Sweetness and light after five days buried alive

The 15-year-old boy had been buried alive for five days, listening to bulldozers clearing mountains of debris, fearful that the incessant aftershocks might collapse the darkened crevice he was trapped in.

And then, "all of a sudden I saw light", Pempa Tamang said, recounting the moment he was pulled from a hole at the bottom of what was once a seven-storey building in Kathmandu.

Tamang did not know whether he was alive or dead. "I thought I was hallucinating," he said.

Thursday's improbable rescue was an uplifting moment in Nepal, which has been overwhelmed by death and destruction since the 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit a week ago today, claiming more than 6,000 lives.

When Tamang was finally extricated, rescue workers inserted an IV in his arm, propped him onto a yellow plastic stretcher and carried him through the ruins on their shoulders as if he was a newly crowned king. A dazed Tamang, wearing a dark shirt with the New York Yankees logo and the words "New York Authentic", blinked at the bright sky.

When the procession of bystanders and journalists turned a corner and entered the main road outside, there came a sound Kathmandu had not heard in days; the jubilant cheers of thousands of ecstatic onlookers.

When the quake began at 11.56am, Tamang said he was having lunch with a friend in the hotel where he worked. As he ran down towards the way out, the stairs shook. He saw walls cracking, ceilings caving in.