Source : the age
Warning: This story contains graphic content.
A majority of the 39 Australian victims of the devastating flash flooding in Nepal and Tibet were pilgrims on a journey to one of the most spiritually significant locations in the world.
Through both overtly religious travel groups, or traditional groups offering pilgrimage packages, they were seeking to trek to Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar as part of the Kailash Manasarovar Yatra, where they cross into Tibet from Nepal.
Families across the country are reeling in the aftermath of the disaster, as the number of Australians reported missing rises and loved ones at home hold out hope for any good news.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Friday morning that at least 39 Australians were now reported missing – up from 35 overnight.
Fifteen of the missing Australians were travelling with the Himalayan Glacier Adventure and Travel Kailash Group, six others were travelling with the Kailash Journeys tour group, and 11 were on a pilgrimage with non-profit spiritual organisation the Isha Foundation. The whereabouts of one traveller with Kathmandu Holiday Tours and Travel, and six other Australian travellers remain unknown.
Indian-Australian community leader Vasan Srinivasan said the other 14 missing Australians from the Himalayan Glacier pilgrimage were Sydney-based members of a cultural and religious non-profit he founded called the Australia Bharatha Brahman Samajam.
“We are all very distressed and trying to track them. I’m just praying.” He said those missing worked in various professions, including the financial industry, and many were his close professional friends.
Sandeep Mohapatra, 43, and Sidharthi Kumari Sahu, 39
A couple from Melbourne’s east have been identified as being among the 39 Australians reported missing after the catastrophic flash flood in Nepal.
Sandeep Mohapatra, 43, and Sidharthi Kumari Sahu, 39, live in Wantirna South and travelled to the Nepal-China border as part of a trek, their friend Manoranjan “Manu” Nayak told this masthead.
He said the couple moved to Australia in 2018 from the Indian state of Odisha, where much of their family remains. Nayak met them through the Odia community in Melbourne.
“We’re a very close community of people. We just met during the festive season,” Nayak said. “They didn’t have anyone here to help them. They were just migrants who came here.”
Mohapatra and Sahu’s last known location was an immigration centre, Nayak added, but they have been uncontactable since.
“It’s an extremely challenging and difficult situation,” he said.
Sandeep’s cousin, Soumya Mohapatra, told Reuters: “We last spoke to them on August 23 and received a text message the next day. Since then, we have had no information about their whereabouts.
“We have lost hope after hearing about the scale of the destruction and the number of deaths.”
Sreedharan Iyer Iyer, 52, Lakshmi Sreedharan Iyer, 50, Rishab Iyer Sreedharan Iyer, 23, and Rudhra Sreedharan Iyer, 20
A family from Cherrybrook, in Sydney’s northern suburbs, is among the missing.
Both Rishab and his brother Rudhra study medicine at the University of Newcastle. Their parents Sreedharan and Lakshmi co-own a tour business, Oz Trek International.
In a Facebook post, Nisha Khadka said family friends Sreedharan, Lakshmi Iyer, Rudhra and Rishab Iyer were missing in Nepal.
Khadka said the group was last known to be in Kathmandu before the natural disaster and friends were urgently trying to locate them.
“If anyone has seen them, has any information about their whereabouts, or has found them safe, please contact me as soon as possible,” she said.
Rishab is a medicine student at the University of Newcastle, while his brother Rudhra is a student at Western Sydney University.
Chandrasekaran Muralitharan, 47, Shylaja Muralitharan, 42, Ashwin Muralitharan, 14, and Aarush Muralitharan, 11
Another pair of brothers, Aarush and Ashwin Muralitharan, and their parents were travelling with Himalayan Glacier and are currently missing. At 11 and 14, the boys are among the youngest Australians affected by the flood.
The younger brother Aarush is involved in junior athletics at Cherrybrook.
Kumar Sampath, 61
Melbourne father Kumar Sampath, 61, is also among the missing pilgrims.
“He’s a hardworking, successful entrepreneur who came to Australia with nothing and provided his family with everything they wanted,” Kumar’s son Mani told this masthead.
“He loved hiking, nature and recently retired and wanted to explore his faith.”
Sampath ran an engineering business specialising in railways before he retired. His son said his family hoped he would be found alive.
