PURCHASING her flight ticket back to Nepal, Sonica Ojha said she had been reflecting on everything she had missed over the years.
She’s built a life in Australia and the Central West, and hasn’t returned home since 2018.
Yet her deepest connections remained rooted in Nepal: her grandmother, extended family, the river where she played with her siblings, and the festivals she grew up celebrating.
With her trip booked for 1 October, Ms Ojha had been looking forward to a long-overdue break, celebrating her and her father’s birthdays and taking her parents on a holiday.
Instead, she is preparing to return to a homeland where many of her childhood memories have been shattered by catastrophic flooding.
“I can’t celebrate my birthday,” she said.
“When so many people are missing their loved ones. There are no bodies to do funerals. There’s only a hand, leg, or you found like a finger. Imagine this, how can I celebrate?”
Ms Ojha spent school holidays at her grandmother’s home in Nuwakot in Nepal’s Bagmati region, one of the communities severely affected by the late-August floods.
Ms Ohja said watching the disaster unfold on social media was deeply personal.
The flooded streets, markets and homes appearing in videos were places she said were all familiar to her.
Many of the people posting about the disaster were part of her own social circle.
While at work, videos began appearing on her feed.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God. Is this real or AI or something?’” she said.
Unable to reach her grandmother due to downed phone lines and power outages, Ms Ojha spent days gathering news of her family online.
She eventually contacted her cousin, a government hospital healthcare worker in the flooded region, who shared heartbreaking news.
Her cousin was searching through mud and wreckage for her best friend, with whom she had shared almost everything.
Despite Ms Ojha urging her to stay safe amid rising waters, her cousin refused to stop looking.
Though grateful most of her family survived, Ms Ojha lost a cousin, and an aunt barely escaped seconds before floodwaters swallowed her three-storey home.
For many others, recovering loved ones proved impossible.
Ms Ojha witnessed videos of families making wooden effigies to perform funeral rites when bodies could not be found.
“I’ve never seen such things before,” she said. “Imagine you should be thankful for finding a body now.”
The plight of children left without parents has affected her particularly deeply.
She said she has seen videos of children suddenly left to care for younger siblings, including one young boy trying to look after his family.
“My heart breaks so much,” she said. “How can you explain that? How are you going to grow now?”
The devastation has become painfully intertwined with Ms Ojha’s own childhood memories, where she remembers school holidays at her grandmother’s house, playing near the river with her siblings and friends despite her grandmother’s warnings.
“When we were little we used to go there in the river,” she said. “My grandmother always said, ‘Please, please, do not go on the river.’”
But she said the river was too beautiful to resist.
She remembers camping trips, waterfalls, cooking outdoors and dancing, as well as the sadness of returning to Kathmandu.
“We always felt so bad going back to Kathmandu,” she said. “Our hearts would just sink.”
Now, those same places are appearing in images of destruction.
A local road she had been particularly excited to see on her October visit had only recently been paved after decades as a rough dirt track.
“In 30 years, finally they built the road where we wanted to drive a scooter,” she said. “And now it’s gone.”
Ms Ojha has never organised a relief campaign before and does not consider herself experienced in humanitarian work.
But after spending several days in shock, she realised she had to act.
“I was in quite a shock for a couple of days,” she said. “But then I thought, wait, hold on. It doesn’t matter. What matters is you need to go and ask for help.”
She is now preparing to travel to Nepal in October, while contributing her own money and working out how to transport practical supplies from Australia.
She hopes to take items such as torches, clothing and other essentials to communities where power and basic services remain disrupted.
Longer term, she wants to help children with school supplies so they can return to learning. But for now, she said, survival comes first.
“First they need to live,” she said. “They need proper food. They need proper water.”
Shelter is another major concern, particularly for people who have lost their homes and have nowhere safe to sleep.
Even Ms Ojha’s journey to see her grandmother is uncertain. Her grandmother lives across the river from where road access ends, and Ms Ojha does not know how she will get there.
She has ruled out taking a helicopter, believing emergency aircraft should remain available for relief operations.
“I really wanted to visit my grandmother,” she said. “That’s why I said this time I’m definitely going home.”
Her father had also been looking forward to the trip. Ms Ojha and her brother had planned to buy him a motorcycle for his birthday, but he no longer wants a gift.
“He doesn’t want anything for his birthday,” she said. “He’s trying to donate as much as he can.”
For now, Ms Ojha is focused on doing what she can: contributing her own resources, gathering supplies and encouraging others to help.
“I’m not that rich as well to do everything,” she said. “I’m just trying my best to personally do whatever I can.”
Ms Ojha is directing donations to the official Nepalese Government appeal, rather than collecting money herself, to ensure funds are handled transparently.
Donations can be made directly to the Prime Minister Disaster Relief Fund – Government of Nepal at pmdrf.nchl.com.np
She said even small donations from Australians can make a meaningful difference because of the exchange rate.
“$5 is nothing here. Everyone can have a coffee for $5,” she said. “But if you send $5, that’s a huge help.”