Or the day we were shaken…

That day didn’t even start like any other one. The previous day, we decided to stay one more night at the little paradise. So today, no trekking, just chilling and enjoying. Oh well, it’s raining this morning so just sleeping and having tea and chilling out in Ekaterina’s room. Hard life!

Quater to noon, the rain has stopped and the sun starts showing up. We decide to head up to the dining hall and read there while waiting for lunch. So here we are, 3 foreign girls from 3 different countries quietly sitting in the dinning hall.

12:00 P.M. the dinning hall starts shaking. Ekaterina and I look up from our books and at each other wondering what sort of train is riding nearby the dinning hall when Anna, the Californian girl, awakes our awareness : “isn’t it an earthquake”? what shall we do?”

We look around and decide to go out. As if in a dream, still bewildered by what is happening, we gently (yes gently, like for the emergency exit exercises back home) walk to the door and go out to see what is happening and how the locals react. And what we see is not reassuring at all : the Nepalese look so afraid and lost we understand this is no mere usual earthquake. Under our feet, the ground is actually moving in waves like water… but it is earth, it’s not normal for it to move like that.

I look at the old lady on the other side of the garden, she holds a baby in her arms and in a desperate attempt of finding security, she is holding a tree in one arm. Is it really safer to hold on to a tree? If the combination of rain and earthquake ends up in a landslide on the hill we are standing on, will a tree prevent us from sliding or will it slide with us anyway?

That’s when I started looking at the ground : if there’s a landslide, how will it happen? Will we see the earth opening under our feet like in a bad end of the world movie?

Theses where probably the longest and scariest 2 minutes of my life.

But then, 2 minutes later, it was over. Dogs had stopped barking, the earth was standing still, as if nothing had happened. The one storie buildings where untouched. We only had lost the internet connection and the electricity but since it is a self sufficient paradise, electricity was quick to come back.

Once we were sure everyone and everything was OK, we went back to the dinning hall and resumed to our reading. But then, for me, impossible to concentrate on my book : where does this crazy buzzing sound comes from? There’s no bug in the room…. Then, the dogs start barking again, staying put and barking around, like lost animals and the room start shaking again, so here we go again, out of the room. This time it lasted only 30 seconds, we are quickly back to the dinning hall and I take time to check out the buzzing sound: the beehive is next to the dinning hall and quite shaken by the earthquake.

A few small aftershoks come after lunch, each time, we look at the dogs : as long as they don’t look afraid, we won’t rush out. Better, we are going back to our room to take a nap. That’s where I saw the first sign of what had happened : some dust had fallen from the ceiling on to my bed.

Before getting to sleep, Anna receives a text message from her husband : it was a 7.8 earthquake and it’s all over the news in the US. Ok, so it was a big one… I should warn my family I’m fine. But… my phone has no connection… and Anna’s phone can’t reach France… I end up using Anna’s phone to text my cousin in the US and ask her to text my family.

2 hours latter, I wasn’t able to sleep so I left Anna in the room and went outside to chill out with a couple of newcomers when Anna comes still sleepy to me, her phone in her hand : “Charlotte, I think it’s your father”

What?

For sure, it’s my father I hear over the phone, all worried for me :

• Where are you?
• In a nice little place named Little Paradise.
• That I know, but how are you?
• I’m fine, thanks, I told you in the text message to my cousin : no connection but no arm either. I’m enjoying some tea with other people under the afternoon sun.

At that time, we still hadn’t realized yet what had really happened. It was so far from anything we could conceive. The couple who had arrived was walking when the earthquake happened and they only noticed how nice it was to see all the birds in the sky. The 2 guys who arrived latter that day only noticed the kitchen was upside down when they stopped at a guesthouse.

That night, we went to bed as usual, with little worries since we knew we could count on the dogs to bark if anything bad was happening.