Chandika Kumari Shrestha was already, as far as her family was concerned, a body to be buried. The floods had ravaged Betrawati, in Nuwakot district, and her four-story house ended up swallowed by mud that compacted almost like concrete. With neither a body nor any sign of her, her relatives began the 11-day Hindu mourning period.
Ten days later, a rescue team was walking through the village’s rubble when they heard something impossible: a voice calling for help. Beneath tons of sediment, in an air pocket opened between the water and the mud, Chandika had held on without seeing daylight. Officer Mahendra Darnal led a 45-minute operation that Saturday to get her out alive.
She was immediately taken to a military hospital while her family, Darnal recounted, was still in the midst of mourning. In Betrawati, teams continue recovering bodies among the ruins of a valley that a flood swept away entirely. Against all odds, she was the exception.