Desperate families crowd around a small army centre in Nuwakot, Nepal, tracing their fingers through hundreds of names taped up on a wall, hoping to find their loved ones listed as survivors.
Nepali photographer and documentary filmmaker Rasik Maharjan was there to film it, witnessing their "hands trembling" as they scoured the lists waiting for good news.
Rasik told the ABC that people have been waiting by the helipads day and night for the army and rescue teams to arrive.
"Every time a helicopter approaches, everyone looks up. There is a quiet hope that the next person coming through the door might be someone they have been waiting for," he said.
"It is an exhausting kind of waiting."
The weight of the tragedy first hit Rasik when he couldn't find the name of one of his missing school friends on the lists.
Knowing someone who was caught up in the wreckage on a personal level "changes everything", he said.
"It stops being just a story you are covering and turns into an agonising, personal nightmare every time I look at the boards or the faces around the camp."
Whole villages wiped out 'terrifying' to witness
Originally based in Kathmandu, Rasik travelled 60 kilometres west to Nuwakot to document the Nepal-Tibet flood devastation.
Nuwakot is a town located on the bank of the Trishuli and Tadi Rivers, where bordering villages have been devastated by catastrophic flash flooding.
He remembered when he first heard about the flooding while sipping his morning coffee on August 26, thinking it would be like previous disasters he'd covered.
But as he started watching videos of "whole villages wiped out and seeing so many people missing", he said he realised how bad things were getting, and he and his friend got on their scooters and travelled towards the devastation.
"It didn't fully hit me until we were on the road," he said.
"It looked terrifying."
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High-resolution satellite imagery has shown structures and settlements wiped off the map as glacial waters ripped through neighbourhoods.
The Nepal-Tibet floods have killed at least 1,252 people and thousands are still missing, including 38 Australians
In some of the hardest hit areas, bodies of those killed by a devastating flood have been found more than 100 kilometres downstream.
'The camera became a kind of shield'
When Rasik arrived, he said the atmosphere in Nuwakot was "heavy" with a combination of despair and "a quiet, suffocating tension".
Being behind the camera and watching people lose their homes, belongings and loved ones made "the camera become a kind of shield".
By the sixth day in Nuwakot, the emotional toll he said he often pushed aside in order to keep documenting difficult moments started to seep through.
"I was standing there watching the water rise. I wanted to cry. I wanted to let everything out.
"But I couldn't.
"Not here. Not while people were still waiting for their loved ones."
As a photographer and documentary maker, he said it had been difficult to process what had happened to his country while still continuing to do his job effectively.
"People see the final photograph or video on their screens. They don't see the silence inside the vehicle on the long drive back," he said.
"You just want to put it down and use your hands to help carry someone to safety."
Documenting survival 'never just a job'
Over the past week, Rasik has heard extraordinary stories of survival.
A group of school children told him they had been swept away by floodwater and miraculously survived by scrambling to the banks just in time to run to safety.
That was one of several stories that had stuck with him already, and he's eager to capture more.
Rasik said being behind the camera to capture this devastating event was his way of helping, by showing people what's happening on the ground.
But at times, it hasn't been easy.
"There are moments when I ask myself: 'Why am I even doing this? Do I really need to capture this? Does the world really need to see this moment?' But then I remind myself why I am here," he said.
"This is what I can do.
"I may not be able to rescue someone or change what has already happened, but I can document it, make sure their story is seen.
