Back in September we crossed the border over the ‘Friendship Bridge’ from Tibet into Nepal at Kodari.
I remember the chaos, friendly smiling faces and warmth (both physical from the humid air and emotional from the people) of this little one street town. It was quite a contrast to the authoritarian atmosphere we’d just experienced at the Tibetan border.
Kodari clings to the mountainside between shear cliffs and a roaring river.
The images bellow are from a BBC news report tonight (05/17/2015). Kodari was near the centre of the quake aftershock and has been destroyed. It is abandoned, as the threat from damaged buildings and unstable hills is just too great. They said the Chinese Army had crossed the border to help with the recovery, then showed diggers attempting to move rocks the size of buildings.
I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be there during this, nowhere to run, and how many were injured or killed. There was no mention of that — just that many had fled to the hills — and no reports at all how Zhangmu, a similar town over the border in Tibet, had fared. Horrific.
