Pramod Poudel has shared the last words his wife spoke to him before she vanished in Nepal’s catastrophic flash floods.
The 34-year-old food truck owner from East Sussex said that he spoke with his 25-year-old bride Sumitra at 4:15 p.m. Last Wednesday, mere hours before a glacier collapsed near the Tibet border and unleashed a torrent of mud, water and ice on her village. She was staying with his family in Sole, a rural settlement that was almost entirely obliterated by the surge.
“When I last spoke to her, she said to me, ‘How are you? I love you so much’,” he told the newspaper.
“I have not had contact with her since then. It’s devastating – I don’t even know how to explain how I’m feeling right now. I’m so worried about her, and all my family. I work so hard for them and they are my whole world.”
Poudel has since traveled to the disaster zone to search for Sumitra, his 52-year-old mother Tulisa, his brother Pardip, and his uncle Madhav. A GoFundMe has been established to support his efforts. He acknowledged that roughly 90 percent of the homes and residents in Sole had been completely washed away, making his hopes fragile despite his prayers.
“I’m very hopeful of finding them but I’m also praying to God,” he added.
He also addressed scattered reports of possible sightings. “Some people have said they have seen my brother and my mum, but I don’t know how true that is,” he said.
The official death toll across Nepal has now exceeded 700, with rescue teams reporting more than 2,400 people still unaccounted for. In neighboring Tibet, authorities confirmed 546 individuals are missing, including 18 Americans and 15 British citizens caught in the devastation.
Among the broader pool of British nationals still missing is Geetha Reddy, a London mother of two. Her husband, Vikram Kolagatla, described the anguish he and their daughters, aged 12 and 14, are enduring as schools prepare to reopen.
“We’re not sure what to do. I have two little girls, and their schools are starting next week,” Kolagatla said.
“The kids still don’t believe it. They think she’s stuck in the flood and that she’ll come back. They think she’s stuck somewhere and there’s no mobile network.”
The Red Cross estimates that 90,000 people have been severely impacted across the affected region. Authorities project that recovery efforts will require approximately $5 billion, while drone surveillance monitors newly formed high-altitude water pools that pose a threat of further flooding.