The Kumaris sprinkle flower petals on to the crowds gathered in Kathmandu’s historic Durbar Square. Dressed in red and with symbolic ‘fire eyes’ on their foreheads, these pre-pubescent girls are worshipped as divine manifestations of female energy. All around me thousands of Nepalese climb on piles of rubble in the hope of catching a glimpse of them.

It’s the start of the eight-day Indra Jatra festival, which pays tribute to the rain god Indra and marks the start of the new trekking season after the monsoon. The Kumaris, who are normally isolated from society, are carried across the city in golden chariots. Masked dancers representing deities and the tiger-toothed Bhairava, a demon associated with destruction, parade in time with drums.

It’s a particularly poignant sight because on 25 April 2015 the palace was gouged open when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal, killing more than 8,000 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. Tourist arrivals dropped by 90 per cent in the six months after the earthquake, a double blow to the locals who rely on visitors for their livelihood.

I’m here to see first-hand how the country is recovering. My plan is to trek part of the route to the Mount Everest base camp over a few days to report on how reconstruction is progressing.

Nepal has a diversity of mountains, jungles, savanna and cultures. The key is to explore them in a way that’s sustainable

Walking through Kathmandu, I find the spirit of the city very much alive. I’m surrounded by a maze of fragrant spices, jingling bells, tuk tuks, and tiny shops selling anything from masala chai to pashminas. Deeper into the mountains, I encounter the towering peaks, ancient temples and kindness of the Nepalese people that define this country.

The small trekking group I join travels to the village of Namche Bazaar, the gateway to Everest, where we are to spend the night before setting off. We head to my favourite trekkers bar, Daphne, where the walls are decked out with T-shirts signed by expeditioners from years gone by. The barman introduces himself as Jack (Jagadish). “We’ve not even had 40 per cent of the people, and it’s not because of the earthquake, it’s because of the media,” he says. “Europeans believe that Nepal is not safe, but actually, everything is operating over here.”

An ongoing fuel crisis is the country’s main concern, according to Jagan Timilsina, who leads treks to Everest base camp. “We do not have fuel for transportation, no gas for cooking. People are having a difficult time.”

After Nepal’s new constitution was passed in September 2015, a shipment of essential supplies from India – the provider of all of Nepal’s petroleum products – was blocked by ethnic minority groups, opposed to the constitution. Nepalese politicians have accused India of supporting the blockade, which India firmly denies.

Getting Nepal back on track

The next morning we take a path leading to the white spire capped rotunda of the shrine built for Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, who along with Sir Edmund Hillary became the first person to summit Everest in May 1953. Prayer flags draped around the building flutter in the wind like multi-coloured leaves. Beyond the shrine a large scar stretches above our path, carved by the earthquake. Further along are more scars, and two local men chip away with simple tools, cutting stones to make a new road.

The tour operator, Intrepid Travel’s Nepal general manager Nicholas Cowie, lives in Kathmandu and intimately understands the earthquake’s devastation. He says a report by earthquake engineering specialists Miyamoto International found there was minimal damage to the majority of accommodation and trails in the Everest and Annapurna regions. Of the buildings that were damaged, most could easily be repaired. Standing on a ridge above the shrine with Ram Moktan, our lead trekking guide, I can see the magic of the mist-shrouded ravines and sky-piercing peaks of the Himalayas hasn’t changed, though the number of visitors has; we pass barely a handful of foreign trekkers. “The best thing people can do now,” Moktan tells me, “is to come back”.

We spend the following night at 2,652 metres, at Phakding, having passed through some of the worst-affected stretches of the trail. At Tok Tok, rock fall blocks a section of the trail near the Dudh Khosi river. But landslides here are nothing new, and we navigate it successfully. Passing through Benkar we see a guesthouse with its modern half intact, but a 50-year-old section collapsing under the weight of its traditional stonewalls and roof. Cowie explains that the buildings are being repaired using cement, reinforcing steel and local stone stacked to create friction so they can move but are still solid.

