At 11:56 am local time on Saturday 25 April 2015, a magnitude 7.8 rupture began 82 km northwest of Kathmandu, beneath the village of Barpak in Gorkha district — the same hill country from which Prithvi Narayan Shah had set out to unify Nepal 250 years earlier. The shaking lasted under a minute. It killed 8,964 people in Nepal (and hundreds more across the border in India and China), injured more than 21,952, destroyed or damaged over 600,000 houses, and inflicted damage estimated at US$10 billion — roughly one-third of the country's GDP.वि.सं. २०७२ वैशाख १२ गते शनिबार, दिउँसो ११:५६ मा, गोरखा जिल्लाको बारपाक गाउँमुनि — जुन पहाडी क्षेत्रबाट २५० वर्ष पहिले पृथ्वीनारायण शाह एकीकरणका लागि निस्केका थिए — काठमाडौंको उत्तर-पश्चिम ८२ कि.मि. माग्निट्युड ७.८ को भूकम्प सुरु भयो। कम्पन एक मिनेटमुनि नै। नेपालमा ८,९६४ मानिस मारिए (सीमापारि भारत-चीनमा सयौं), २१,९५२ भन्दा बढी घाइते, छ लाख भन्दा बढी घर पूर्ण वा आंशिक रूपमा ध्वस्त, र क्षतिको अनुमान अमेरिकी दस अर्ब डलर — देशको कुल घरेलु उत्पादनको झन्डै एक-तिहाइ।[1][2]
What Fellजुन ढल्यो
- ◆Langtang village, Rasuwa — buried by an avalanche and landslide; the trekking village and most of its people disappeared in seconds. Over 300 died there.
- ◆Mount Everest — a co-seismic avalanche swept Base Camp, killing 22. It was the deadliest day in the mountain's climbing history.
- ◆Dharahara, Kathmandu — the nine-storey watchtower built in 1832 collapsed; some 180 bodies were later recovered from its rubble.
- ◆The Durbar Squares of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur — Malla-era temples crumbled; the Kasthamandap, the wooden pavilion that gave Kathmandu its name, collapsed.
- ◆Sindhupalchok and Nuwakot — the districts with the highest death tolls, where stone-and-mud village houses flattened whole hamlets.
A second major shock, magnitude 7.3, struck on 12 May 2015 near the Tibet border. Search-and-rescue teams from 34 countries worked the rubble of Kathmandu alongside Nepal's own exhausted police and army. Reconstruction was formalized a year later under the National Reconstruction Authority; by 2022 the large majority of affected households had received the government's grant to rebuild, but full restoration of the damaged temples remains unfinished even now.दोस्रो ठूलो झट्का, माग्निट्युड ७.३, २९ वैशाख २०७२ (१२ मे २०१५) मा तिब्बत सीमा नजिक लाग्यो। ३४ देशका उद्धार टोलीले काठमाडौंको मल्लाहाटमा नेपालकै थकित प्रहरी-सेनासँगै काम गरे। पुनर्निर्माण एक वर्षपछि राष्ट्रिय पुनर्निर्माण प्राधिकरणमार्फत औपचारिक भयो; २०७९ सम्म प्रभावित घरधुरीको ठूलो हिस्साले सरकारी अनुदान पाए, तर क्षतिग्रस्त मन्दिरको पूर्ण पुनर्स्थापना आज पनि अधुरो छ।
""We have received the grief of the whole world — but the country has been broken by more than an earthquake."
"हामीले सारा संसारको शोक पायौं — तर देश भूकम्पभन्दा बढीले भाँचियो।"
— A Kathmandu resident, 2015
The Blockade — September 2015 to February 2016नाकाबन्दी — असोज २०७२देखि माघ २०७२सम्म
Nepal is landlocked, and imports most of its fuel, medicine and trade goods through its southern border with India. In late September 2015 — days after the constitution was promulgated and New Delhi had voiced objections to it — tanker traffic from India slowed to a trickle. India denied an embargo, blaming Madhesi protests on its side of the border. From Kathmandu it looked, plainly, like a blockade: the same tactic India had used against the Panchayat regime in 1989–90.नेपाल भूपरिवेष्ठित देश हो, र इन्धन, औषधि र व्यापारका ठूलो हिस्सा भारत सीमाबाट भित्रिन्छ। वि.सं. २०७२ असोजको अन्त्यतिर — संविधान जारीको केही दिनपछि, नयाँ दिल्लीले आपत्ति जनाएकै बखत — भारतबाट आउने ट्यांकर ट्राफिक ह्वात्तै घट्यो। भारतले नाकाबन्दी स्वीकारेन, सीमापारिका मधेसी प्रदर्शनलाई जिम्मेवार ठहरायो। काठमाडौंबाट भने यो स्पष्ट नाकाबन्दी थियो: वि.सं. २०४६–४७ मा पञ्चायतविरुद्ध प्रयोग गरेकै रणनीति।
- ◆Petrol stations rationed fuel; cooking-gas lines wrapped around entire neighbourhoods.
- ◆Hospitals postponed operations for want of medicines; schools closed; generators fell silent.
- ◆International relief flights carried aviation fuel for the earthquake response — while road-borne supplies sat sealed at the border.
- ◆Nepal turned north: it signed a fuel-import and transit agreement with China during the crisis — its first formal break of the Indian supply monopoly.
- ◆By the time traffic normalized in February 2016, the blockade had cost Nepal more in lost output than the earthquake itself.