The collapse-prone Krishnabhir section of the Prithvi Highway has exposed the lack of a parallel route on the other side of the Trishuli river, despite plans dating back nearly a decade.

The 70-km project will widen the highway to four lanes and build a two-km flyover through Tikauli forest.

Officials will decide within a week whether vehicles can resume using the existing road. If reopening is not feasible, authorities will seek a sustainable alternative.

With 41 bridges destroyed between Rasuwa and Chitwan, authorities are reopening roads and seeking temporary bridges from China and India to restore key links.

Fourteen months after covering the first Lhende Khola flood, I returned to the same disaster zone. This time, roads and homes were gone, families were searching for their loved ones, and the places I remembered were barely recognisable.

Fuel, food and other essentials are reaching the Capital through alternative roads, but transport disruption is pushing up prices and limiting cooking gas supplies.

Authorities are mapping unsafe settlements and considering safer locations, but past disasters show that moving communities away from their land and livelihoods can be unsuitable.

Families perform funeral rites using effigies, mourners struggle to find cooking gas.

After years of unfulfilled government promises to move them to safe ground, dozens of quake-affected families in Rasuwa and Nuwakot have now been swept away by the catastrophic Bhotekoshi flood.

Traffic halted after a three-metre-wide section of the highway sank at Pataleban, with small vehicles diverted through the Nagdhunga tunnel.

From a Rasuwa holding centre, survivors recount desperate escapes, relatives swept away and the loss of homes, villages and entire families in the Bhotekoshi disaster.

14-year-old Akash Tamang says he survived the floods, but his younger brother and sister are missing. 17,000 children have been directly affected by floods in Bhotekoshi and Trishuli corridors, says UNICEF.

Medicines are running short, health services remain disrupted, and crowded shelters are raising fears of disease outbreaks among displaced families.

Displaced patients miss essential drugs while hospitals struggle with dwindling supplies, no fuel and worsening sanitation as insecurity spreads around shelters.

Prem Bahadur and Maiya Tamang have turned their lone hillside home into a shelter, feeding and housing more than 200 people since the disaster despite relying mainly on small government allowances.