At least 1,114 people have died in Nepal following devastating flash floods and landslides along the China-Nepal border, while 3,916 others remain missing, according to the country’s disaster authority.
The updated figures were released on Wednesday, one week after the disaster struck, as rescue teams continued efforts to locate missing people and families struggled to come to terms with the scale of the tragedy.
Chinese state media reported that 16 people were killed in Tibet, while another 546 remained missing. This brings the combined toll from the August 26 disaster to 1,130 deaths and 4,462 missing people.
With thousands still unaccounted for, many Nepali families have begun holding symbolic funeral ceremonies for relatives whose bodies have not been recovered. The rituals are traditionally performed to “liberate the souls” of loved ones who are presumed dead.
In Kathmandu, 12-year-old Rozel Shrestha carried out one such ceremony at the Pashupati temple along the Bagmati River. He burned a small effigy made from straw and barley to represent his missing father, 37-year-old Krishna Shrestha.
Krishna was in the worst-hit Rasuwa district when the floods struck and has not been seen since.
“We searched everywhere, went to morgues across the country, but could not find his body,” his brother Jeevan Shrestha told AFP.
“So the family sat down… and decided we have to do our traditional rituals to liberate his soul.”
The disaster occurred after the collapse of a Himalayan glacier on the border with China triggered a tsunami-like surge of freezing water, mud and debris, leaving widespread destruction across the region.
The scale of the devastation has left many families with no bodies to bury, forcing them to turn to traditional ceremonies as they seek closure.
Chandra Bahadur Newar’s family also held a symbolic funeral after the 35-year-old truck driver disappeared in Timure, a border town where he had travelled while heading to China.
Newar last spoke with his family on the night before the floods.
“He had called after dinner as he always did,” his wife, Dolma Newar Tamang, said. “He had said he would be back in not more than a week.”
When her husband failed to make his usual morning call, Tamang initially assumed he was simply busy.
“But then I saw the news and called him,” she said. “I called repeatedly, but he never picked up.”
She and other relatives later searched hospitals and morgues in Kathmandu, while some family members travelled towards the disaster zone and others searched areas downstream where floodwaters had carried hundreds of bodies.
After days of searching, Tamang said she eventually accepted that her husband might never return.
“We had to do this to set his soul free, so that he is at peace and happy wherever he is,” she said, surrounded by her grieving son.
Another family in Kathmandu was preparing to cremate 30-year-old Mahesh Dangol after delaying his funeral in the hope of receiving information about his missing relatives.
Dangol was among the few people rescued from the almost completely destroyed town of Betrawati. However, he later died from a lung infection at a Kathmandu hospital.
His relatives had postponed his cremation while hoping for news about his parents, wife and daughter, who were swept away by the floods.
However, hospital authorities informed the family on Tuesday that they could no longer keep his body because morgue space was running out, according to Dangol’s cousin, Sunil Dangol.
More than 1,000 bodies have so far been recovered by authorities, but only a small number have been identified, placing additional pressure on Nepal’s already limited morgue facilities.
“It is unlikely anybody else will be found, so we have decided to go ahead with the rituals for the entire family,” Sunil said.
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