Restoring Nepal's earthquake-hit monuments is a 'race against time'
When a 7.8-magnitude earthquake shook Nepal in April this year, nearly 3,000 significant sites were damaged or destroyed. Bibek Bhandari investigates how the Nepalese government is restoring its monuments, and whether the devastating extent of the damage could have been avoided.
Lok Bahadur Shakya’s earliest memories of Patan Durbar Square haven’t faded. The 74-year-old played in this centuries-old palatial courtyard as a child; he woke to the morning bells of the temples and would follow his mother as she went to pray to the deities whose shrines are scattered across the square.
He has walked past the Unesco World Heritage site, in the Lalitpur district of Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley, every day for seven decades and has a story for each season. But on a sunny September afternoon, as the square is being prepared for Janmashtami, the annual celebration of the birth of Hindu god Krishna, Shakya takes in the scene contemplatively.
The gods he once worshipped are behind wired fences and some of the temples in which he prayed no longer stand.
“So many temples have collapsed. These aren’t just monuments for us – it’s where our gods live. They symbolise our faith,” says Shakya, sitting on a wooden bench.
The 7.8-magnitude earthquake that shook Nepal at 11.56am on April 25, along with the powerful 7.3-magnitude aftershock on May 12, flattened villages, killed more than 8,500 people and displaced millions. Nepal also suffered an incomprehensible loss of heritage – historic palaces, monasteries and ancient temples were levelled. More than 400 monuments were affected in the Kathmandu Valley, the most populated area of Nepal, and at least 35 of them, in six of the seven World Heritage sites in the area, have collapsed entirely, according to the Department of Archaeology's preliminary assessment report.
The government estimates that, across the country, 2,900 religious and culturally significant sites have been damaged or destroyed.