Kevin is currently in Nepal. Neighbouring North India has had an earthquake causing damage near to where he is. He is unharmed and this is the e-mail he's sent:
Thanks for your prayers.
For me it was quite alarming at first as we didn't know whether there was more to come, and having spent 10 days inspecting the poor quality of buildings in Kathmandu I was concious that they could be easily toppled. Then it became quite fascinating from a geographical perspecetive, and I enjoyed the challenge of navigating our walk back through the city in almost total darkness and finding our guesthouse. Some of our team were more a lot more shaken.
As we began to pick up news we realised the earthquake epicentre was about 170 miles away in North India and that there has been widespread damage and sadly about 50 dead so far. In Kathmandu there has been some property damage, and a few deaths - 3 of which occurred when part of the compound wall of the British Embassy collapsed onto a motorcycle. Here the motor cycle is a very common means of transport and sometimes the whole family will ride on ONE. Sadly in this incident it was a father and young daughter who were killed.
We decided to go to bed on Sunday night prepared to evaccuate with an emergency bag packed which was a bit unnerving but we did manage to sleep.
Normal life has resumed yesterday and we went out of the city for the first time visiting a medieval palace and a hilltop village with views through the cloud at 7500 ft.
I have packed my bags for the next stage, and having been in touch with the trekking people am expecting to fly to Pokhara tomorrow. I am just a bit wary of landslides (!) as there has been some very heavy rain since the earthquake. If there are any problems then I can stay in the hotel at Pokhara or back in Kathmandu, and the BMS people will let me keep the communal mobile phone we have been using on our trip for a few more days so I can contact them if there are any problems.
