A British man has spoken about the desperate search for his wife, who went missing after catastrophic flash floods struck her village in Nepal last week.

A phone call before the disaster

Pramod Poudel, 34, from East Sussex, last spoke to his 25-year-old wife Sumitra by phone at 4:15pm on 26 August, just hours before a glacial collapse near the Chinese border triggered a devastating surge of mud, water, and ice through the region. Sumitra had been staying with Poudel's family in Sole, a rural village that was almost entirely destroyed by the flooding.

Poudel has said Sumitra's final words to him during that call were simply asking how he was and telling him she loved him. He hasn't been able to reach her since.

A journey to search for family

Poudel has since travelled to Nepal to search for Sumitra, along with his 52-year-old mother Tulisa, 31-year-old brother Pardip, and 64-year-old uncle Madhav. He's said roughly 90% of homes and residents in the village were swept away by the flood, and while some people have claimed to have seen his brother and mother, he hasn't been able to confirm whether that's accurate. A GoFundMe has been set up to support him during the search.

The scale of the disaster

The official death toll in Nepal has now passed 700, with more than 2,400 people still unaccounted for. In neighbouring Tibet, authorities have confirmed 546 people missing, including 18 Americans and 15 British citizens. Across the wider region, 33 British nationals remain missing, including a 13-year-old girl, a 14-year-old boy, an 18-year-old student, a nurse, and a Hindu priest who had been leading a tour group.

Recovery efforts are estimated to cost around $5 billion, with drone surveillance now monitoring newly formed high-altitude water pools that could pose further flood risk. The Red Cross estimates around 90,000 people have been severely affected by the disaster overall.

Other families waiting for news

Among those still missing is Geetha Reddy, a mother of two from London. Her husband, Vikram Kolagatla, has described the strain on their two young daughters as they wait for news, saying the girls still believe their mother is simply stuck somewhere without phone signal and will come home.