Narayan Panthi
Brisbane father Narayan Panthi was on a sacred pilgrimage to Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar, embracing the mantra of “living in the present”.
Posting about his nine-day journey on social media, he wrote: “May this sacred journey to Kailash bring peace to my mind, joy to my soul, and new energy to my life.”
Krishna Prasad Dhakal, the operator of Kathmandu Holiday Tour and Travels, said a group of 17 people who had set out on a bus journey to Manasarovar were missing, including foreign nationals, and it hadn’t been possible to establish contact with any of them.
He said Panthi was part of the travelling group. “It has not been possible to contact him or anyone else yet,” Dhakal said. “I just spoke with family members; they are coming to meet me.”
Reshma Bhavin Patel, 46
Reshma Bhavin Patel was confirmed missing by her sister and a family friend in Nepal.
Her sister, Vaishali, said Patel was part of the Isha Sacredwalks Group, and that they had not heard from her since the floods.
Her group was at the Nepalese border and made contact with another group from the Isha, before going dark.
Patel is a mother of two, a 14-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy, who have are leaving for India alongside their family.
The family friend also confirmed that the Newcastle woman was travelling with a group on the Kailash Manasarovar Yatra pilgrimage.
Venkatraman Balakrishnan, 52, and Chitra Venkatraman, 46
The son of Sydney-based couple, Venkatraman Balakrishnan, 52, and his wife Chitra Venkatraman, 46, told the ABC the last contact he had with them was when they were about 15 kilometres from the Tibetan border.
“I’d like to see my parents and everyone who went with them back in one piece, and that everyone else there is as safe as possible,” he said.
Other missing Australians
Nepalese police have provided a full list of missing Australians, which includes names that were previously reported, names of people from different travel groups, and unconfirmed victims.
Further information on their whereabouts and wellbeing is still unclear.
- Rajeswari Sharma
- Sruthi Chandrasekaran
- Krishna Sharma
- Umesh Sharma
- Renee Therese Spry
- Uday Shivamurthy
- Kripa Shivamurthy
- Bhoomi Mahendrakumar Patel
- Shivaprasad Rakesh Nayaka
- Ganeshbale Daya
- Bharat Mangwani
- Michael Ryan Keats
- Luke Christopher Costanzo
- Patricia Rose Cara
- Agastaya Gopi Krishna Naidu
- Sumi Adhikari
The Isha Foundation said 11 Australians were missing after a building they were believed to be in was destroyed by floodwaters.
The last known signal from the group, which had completed its pilgrimage, was after members entered an immigration building on the border, said the Isha Foundation’s founder Jagadish Vasudev, who is known as Sadhguru.
“They believe the entire group was in the building,” Vasudev said. “The town where they were entering, almost half the town is carved out of the valley.
“At 9.05 we received a message from group leader Praveen. He sent a message saying they had arrived at immigration. This event happened at 9.14am.
“His [Praveen’s] Nepal phone did not become active. If he had crossed, his Nepal phone should have become active but he did not come.”
On Thursday night, families gathered for prayers and held a minute’s silence for those lost to the floods, lighting candles beside a hand-crafted display of dyed rice reading “pray for Nepal”.
Keshav Kadel was among members of Nepalese community who gathered in north-west of Melbourne at the Australian Nepalese Multicultural Centre, where he serves as vice president.
“What’s happening in my town is that bodies are now flowing in the river,” he said. “They have slid all the way down and people are pulling bodies from the river.”
The diaspora was “united in grief, hope and prayer”, centre secretary Sudhir Shakya told the event.
“Behind every number is a person – a mother, a father, a son, a daughter, a relative, a friend, and someone deeply loved,” he said.
Mourners compared the floods to the 2015 earthquake which devastated Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, killing almost 9000 people. While the death count this time is not as great, Kadel warned that consequences would be more dire at the level of individual towns.
He has followed the disaster largely through social media, unable to bring himself to call those in the affected region. “I didn’t have the courage to do that,” he said.
Similar events were held across Australia on Thursday, including a vigil in Rockdale, in Sydney’s south.
Australians in need of emergency consular assistance should contact the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s 24-hour Consular Emergency Centre on 1300 555 135, or +61 2 6261 3305 (if calling from overseas).
