Lapa (Nepal): As the dust settled from Nepal’s massive earthquake over two years ago, a fresh humanitarian crisis was just beginning: supply lines to remote communities had been destroyed, and villagers were starving.
Without these trails used by porters and mules to ferry in goods, more than one million people living in isolated villages in central Nepal were desperately short on food.
What staples did manage to creep along these damaged lifelines to local markets quickly skyrocketed in price.
“The cost of those items once they get there becomes prohibitive, especially nutritious food,” said Pippa Bradford, head of the World Food Programme in Nepal, of the areas worst-hit by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake.
In the months following the disaster in April 2015 food supplies to these remote areas, already so limited before the disaster that many children suffered from stunting, all but dried up.
Mules couldn’t travel on the damaged paths, meaning all goods had to be carried precariously on the backs of porters. Journeys that took one or two days doubled overnight.