Never is a nation so vulnerable, its people becoming victims of misfortune as when nature, in one of her truly black moods, comes calling. Nepal, a nation of almost 27-million, adjacent the other Asian countries in the Himalayan range, and home to the fabled Mount Everest, is an impoverished country, hugely dependent on the income it derives from foreign tourism, drawn to its imposing geological landscape.



Buddhist shrines of ancient heritage are everywhere in Nepal, sacred places whose lineage has been recognized by UNESCO, given recognition as the place on Earth with the most heritage sites. And now many of those sites have been irremediably damaged, a people's faith put to the test. Well over four thousand Nepalese have died as a result of the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that destroyed peace and calm in Kathmandu, and spread its dire effects in a wide range affecting India, Tibet and as far as Bangladesh.

Hospitals in Tibet cannot meet the demands of the thousands of wounded requiring care. And these are those who can be readily reached by search and rescue volunteers, many of them of international origin. The further, isolated villages of several hundred souls each to which passage has been cut off, resulting from the earthquake's vast destruction, will add immeasurably both to the death toll and to those who have suffered grievous injury who require medical attention to ensure that they too do not join the ranks of Nepal's dead.

"I ran and it just flattened me. I tried to get up and it flattened me again," Singapore-based marine biologist George Foulsham told AFP at base camp. "I couldn't breathe, I thought I was dead. When I finally stood up, I couldn't believe it passed me over and I was almost untouched."
Picture: Robert Schmidt/AFP

International teams of mountain climbers were caught on Everest's Base Camp as a landslide triggered by the quake swept down the mountainside. Some 18 climbers and Sherpas are among the dead, many more injured. These are intrepid mountaineers for the most part, many having a fairly good idea of the kinds of obstacles they face, both through the uncertainty of the geology and the weather. This season, like the last, when 14 Sherpas were swept to their death on the mountain, has started off ominously.

As the Sherpas would warn, the goddess of the mountain is angry, her lord, the Earth's interior, has rumbled his rage and the mountain responded.

Flames rise from burning funeral pyres during the cremation of victims of Saturday's earthquake, at the Pashupatinath temple on the banks of Bagmati river, in Kathmandu, Nepal, Sunday, April 26, 2015. AP Photo/Bernat Armangue