By Waheed Khan

BALAKOT, Pakistan, Oct 8 (Reuters) - As a journalist covering cricket for the past 12 years, I'd seen little to prepare me for reporting from the heart of my country's worst natural disaster.

When I got the telephone call in Karachi on Saturday, Oct. 8, 2005, telling me to get to Islamabad as fast as possible, I had no idea of the scale of the catastrophe that had befallen Pakistan's North West Frontier Province and Kashmir.

Neither had anyone else. All communications were down and the roads were cut off.

Setting off, I saw the assignment as an exciting break from a sport I loved and had been lucky enough to make my career. I didn't realise the hell I was heading into.

Chief photographer Zahid Hussein and I were told to make our way to Mansehra district in the Frontier province. Another team had set off to Muzaffarabad in Kashmir, from where sketchy reports of devastation had begun to trickle in.

Driving to Mansehra, I remember thinking: "One or two days of reporting this and I should get back to prepare for the England series."

ARRIVING

We entered a darkened Mansehra town in heavy rain. There was no way to reach our ultimate destination, Balakot, that night because of landslides on the mountain road.

I visited Mansehra's government hospital many times over the next 10 days, and went back this year ahead of the quake anniversary, but my first encounter from that first night is the memory that stays with me.

We had seen an old man carry a girl through the gates of the hospital. We watched as she died moments later in his arms.

I sat with Fazal Elahi as he cried in the courtyard beside the body of his 14-year-old daughter and I heard his story.

Elahi had carried his daughter for 40 km (25 miles) from his village in Hillkot to reach the hospital.

Each time I think of it I'm reminded of the physical and psychological scars borne by the people who survived.

While Elahi told us of the massive damage and loss of life, scores more injured and grieving people poured into the damaged hospital pleading for help from staff struggling to cope.

Amid the mayhem, a woman screamed as she gave birth behind a hastily erected screen in one corner of the grounds.

The army, international relief agencies and NGOs only reached Mansehra in full strength the following day. That night the town's traumatised people had to fend for themselves.

RUBBLE

If any doubts remained about the magnitude of the disaster, they vanished at daybreak on Oct. 9.

We set off for Balakot before first light, and when we were stopped by the landslides we trekked over 8 km (5 miles) across a broken wooden bridge and roaring streams.

I counted more than 100 bodies as we made our way past scared and shocked people huddled besides their ruined homes.

Balakot town was flattened. We were to learn later that nowhere had suffered more intensive damage than this town of 40,000 people, where one in five died.

Nothing was more nightmarish than the sight at Shaheen Public School.

Women wailed as frantic parents and villagers used their hands, shovels and picks to reach children trapped beneath the rubble. I could hear their faint cries, begging to be rescued.

Aftershocks shaking whatever was left standing in Balakot added to the horror.

GOING BACK

Over the next 10 days I lost count of the bodies I saw lying on roads, in shops, outside schools and houses. The stench of dead people and animals hung in the air.

But I also saw examples of the goodness of human spirit and I see it again in Balakot a year later.

Revisiting, for the first anniversary assignment, I still hear stories filled with pain and uncertainty.

Balakot is again a town, at least in an economic sense if not a civic one. It sits right on a fault line, and the government plans to relocate it to a spot a few kilometres away.

Families are living in temporary or makeshift shelters made of tarpaulin tents or corrugated sheets.

Seeing the children's eagerness to learn as they attend classes in makeshift schools is a reason for optimism.

Yet there is a lot still to be done. Widows and orphans need support, families need better shelter and renewed livelihoods. Men who lost their families need a reason to carry on.

The challenges are immense but I know there is hope.

I still love cricket, and relish reporting it, but Oct. 8, 2005, changed things.

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