Husband Hopes Missing Wife Alive After Himalayan Flash Floods

It was meant to be the trip of a lifetime.

Reshma Patel had always dreamed of doing a two-week pilgrimage to the Mount Kailash Mansarovar region in the Himalayas.

Rather than taking a helicopter tour, she was determined to do the trip on foot "before getting too old".

Her husband of nearly 25 years, Bhavin Patel, agreed to stay home in Newcastle to look after their two school-age children while she was gone.

But during Ms Patel's pilgrimage on August 26, a devastating torrent of water swept through the Nepal–Tibet border region.

A month on from the flash floods, more than 1,400 people have died and more than 5,500 people remain unaccounted-for, including Ms Patel and 33 other Australians.

Mr Patel is calling for more to be done, while refusing to give up on the possibility that his wife is alive.

"I still have hope," he said.

A difficult time for families

Mr Patel said he had been receiving daily updates from the Australian government, but that had stopped.

In a statement, a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) spokesperson said the Australian government held grave concerns for the 34 Australians still missing.

"We recognise this is a deeply distressing period for families and loved ones," they said.

"The Australian government remains committed to supporting their welfare and ensuring they receive accurate and timely information."

The day after the disaster, Mr Patel travelled to Nepal to look for Ms Patel and the Isha Foundation tour group she was with.

He believes they are most likely to be in a remote area on the Tibetan side of the border.

With others, he hired a helicopter to look at the area from above and observed places in the Tibetan hills he believes it would be possible to survive.

The exact location of the tour group when the flood hit is uncertain, despite an early report that the group may have been inside the immigration office on the Tibetan side of the border.

Mr Patel hopes that his wife and others may be in a safe place, simply undiscovered given the scale of the disaster and complex geography.

At this stage, neither Nepal nor China has confirmed that any Australians are among the dead.

More help needed

Last week at the UN General Assembly in New York, Nepal Prime Minister Balendra Shah called for urgent funds to help his country rebuild following the crisis.

The Nepal government's response has also been in the spotlight, as offers of assistance from countries including China, the US and India were initially declined before being later accepted.

Mr Patel said he planned to return to Tibet and keep searching when it was possible to access the region on the ground.

"We strongly believe that she would be somewhere in Tibet," Mr Patel said.

He said there was more the international community could do to collectively urge the Nepali and Chinese governments to accept more help and keep searching for the thousands of people unaccounted-for.

"Overseas countries want to help, but that government will not let them do it," he said.

"All of the countries … push the Nepal government, the Chinese government, maybe they can do something."