That morning, worries started to strike us: Anna’s husband had updated us with the casualties figures. But still, it’s just numbers, how can you visualize that?

Then, during breakfast, a French guy told us his parents called him in the middle of the night, apparently it was on the French evening news that the government had opened a crisis cellule for all the French people in Nepal… crisis cellule? Was it that bad or just French people seeing the worst of everything?

Then, Nepalese people told us that some hundreds years old temples had been destroyed. Was it the ones I’ve visited?

Then, one Nepalese asked about our phone batteries : there had been solar waves during the night and every phone that was on during the waves is now out of service. And it appears to be true… As if an earthquake wasn’t enough for one day…

So many bad news… while that day had started quite nicely : we had decided to wake up at 5 to prepare tea for Dinesh and Agni in order to thank them for those 10 wonderful days. And sure enough, at 5 A.M. exactly a strong aftershock stroke us, shaking our beds for 10 seconds as if the earth thought our alarm clocks wouldn’t be enough…

I think that at that time, what stroke us the most was the punctuality of the strikes.

After that weird breakfast, we started heading back to Pokhara. The dog from the guesthouse escorted us to safety through the first lands and until he felt sure no other neighbor’s dog would bother us. We felt safe… And quite good under the shy sun of that morning.

A couple of hours latter, we reach the village where we can take a jeep to go back to Pokhara. Right now, our only worries are to get the jeep out of the mud…

That was before we reach a real city, before we reach newspapers and T.Vs…

On the road, we can see some people hanging out outside houses but no building and no infrastructure looks really badly broken. And the road is as good as a gravel road can be. Even Pokhara seems untouched.

Until we reach the first restaurant where we are supposed to have lunch : it is closed because the cooks had to go back in the mountains to help their families rebuilding their homes.

And then came the second restaurant where we found newspapers and TV and internet…

A true shock. Although Anna and I can’t understand any written or spoken Nepalese, we can understand the images. And Dinesh and Agni translate a lot for us. Dinesh’s village was totally destroyed. The temples I’ve visited not so long ago don’t exist anymore. People are lost and worried and nobody expects the government to help. But still, Agni shows us a picture of his family, back in Katmandu, they are sitting outside a no longer standing house. And they are smiling anyway…. Oh strong Nepalese people! How I admire you all.

Next thing we do is logging in on the internet : e-mails from friends and family trying to reach us, Facebook messages to ask if we are safe. We feel overwhelmed with all those attentions. Never did we expect to have so many support after that big shake.

I’ve had deep talks with a friend recently about human nature. That friend was saying how sad it was that human nature was so mean. I disagreed. I do not believe human nature is mean, I believe it is good. Not perfect, everyone isn’t good enough to be some sort of Buddha, everyone doesn’t have enough empathy to understand others and do what is best for everyone, everyone doesn’t get that what they do sometimes is mean to some people… but everyone is basically good.

Either that or I am really lucky because I’ve always met good people and I feel surrounded by good people.