E very day, Nikhila Agastya answers more questions from her two children: has she heard anything about their father? Is he with anyone? Is it snowing in Kathmandu? Is he cold, and does he have warm clothing? Will he come home? The answer is: probably not.

“They know that [their] father is missing,” Nikhila says. “And they are still looking for him. They always wait; every day they wait for him. They won’t give up, they think he will come home.”

Her husband, Gopi Agastya, had travelled from Sydney to Nepal to go on a pilgrimage with the Isha Foundation when a flood hit on 26 August. He did not return home.

It has been 10 weeks since the catastrophic floods wiped away whole villages , reaching settlements as high as 82 metres above the river level.

The number of dead has risen to 1,459. Another 5,285 people are unaccounted for.…