Believing she had been lost in Nepal's deadly floods, Chandika Kumari Shrestha's family began to mourn the elderly woman's death. Ten days later, rescuers found her alive in her destroyed home in the flattened village of Betravati, where she had been surviving in a small pocket of air, trapped between water and mud. "The four-story house was swept away by the floodwaters and left in the middle of a quicksand. As we were walking around it, we heard a voice saying, 'Save me,'" said police officer Mahendra Darnall.

In a 45-minute rescue operation on Saturday, Darnall and his team found Shrestha in a confined space and took her to a military hospital. “I was in touch with the family and they had begun their 11-day mourning period,” Darnall said.

Shrestha was among hundreds missing in Betrawati, an area that was one of the worst-hit by floods in Nepal, covered in white sediments that had compacted so much they resembled cement.

Rescuers continue to pull out dozens of bodies. The city's market and most of the residential buildings, some up to four stories high, were almost completely buried under the rubble left behind by a torrent that swept through the valley, part of a disaster that has killed more than 1,300 people across Nepal. Thousands remain missing.

Rescuers in helmets were seen digging with shovels, while others crawled through gaps in collapsed buildings, periodically whistling to attract the attention of anyone trapped and alive. Five days earlier, 24 bodies were found in a state of decomposition in the Betrawati market area, in a building that housed a small shop, Darnall said.

Eleven days after a glacier collapse triggered devastating floods, nearly 5,000 people are still missing. Hundreds of bodies have washed up on riverbanks in the devastated Rasuwa district. In Chitwan, hundreds of miles away, several mass burials of unidentified bodies have been carried out. As hope begins to fade, Nepalese authorities continue their efforts to find those trapped in tunnels and under a thick layer of mud that has hardened over buildings.

Since Friday, they have pulled three people out of the tunnels, including a Chinese national near the Trishuli River, where more than 900 people are believed to be trapped. Others, like Shrestha, have survived in unusual circumstances, including an 8-year-old boy who was also reunited with his mother.

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