The following morning we fly back to Kathmandu to visit some NGOs doing on-theground work. At Seven Women, disadvantaged and disabled women are taught literacy, numeracy, and handicraft skills. At Just-one, which supports around 100 children living on the streets, they tell us: “If you want to help these children, don’t give them money, give it to community projects instead.”

Nepal remains a destination that amazes, intrigues and sometimes shocks. But the country is at a crossroads. “It can continue offering the same trekking routes or begin to think outside of the box,” Cowie says. “Nepal has a diversity of mountains, jungles and savanna that are largely unexplored. The key is to explore them in a way that’s sustainable – environmentally, economically and socially.”

I think back to the colours of the Indra Jatra and the view across the Himalayas. There will be more earthquakes, they are what created the famous peaks, but, Cowie shrugs, “where there is no risk, there is no life.”

Intrepid (0808 274 5111) is donating all profits from the 2015/16 trekking season to the Nepal rebuild. A 15-day Everest base camp trek through the Himalayas costs from £748 per person, including local flights and accommodation. International flights not included.

Photography by Ben McNamara. Main image: Crowds gather for the first Indra Jatra – Nepal’s largest annual festival – since the catastrophic earthquake in April 2015

The post After the quake: Nepal one year on appeared first on Positive News.

More than 8,700 people have died since the 25 April earthquake struck Nepal. As the country begins to rebuild, mental health professionals are reaching out to those in need.

“I saw a lot of grief in people,” says counsellor Dristy Gurung.

“If it doesn’t get treated or if you don’t intervene in such grief or trauma, in the long run it might create some mental health issues for people.”

According to the UN resident coordinator in Nepal, 2.8 million people are still in need of some form of assistance.

Gurung works for Transcultural Psychosocial Organization (TPO) Nepal, one of the country’s leading psychosocial associations.

While the organisation advocates for mental health laws and acts, Gurung says the country always puts physical health first and that mental health is put in the shadow.

Gurung and other mental health professionals in Nepal say this can have major repercussions after a natural disaster of this scale. Gurung says they have already heard of cases of suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Radio show

Days after the earthquake, Radio Nepal, together with UNICEF Nepal, started a programme that airs four times a day called Bhandai Sundai. The goal of the programme is to reduce the impact of the earthquake.

During one slot of the show, guest health professionals like Gurung respond live to questions from callers.

“Slowly their tolerance to face the problem increases.”

“Geographically, except for radio, there is no other way to communicate,” Madhav (Prasad) Ghimire of Radio Nepal says. “In many places electricity is down. Now everyone is listening to the radio because it is reaching where no human can reach.”

The programme receives about 15 calls during their 55-minute slot.

In one instance, a man living in the United States calls in and says he is worried about his family in Nepal. He doesn’t know if they are OK. It’s 4am where he is, and he has no one else to talk to.

In Nepal another man calls in, wondering how he can help his wife who has felt nauseous since the earthquake. Gurung questions whether her symptoms are physical or also mental and advises the caller to take his wife to the nearest health post.

“Having your lifelong savings go down in just a minute is a huge loss to bear to people, and that causes a lot of stress on people,” Gurung says.

Living in tents

In Kathmandu, people who have no homes to return to are still living in tents.

Jiban Kumari Bhattrai, a counsellor with Women’s Rehabilitation Center (WOREC) Nepal, has led group therapy sessions for women at Tundikhel tent camp in Kathmandu.

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“During group counselling they realise they are not the only person who has the problem, other people also have the same problems so slowly they cooperate and their tolerance to face the problem increases,” Bhattrai says.

The work of Gurung, Ghimire, and Bhattrai focuses on community experiences and building empathy among victims. Gurung says this is an important way of healing in Nepal.

“We have psychosocial counsellors, psychosocial workers who are mobilised in communities,” Gurung says. “Rather than focusing on therapies, they try to focus on [the community’s] own coping mechanism, resiliency and how community can come together to heal each other.”

First published by Al Jazeera.com

The post Tackling the psychological impact of earthquakes in Nepal appeared first on Positive News.