The images of a mud-covered elderly woman being carried to safety in the scoop of a digger have come to symbolise extraordinary accounts of survival in Nepal’s devastating flash floods.

The woman, 97-year-old Guna Maya Bohara, was pulled alive from the rubble of her care home after a four-hour rescue operation.

Her doctors say she is recovering in hospital, while her great-nephew Dipak told BBC Nepali that she looked like “a warrior” who had returned victorious from battle.

Hers is one of the many stories of survival from flood-ravaged areas of Nepal, where people fled collapsing settlements, sought refuge on hillsides and spent nights stranded in forests before rescuers could reach them.

The death toll from the devastating flash floods in Nepal crossed 600 on Saturday, as rescue teams continued search and relief operations in a race against time, with more than 2,400 still missing.

For Raju Budhathoki, a customs agent in Timure, a town on the Nepa...