Donatella Lorch

By the time I was taken to the operating theater, I was groggy on painkillers, but I remember admiring the earthquake cracks creeping up the walls and snaking across the ceiling. Just before I drifted under anesthesia, my last thought encompassed my worries of my last two months in Nepal: ...

This week, Kathmandu is a city of goats.

People are walking goats on leashes on the sidewalk. On motorcycles, goats are sandwiched between the driver and the passenger. They teeter precariously on bus roof racks.

And Nepalis are eviscerating freshly butchered goats by the roadside in the suburbs, while the ...

The Red God of Nepal is on the move again, riding in a chariot pulled by dozens of intoxicated men. The April earthquake slowed the god down and left him homeless, but there's no stopping a determined deity.

The Red God, or Rato Macchendranath, is both a Hindu and a ...

In mid-August, the British ambassador to Nepal was photographed on a trail on the Annapurna trekking circuit holding a poster that declared: "I am in Nepal Now." More than four months after a devastating magnitude 7.8 earthquake, this was part of a campaign to revitalize tourism, a main foreign ...

In post-earthquake Kathmandu, it is now cows and calves that are a problem.

Stray ones that is.

Hundreds have taken over the streets, casually strolling or curled up in the middle of the road, oblivious of their traffic-aggravating role amid the cacophony of buses, trucks, motorcycles and cars trying to ...

Nepal's mountains are achingly beautiful. And extraordinarily dangerous.

Since April 25, when a 7.6 magnitude earthquake tore through central and eastern Nepal, the most affected were the hamlets, villages and towns in Nepal's Himalayan steep foothills. These have become more inaccessible than ever, places of death, dread and fear.

On ...

When the earthquake hit, my son, Lucas, and I were in the car and he was trying to find "The Piano Guys" on my iPhone to blast through the car speakers. He didn't realize anything was amiss until the car jolted violently up on two wheels then slammed back down. ...

The night before he disappeared, Dennis Lee Thian Poh called his wife in Kuala Lumpur. They chatted about the bitter cold in Nepal's Annapurna range and he said that dinner in his small lodge had consisted, yet again, of vegetable fried rice.

Lee, 47, had been hiking for six days ...

They don't call it Trashmandu for nothing.

In Nepal's capital city of Kathmandu, garbage is pretty much everywhere. It's stuffed in plastic bags and dropped in drainage ditches. It's piled high in empty lots, on the roadside and on the edges of the city's sewage-filled rivers.

It is thrown out ...

Nepal, a country of 25 million, is struggling out of poverty after a decadelong civil war. Squabbling politicians have paralyzed government, and high unemployment means 1,500 youth leave every day for jobs in Malaysia and the Middle East.

So, as the United Nations International Day of Happiness dawns, Nepalis ...

Maybe you read the story about the Turkish plane that crash-landed on March 4 in Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA), skidding off the runway and plowing its nose into the rain-soaked grass.

Fortunately, no one was injured. Unfortunately, Nepal didn't know quite what to do about the Airbus 330 ...

Turkish Airlines has the first slot for landing at the Kathmandu airport, just after 6 a.m. In winter, this often means long hours circling over the hills south of the Kathmandu Valley and waiting for dense fog to lift. Wednesday wasn't any different. About 6 a.m. local time, Flight TK726 ...

What would you do if you lived in a city where you faced the world's greatest risk of dying in a catastrophic earthquake?

I like to believe that I'm prepared. I have water, blankets, sleeping bags, a tent, dry food, a crow bar, shovel, charcoal and "go-bags" for each ...

The phone calls start in early morning. They are strikingly similar.

"There is an injured dog on the street. Can you take care of it?"

Ram Nagarkoti, the 31-year-old ambulance driver at the Kathmandu Animal Treatment Centre (KAT Centre), often spends his days zigzagging through traffic, waving at police ...

Katmandu is giving itself a facelift.

Tomorrow is the opening of the 18^th summit meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. Seven regional heads of state, whose countries are home to large numbers of the world's poorest and hungriest people, are arriving in the city for two ...

Like a weather vane pointing east, a goat stands motionless on top of a Buddhist temple. Others slumber interlaced on its main pedestal. And one or two nibble orange flower petals a devotee left as an offering on the lap of a stone Ganesh. Without hesitation, they walk into ...

In early October, blizzard conditions in Nepal killed more than 16 foreign trekkers and 17 locals, most of them lightly-dressed porters who were carrying the trekkers' gear. The tragedy calls attention to the dangers of trekking — and the risky life of local porters.

At 42, Rane Tamang knows the ...