Hope and horror: Families in Nepal await news of missing

The walls of Kathmandu's largest hospital have been transformed in recent days.

Colourful posters have begun popping up everywhere, their subjects’ smiling, happy faces at odds with the messages carefully printed on the paper in English and Nepali.

The photographs serve to humanise a tragedy that has made headlines around the world this week, with videos of the destruction and devastation being viewed millions of times.

The posters bring to focus the lives and livelihoods of the people impacted - a baby in blue dungarees in his mother’s arms, a newly-married couple, a grandfather on pilgrimage.

They are among more than 2,000 people who remain missing after the glacial collapse high up in the Himalayas on Wednesday which unleashed a wall of water, mud and debris downstream.

For the desperate families of the missing, the long wait for news has been agonising.

Many of them have been holding vigils outside Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, where some of the injured have been taken.

Each time an ambulance arrives, they crowd around, hoping that it has delivered their loved one to safety.

It is a recurring cycle of hope, then helplessness.

Among those searching is Sitaram Khadka, whose 26-year-old brother Bhupendra has not been seen since Wednesday.

He had been working with a tour agency that takes tourists up to Mount Kailash, over the border in Tibet.

"We’ve been running around different hospitals and even airports in Kathmandu in the hope that my brother has been rescued and brought here," he says.

"He has only been married for seven months. It’s very difficult."

Many of those missing are tourists who had been taking similar routes to Mount Kailash, which is considered a sacred site for both Buddhists and Hindus.

Two Irish citizens, 46-year-old Santosh Sahu and 18-year-old Spandan Sahu, were on one such tour.

Not far from the hospital, family members of the missing have also begun gathering outside a local morgue.

It is a scene few could conceive of.

Hanging on the walls outside, authorities have posted photographs of some of the dead bodies - children and adults alike - some missing limbs, many swollen from prolonged immersion in water.

Family members are walking from picture to picture, carefully studying each photograph, as they try to identify their missing loved ones.

It is the most harrowing of tasks in an already devastating week.

One of those examining the images is Sanu Tamarg.

Her husband Bijay is a logistics driver who had just crossed over the border from Tibet when the floods occurred.

"My heart is broken, it’s been very difficult. I have no information on him. It’s been so many days. My son is also refusing to eat anything.

"We keep going around hospitals but there is no name of him on the lists.

"My husband is a very fun-loving energetic person.

"He gets along with everyone very easily… if anybody sees him please get in touch with us."

Inside the morgue, families have been provided with facemasks and latex gloves, as they await their turn to view those inside.

There is a profound sense of grief in the air.

The police tell us that some of the bodies have been so badly disfigured that the only way they can be identified is using DNA samples.

It is a job that could take weeks, even months, further prolonging the anguish of families who are already living through the most unimaginable pain.