Nepal earthquake: the village too dangerous to rebuild

Standing in the rubble of his family home, near the top of Chinling Dara Mountain, Suman Tamang was taking stock.

He’d spent the past three days trying to locate his four-year-old sister. At 4pm on Friday afternoon, he finally found her.

Carefully, he dug out her little body and the family quickly cremated her last night.

Suman, 26, is a migrant worker in Malaysia and when he heard about the quake, he got home as quickly as he could. His parents’ house was completely destroyed, as was his uncle’s home next door. His aunt was killed by a rock, sitting on her terrace.

But, exactly one week on from the massive earthquake, Suman and the other villagers in Puranogau, were coming to terms with the fact that they had lost more than their loved ones and their homes. After several geological inspections of the situation up above them, all had agreed that rebuilding wasn’t even an option. Puranogau is finished.

“The earthquake has opened up a huge crack, up there,” said Suman, pointing towards the summit.

“Every time there is a tremor or an aftershock, we get very nervous.” Another quake or even heavy rain could bring the entire flank of Chinling Dara that they live on crashing towards the valley floor, 3,000 feet below.

“We have to move,” he said. “It is now too dangerous to stay here.”

In these geologically-unstable young mountains, which, as two tectonic plates collide are growing ever upwards, huge landslides are not uncommon.

One, a year ago, and just a few miles north, wiped out a village, called Jure, on the valley floor. Unknown hundreds still lie buried by the debris.

We’d driven across a rough boulder-strewn road they’d built on the detritus. It was so huge that it took ten minutes to cross. And in Puranogau, a recurrence of the Jure landslide is exactly what they fear.

“My father is a rice farmer,” Suman said. “But now we’re going to have to rent a house in Kathmandu, which will be expensive. We have asked the government for help and told them our concern. But they’re so busy after what has happened, I don’t expect to get any help.”

Puranogau is one of four mountain-top settlements in a region called Mankha, two-and-a-half hours’ drive northeast of Kathmandu and then a two-hour walk, straight up. In all, the quake killed more than seventy up here and injured more than they could count.

Every mudbrick house was either flattened or wrecked beyond repair, even before a villager cutting grass for goats discovered the gaping fissure in the rock above.

We’d decided to trek up there after meeting villagers onFriday afternoon while filming at an aid distribution point on the valley floor. The villagers of Puranogau had come down to pick up sacks of rice donated by some local businessmen.

We met a man called Ram Bahadur, who is in his late sixties. He told us there was nothing left up there and people were going hungry.

Ram Bahadur sent his son, Amar, back down today, to guide us up the mountain. The trail wound steeply through pine forests before opening out to reveal the stunning Bhote Koshi river valley.

The sound of bus horns below faded as we climbed. Collapsed buildings were visible in every direction – houses, a school, a chai shop.

We reached Puranogau in just short of two hours. Amar showed me round the family home, or what was left of it. The roof was down, stone walls had collapsed and everyone felt safer sleeping well away from it. Ram Bahadur was there, with his wife, surrounded by their grandchildren.

“We will build it back up ourselves,” he told me, his arm sweeping out across what was left of his beautiful mountain village. “If we don’t,” he asked, “where will my children and grandchildren live?”

Later, when Suman told me about the huge crack in the mountain up above, I told him what Ram Bahadur had said. I said: “surely he knows they can’t continue living here?” Suman gave me a sideways look and a rueful smile. “Everybody knows,” he said.

Unsurprisingly, those who have lived at the top of Chinling Dara mountain all their lives, farmed its soil and have taken in its breath-taking views for decades, don’t want to join the tens of thousands of Nepal’s quake refugees. This earthquake has dealt a particularly cruel blow to the villagers of Puranogau.

Pictures taken by @raulgaab and @thompwalker

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