JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — More than two weeks after floods and landslides tore through the Himalayan border region between Nepal and Tibet, relatives of a Sydney family with roots in Jaffna say they have had no word from any of its four members and are beginning to accept that they may not have survived.
Chandrasekaran Muralitharan, 47, his wife, Shylaja Muralitharan, 42, and their sons, Ashwin, 14, and Aarush, 11, were traveling to Mount Kailash in Tibet, one of the holiest sites in Hinduism, when the disaster struck on the morning of Aug. 26. They were part of a group organized by Himalayan Glacier Adventures, a tour operator based in the United States, that included 15 Australians. The group was believed to be near Rasuwagadhi, a crossing point on the border between Nepal and China.
There has been no confirmed sighting of the family, and no message from any of them, since that morning.
"Fourteen days have passed without any contact from them," Kovai Nanthan, a relative of Mr. Muralitharan's in Sri Lanka, wrote on Thursday in a Tamil-language account of the family's ordeal. "As the boundaries of hope and waiting have narrowed, negative thoughts increasingly dominate our minds."
The family is among 35 Australians still unaccounted for, according to the Australian government, which said this week that 34 of them had been on religious pilgrimages to Mount Kailash.
Ms. Muralitharan's younger sister, Vaishnavi, who has asked news organizations not to publish her surname, told Australian media that she last spoke with Mr. Muralitharan at about 6:45 a.m. Nepal time on Aug. 26. The family was getting ready for breakfast and planned to travel to the border to clear immigration before crossing into Tibet. The flood struck within the hour.
In the days that followed, Vaishnavi urged the Australian government not to scale back the search. "We don't want the searching to stop," she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Mr. Nanthan said on Wednesday that the family had received no information on the whereabouts of the four, despite searches by Nepali authorities and international teams.
Both parents have deep roots in Jaffna, and the family's disappearance has been followed closely here.
Mr. Muralitharan is the son of Chandrasekaran and Pushpam and the grandson of Arumugam and Kanagamma of Kopay North. He attended St. Patrick's College in Jaffna and earned an engineering degree from the University of Moratuwa before settling in Australia, where he worked as a geotechnical engineer for a private company.
Shylaja is the daughter of Ambalavanar Umasankar, a lawyer from Erlalai, and Pathmaranjini, of Nallur, a former dance lecturer at the University of Jaffna. She attended Chundikuli Girls' College in Jaffna, earned a commerce degree from the University of Sydney and worked as a manager at a private bank in Sydney.
Their sons are both in school.
The family lived in northwestern Sydney. Relatives told Australian media that the four had prepared for the physically demanding pilgrimage together, taking training walks and changing their diets before the trip. Vaishnavi said her sister had wanted to visit Mount Kailash since childhood.
The mountain, in southwestern Tibet, is revered by Hindus as the abode of the god Shiva and is also sacred to Buddhists, Jains and followers of the Bon religion. Thousands of pilgrims make the difficult journey to it each year.
The floods of Aug. 26 killed at least 1,399 people in Nepal and Tibet, and more than 5,400 remain missing, including about 800 foreigners, according to figures reported on Tuesday by SBS, the Australian public broadcaster. Satellite imagery indicated that the flooding was likely set off when a large mass of glacial ice broke away and fell into a river, the ABC reported. Roads, bridges and communications lines were destroyed, and parts of the border region remain cut off, making it difficult to establish what happened to foreign pilgrims traveling through the area.
Australia has sent crisis-response staff, consular officers and Australian Federal Police officers to Nepal and has offered search-and-rescue assistance. The government has also pledged humanitarian aid for affected communities.
Eight Australians who were initially reported missing have since been found alive. The number of missing Australians stood at 43 on Aug. 31. The most recent person was confirmed safe on Tuesday, bringing the figure to 35.
None of those developments has brought news of the Muralitharans.
On Wednesday, Anne Aly, Australia's assistant minister for international development, told Parliament that the government was continuing to work with local authorities to find those still missing. "For the families and friends of those remaining Australians, every hour without news is excruciating," she said.
Nepali authorities have said search-and-rescue operations will continue despite worsening conditions.
In his account, Mr. Nanthan noted that the family had set out for a mountain that devotees regard as Shiva's dwelling place on earth. After two weeks without word, he wrote, relatives had begun to wonder whether fate had taken them "to become one with Shiva."
"Fate is powerful," he wrote. "For our family, fate has been cruel."
