt, but he is troubled by that fact that his daughter, who took the afternoon nap earlier than usual, would have been saved.
"I think she slept a little early. I was in Kathmandu and was extremely worried about what happened. When I arrived, this place looked like a desert," he said.
Nearby, where another dilapidated house stood, a group of men and women were salvaging whatever little they could.
Maya Tamang, a 24-year-old tailor, ran the shop inside the house. Fortunately that day, she had gone to Chautara for training on sewing, a journey that likely saved her life. Now the machine is buried under the rubble and perhaps broken, jeopardizing her livelihood.
From the debris, a woman unearthed clothes, neatly folded and ready to be tailored. They also found millet and maize, grains that they need most, for the conditions in the remote communities are dire due to lack of resources and infrastructure. The precious grains were packed into sacks.
Gyawali, the local top official, said 200 clusters of villages in the district remained out of communication. Outside his office, hundreds of angry people demanded food and shelter.
