BURST
Dipti Bhatnagar and her brother, Khushal, arrived in Nepal’s capital Friday in a desperate bid to find their sister, Shubhakshi Rawla, 49, and her husband, Sumit, 50.
The siblings travelled from India to Kathmandu, thousands of kilometres from their sister’s Coquitlam home, after the couple vanished during a pilgrimage through northern Nepal toward Mount Kailash, known to be a sacred site for Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and followers of the Tibetan Bon religion.
The couple are among 32 Canadians and permanent residents missing after floods and landslides tore through the region, killing at least 579 people and leaving more than 2,000 others unaccounted for, including hundreds of foreign tourists, according to the latest reports from Canadian and Nepalese authorities.
Rawla’s siblings lost contact with the couple Wednesday morning and are planning to make the difficult journey into the remote mountain region to join the search.
“I just can’t believe it,” Bhatnagar said from a hotel in the capital city. “We are three best friends.”
For Rawla, the journey to Mount Kailash was to be a spiritual pilgrimage, a trip she had looked forward to ahead of her 50th birthday.
She and her husband were travelling with 47 people, including 10 Canadians and two other B.C. residents, Megha Shah, 50, and her husband, Dhaval Shah, 52. The group was organized by Himalayan Glacier Adventures and had spent the past few days visiting temples and taking part in prayers.
But a roadside cup of tea became the last known contact between Rawla and her family.
Bhatnagar was speaking to her sister by video call Wednesday morning when Rawla turned the camera toward a tea stall outside Hotel Kailash in Timure, near the Nepal-China border, and said they were going to indulge.
“They are tea-lovers,” Bhatnagar said Friday.
Rawla later sent her sister a photograph of the couple having tea. It was the last contact Bhatnagar had with her sister. The tour group was scheduled to head to the border later that morning.
Now, Bhatnagar and Khushal are headed into the region, where floods have destroyed roads and bridges and left communities cut off from cell service.
As of Thursday, 858 Canadians were registered as being in Nepal, and another 18 were registered in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, according to Global Affairs Canada.
Emergency response teams have managed to pull more than 100 international travellers to safety, according to a Friday update from the Nepal Tourism Board, but none are reported to be Canadian.
The federal government said Friday it would provide $5 million in aid to help with emergency relief, including food, shelter, water, sanitation and health services. The money will be delivered through the UN, the Red Cross and Canadian aid groups.
Canada also offered to send emergency supplies through the Canadian Red Cross if requested. Five additional Canadian consular officials are now in Kathmandu, working to assist local authorities in locating Canadians.
From the Okanagan to Metro Vancouver, community groups are collecting donations.
For Gyan Kumar Shrestha, vice-president of the Nepalese Society of the Okanagan, the devastation is personal. The 45-year-old Kelowna resident grew up in Kathmandu and spent years visiting the affected villages as a university professor specializing in environmental science and engineering.
“They have been completely swept away,” he said.
Several of Shrestha’s former students worked at hydropower projects in the affected region, some of which have been damaged. Two of his former students are among those still unaccounted for.
“It’s very, very sad and hard,” Shrestha said.
The Okanagan non-profit started a GoFundMe campaign Friday morning, and by the afternoon, the campaign had raised $900.
Shrestha said the goal is to send all of the money raised directly to the Nepal prime minister’s disaster relief fund.
“The disaster struck along Nepal’s mountainous border with China, where the Bhote Koshi River runs through the affected region.
He described it as difficult to watch social media footage of what appeared to be volunteers recovering bodies from the river.
“They are collecting the dead bodies downstream of the river,” Shrestha said. “It’s not one or two people, five or 10. It’s much more people they already recovered.”
Other Nepalese organizations in B.C. are also mobilizing, including Surrey’s Hindu Buddhist Foundation of Canada, which has set up a dedicated email for flood-relief donations.