Brick by brick

It's eight in the morning on the 2559th anniversary of the Buddha's birth. The lower reaches of the hilltop temple of Swayambhunath in west Kathmandu, known to tourists as the Monkey Temple, are thick with devotees. But this year they won't be able to gaze upon the 13 tiered gold rings of the 5th-century stupa. While the main structure escaped unscathed in the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that shook Nepal on 25 April, many of the smaller shrines have been destroyed, and the site is off-limits. This doesn't deter the pilgrims; if anything, their prayers and prostrations seem more fervent than ever. These expressions of abiding faith in the wake of catastrophe may be confounding, but in Nepal, many believe their fates are inscribed on their foreheads. Natural disasters, even those that kill and maim tens of thousands and obliterate hundreds of thousands of homes, are not to be blamed on the gods.

Before the enormity of the human devastation became apparent, the days following the earthquake were dominated by news of the destruction of iconic monuments in the Kathmandu Valley's seven UNESCO Monument Zones. As aftershocks rippled through the temporary encampments that filled the city's shrinking open spaces, thousands thronged Kathmandu's Basantapur Square to gawk at the piles of rubble that once were temples.