Nepal earthquake: Migrants in mass exodus from Kathmandu

Suitcases and backpacks at the ready, they wait in weary crowds at the city's main junctions, surging forward whenever a bus or an empty truck approaches. Hundreds of thousands of Kathmandu residents are staging an exodus to their hometowns and villages following last week's deadly earthquake in central Nepal.

"I'm afraid there could be epidemics," says Kushal Timilsina, a 21-year-old computer science student who is waiting in a clump of people, most of them wearing face masks, trying to return home to Damak in the east of the country. It is mid-afternoon and he has been waiting since 9am for free buses promised by the government.

Hundreds of overloaded buses, some with more than a dozen surplus passengers perched precariously on the roof, have been snaking down the winding roads of the Kathmandu valley and heading for the relative safety of the lowlands.

The capital's shifting population of migrants - about half the area's population of more than 3m who are said to have arrived in the past 15 years - are seeking the comforts of home and relief from dozens of aftershocks following the earthquake that claimed over 5,000 lives in the Himalayan foothills.

"Even if we die at least now we can be with the family," said Nischal Magar, as he boarded a bus for Itahari in eastern Nepal with a brother just returned from a labourer's job in South Korea.

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The coalition government of Prime Minister Sushil Koirala has encouraged the exodus with the promise of free buses, calculating that in the aftermath of the quake it will be easier for people to find food and shelter in their home districts than in the sprawling and overcrowded metropolis of Kathmandu.

"It's a good ploy," says Joseph Silvanus, who heads Standard Chartered bank in Nepal, recalling that Kathmandu anyway becomes a "ghost town" twice at year during the major Hindu festivals as the migrant population returns en masse to families back home.

No major roads or bridges appear to have been blocked or destroyed by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake, and the airport is open. But the Kathmandu valley remains vulnerable to any disruption of the vital supply chains linking it by narrow roads to the south and to neighbouring India.

The UN estimates that 75,000 people have been displaced from their homes in the valley and are living in camps, while across central Nepal 1.4m are expected to need immediate food aid for the next three months. Nepal says 70,000 houses have been destroyed, and it is estimated that 530,000 homes have been damaged.

"Lots of people have left Kathmandu, which according to me is a good thing," says Binod Chaudhary, the Nepalese tycoon who says his company is setting up relief camps in affected districts. "It reduces the pressure."

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