For 10 days, Nepali hydropower worker Sanjay Sah survived in darkness inside a flooded tunnel, drinking muddy water and losing all sense of time as he desperately prayed for rescue.
When a disaster response team finally pulled him to safety on September 4, Sah’s first question showed how deeply the ordeal had disoriented him.
“When I was rescued I first asked, how many days has it been?” Sah, aged 30, said in an interview, while on his way back home in Saptari district on Sunday.
“He said that it has been 10 days. I thought it had been just a few days.”
Sah was among hundreds of workers at a series of hydropower projects hit by the catastrophic August 26 flood, triggered by a glacial mountain collapse on the China-Nepal border.
Sah’s extraordinary survival was a rare ray of hope after a disaster that killed at least 1,429 people and left more than 5,640 missing, the majority in Nepal.
Family, friends and neighbours celebrated Sah’s return with garlands and a cake, and his home was adorned with balloons and colours.