Monday is the 13th day since the flooding that has killed 1384 people in Nepal and Tibet and left some 5000 missing including 36 Australians, according to Nepal's disaster management agency.
In Hindu-dominated Nepal, mourning periods last 13 days, in which close family members stay home and relatives visit to pay respect. On the final or 13th day, rituals are held to pray for the departed souls.
Several people whose family members are still missing have performed symbolic funerals with mourning rituals. In Hindu tradition, cremation is an important final rite, and for some families, performing the ceremony even without the bodies of their loved ones provides a sense of spiritual release.
In Kathmandu, family members gathered near the offices of the prime minister and key ministries to demand the government speed up the search and rescue for the hundreds of people who were working on hydropower plants and were either swept by the rushing Bhotekhoshi river buried by the debris.
Rescuers pulled out a Chinese man on Saturday from a power plant, and two Nepalese workers were rescued from the plant on Friday.
Rescue efforts have increasingly focused on 12 hydropower projects, where about 900 workers are missing and roughly 500 are believed to be trapped in various tunnels, authorities said. Specialised rescue teams from India, China, South Korea and the United States have been searching through debris, damaged structures and tunnels at the projects, hoping to find survivors.
Many are still believed to be trapped in tunnels and shafts at the facilities.
Hundreds of bodies have been swept onto the banks of rivers far from the ravaged Rasuwa district.
In Chitwan, hundreds of kilometres away, several rounds of mass burials have taken place for unidentified and badly decomposed bodies.
Even as hope is beginning to fade, Nepal authorities continue their effort to look for people stuck in tunnels and under the thick deposits of mud that have hardened over buildings.
President Ram Chandra Paudel, the ceremonial head of state, was touring flood-hit areas on Monday and would survey damage caused by the disaster, his aide said.
"There are no government programs organised as the rescue and search operation is still going on in the flood-hit areas," Phanindra Paudel of the National Emergency Operation Centre (NEOC) told Reuters.
Security personnel at the district jail in Nuwakot, one of the two worst affected districts, saved 923 prisoners by shifting them to a building in a higher location before flood waters entered their low-lying building, Prime Minister Balendra Shah said in a social media post.
Authorities also captured 50 prisoners who had broken the prison wall and gates as flooding began, and had fled barely 100m, Shah said.
with Reuters and AP
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