Saturday April 25th 2015 3.45pm
Krishna's sister points and mutters "ground" on seeing how concerned I was to see the Pandeys place closed. A grazing meadow of sorts, shared with all manner of livestock, kids and teenagers and right now crowded with hundreds of locals. Slowly but surely news is emerging of deaths in Kathmandu due to an earthquake a few hours ago.
Dharahara tower, a popular tourist attraction and Kathmandu view point has collapsed - that's the news from Kathmandu as locals here are frantically trying to connect with their relatives in the capital. Communication lines are grinding to a halt, power is out as the fear of aftershocks could bring down the lines. There is a sense of real fear, an edginess that's hard to describe among a community that knows their country is in serious trouble - the fragile and developing infrastructure of this country has been seriously effected but to what extent, well, we'll just have to wait for the power to return.
A quick recap - the vibrations felt on the bus earlier was the earthquake emanating from Kathmandu. The jolt at the cafe was an aftershock but thankfully both events were well outside the sphere of damage with Pokhara itself on the edge of the shockwave effect.
6.30pm and life begins to stir as dusk turns into night, still with an edginess, folk cautiously trading a path back to their homes. No further tremors have been felt since mid afternoon but everyone here is expecting another significant jolt - and that will come at anytime, without warning!
7pm electricity is back on but no internet to be found anywhere. Thankfully a line, a phone line to the outside world. Yes it's working, and a phone call to Mother England where my first indication of the scale of this earthquakes damage is becoming apparent - it's quite bad. Fair to say no one in Nepal will get agood nights sleep tonight!
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