By Tora Agarwala and Ju-min Park
NEW DELHI/BEIJING, Sept 15 (Reuters) – Every day since a torrent of mud and rocks destroyed a Nepal-China border crossing high up in the Himalayas last month, Arushi Gupta’s parents have called and messaged their missing daughter hoping she somehow survived.
The last photo she sent on the day of the flood was the facade of the Gyirong Port immigration post. But the calls and messages from her parents, who are among many families in Nepal and abroad awaiting news of loved ones, have gone unanswered.
“15 minutes walk to the border,” the 33-year-old wrote on WhatsApp to her father in New Delhi on the morning of August 26, the day of the flood, as she prepared to cross from Nepal into Tibet on a pilgrimage to the Hindu holy site of Mount Kailash.
Up to that point, her updates on WhatsApp had been constant: the quick cup of milky tea at a Nepal hotel, the travel tablets popped for the journey ahead, the last-minute hitch over a fellow traveller’s forgotten passport and, finally, the photo of the border crossing.
“We are convinced that she has gone to the Tibet side of the border and is safe in some elevated place,” said her 63-year-old father, Ajay Gupta. “I am convinced, her husband is convinced, my wife is convinced.”
There are 5,130 people still reported missing on the Nepal side of the border after the flood caused by a glacial collapse swept down the mountains, killing at least 1,386 people. In China, at least 43 people were killed and 519 are missing, including many foreigners.
The search for the missing has led to a few remarkable rescues of people trapped in tunnels of Nepal’s hydropower plants.
But the once regular flow of information about the rescue effort has slowed. Despite the uncertainty this vacuum leaves, some say it offers a sliver of hope that loved ones escaped.
“They haven’t been confirmed dead,” said Vladyslava Horlova, a 22-year-old Ukrainian film student in Bergen, Norway whose mother is missing. “So I think that’s a little hope to hold on to.”
Horlova’s 42-year-old mother Elena also went missing around the border post as she travelled with a group of Ukrainians on a spiritual retreat. Along with Elena, 46 other Ukrainians on that trip remain missing, representatives of the families say.
Horlova has been sleeping with her phone ringer set at maximum volume awaiting news at any hour of the day or night. The last text message to her mother, sent on WhatsApp a day after the flood, said: “Did you land?”
It has not been read.
‘ONLY PATIENCE IS REQUIRED’
Arushi, a consultant in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, had long planned a visit to Mount Kailash, which is believed by Hindus to be the eternal home of Lord Shiva.
Catching a flight on August 23 from New Delhi to Kathmandu, her parents dropped her off at the airport, snapping a photo that showed a smiling Arushi flanked by her mother and father.
In her last WhatsApp chat from the Gyirong border post, she told her father how a fellow traveller had forgotten his passport. “Unexpected things can occur, and only patience is required,” she wrote.
Since then, her family has been on a search for news.
“We are doing anything and everything that comes to our mind,” her father told Reuters in Delhi, breaking down as he described reaching out to the authorities in Nepal, China and India, where many pilgrims in Arushi’s group came from.
Families of those on the pilgrimage formed a WhatsApp group with about 200 members to share information. Initially, they held regular evening calls to share updates.
Three days after the disaster, Arushi’s father and three of his relatives travelled to Kathmandu, going from hospital to hospital, scanning lists of the missing and dead, and meeting embassy officials and police officers. He handed over a DNA sample to aid any identification. But no news has emerged.
He collected Arushi’s suitcase from a hotel where she left some belongings before she set off to the pilgrimage site.
“I sat in the hotel lobby for an hour. I felt that my daughter was sitting there,” he said, adding that he hoped China, with its greater resources, could help.
The authorities in Nepal and China have said they are making every effort to coordinate, track down the missing and provide information to families as soon as possible. India also said it was working closely with the Chinese and Nepalese authorities.
But officials say the scale of the flood, which deposited 2.2 million tons of debris in the valleys, devastating infrastructure and settlements, has hampered the search.
In response to Reuters questions, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said relatives would be informed promptly with any information and a hotline for families worldwide was available. The Nepalese and Indian authorities did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this story.
‘MIRACLES DO HAPPEN’
In Norway, Horlova has sent about 30 emails and made dozens of calls to ministries, embassies and police departments in China, Nepal, Norway and Ukraine in her effort to find out what happened. She also handed over a DNA swab to Norway’s police.
“I just want to know, ‘Today we searched that area, we didn’t find anything’,” she said of her wish for any information.
She has also grappled with a painful puzzle. Her Find My app on her iPhone shows her mother’s mobile was last seen on China’s side of the border while her mother’s Apple Watch and AirPods were last seen on the Nepalese side.
She reached out to Apple for help, as has Arushi’s family.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sachin Joshi, whose brother and sister-in-law were also in Arushi’s group, has asked India’s foreign ministry to seek help from mobile operators about the last location of his relatives.
“But honestly, there’s no information – whoever you connect with,” Joshi, from Pune in India, told Reuters.
Yet even though the WhatsApp group for families of the Indian pilgrims no longer buzzes with updates, Arushi’s father has refused to lose hope. He is planning another trip to Nepal this week with his wife Anshu and Arushi’s husband Shubham.
“Miracles do happen,” he said.
(Reporting by Tora Agarwala in New Delhi and Ju-min Park in Beijing; Additional reporting by Joe Cash in Beijing; Editing by Krishna N. Das and Edmund Blair)
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