The long journey to recovery
Coke, and the not-so expected – eggs and rice millet wine.
Heading out to Tsum Valley, the closest village you can drive to is Soti Kohla, a seven-hour haul from Kathmandu.
This drive includes some sealed road, but three hours of sand under the wheels makes it a rough ride. Once you reach the village of Soti Kohla, nestled in between two large hills next to a pristine blue river, it’s walking only.
The first stop for our group is Lapu Bhesi.
This small village is like many, with large guest houses for travellers and small unstable-looking shacks for locals.
We ordered noodles and received an apology – they would take an extra 15 minutes as there was no electricity.
Prem Gurung, 36, the owner of the restaurant, said a boulder had taken out their power station during the earthquake and the Government would not fund its repair.
Instead, the community was saving what little money they earned to get the boulder broken down and electricity restored. Its impact was huge. ‘‘At night times, it’s very hard to serve the guests, because we have limited power supplies with the batteries,’’ Gurung says.
Walking another two hours along winding terrain you stumble across Khorlabensi.
Arriving at dusk, light switches are flipped. Again, no power.
Our party of eight orders dinner. A wood-fire oven is all there is to cook on.
Looking out at the hills you can see where chunks were carved out by the quake.
Buildings around the guest house are missing walls. Bookings are being taken for rooms in partly-constructed buildings.
‘‘Many of [the people in the village] were injured, some of them had died.’’ Sun Kumari Gurung, social worker