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KATHMANDU, Nepal — After spending eight days living in a tent in this city's Tudikhel Park, Bikesh Karki and his family decided, like tens of thousands of others, to pack up and go home.

"We're going to have a party tonight," said Bikesh, 17, who was carrying two trash bags full of belongings. "Nothing too big. Just a nice dinner with family."

A week after the most severe earthquake in more than 80 years, Kathmandu returned to a semblance of normalcy Saturday as a growing number of its residents packed up tents, checked out of hospitals, and got ready for the workweek, which starts Sunday.

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Many shops that survived the quake were open; electricity was largely restored; and with truck traffic moving, hotel restaurants were once again serving fresh fruit. Lines disappeared from gas stations.

The weather even returned to normal after rains and chilly temperatures that made life especially miserable for survivors gave way to the season's usual warmth and brilliant sunshine.

While Kathmandu has managed a remarkable turnaround over the past week, a full recovery in impoverished Nepal is expected to take billions of dollars and years of work, especially in the hard-hit hinterlands. Rather than folding up their tents, Nepalis in those remote villages are still trying to acquire them to temporarily replace tens of thousands of destroyed homes.

"We are struggling to provide tents as we have to purchase them from abroad," said Laxmi Prasad Dhakal, a Home Ministry spokesman.

The relatively quick move toward recovery in Kathmandu, the capital, was possible in part because the city's airport was able to stay open through most of the crisis. Relief supplies poured in from abroad; huge pallets have been piled around runways and airport buildings. Stormy weather, poor infrastructure, and bureaucratic roadblocks, however, have prevented supplies from rapidly reaching rural areas.

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Even so, the cleanup of many dozens of toppled buildings in Kathmandu and the search for new housing will take time. But many residents seemed determined to at least begin to move on. By Saturday, the city's always unruly traffic wended around the various detours of piles of bricks and timber from shattered buildings.

A week ago, nearly 150,000 people were living in hastily constructed tents in Tudikhel Park; that number had dropped to 10,000 by Saturday, according to Dal Bahadur Khatri, the head constable for the area. Teenagers were once again kicking soccer balls around grassy areas now dotted with blackened circles where thousands of families had been cooking meals.

Bikesh, the 17-year-old heading home, said he was looking forward to watching a bit of TV and trying to find his cat, which had given birth just before the earthquake. "I just want to have my stuff," he said.

The fear of more earthquakes has not left this city, with many admitting that nightly aftershocks — always accompanied by a symphony of howls from thousands of stray dogs — still robbed them of sleep. But Tara Magar, 19, said Saturday she was moving home because she could not stand the smell of the park's toilets anymore.

"I'm still scared, and our house still has cracks all over it," she said, "but we don't want to stay here any longer."

At nearby Bir Hospital, a 660-bed facility that was overrun with hundreds of trauma patients in the hours after the earthquake, doctors said just 40 new patients sought attention Saturday, only 20 of whom had serious medical problems.

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"We're almost back to normal operations," said Dr. Swoyam Pandit, the hospital director. The hospital, a sprawling complex of buildings, suffered some structural damage to its oldest sections. But Pandit said he expected that to be fixed soon. And the hospital's 150 administrative staff members, many of whom left the city for their home villages over the past week, are being asked to return to work Sunday, he said.

"I expect nearly all of them will be back," Pandit said.

The nationwide death toll on Saturday stood at more than 6,600, though many fear it will keep rising as more villages are reached.

In Thamel, a haven in Kathmandu for backpackers, trekking and curio shops were mostly open, although the usual bustling crowd of young and tattooed tourists was largely absent. In their stead, crews of burly, tired-looking rescue workers wandered through after hopes of finding anyone alive in the rubble had largely disappeared.

At the 17-room Hotel Traveler's Home, only three guests were checked in, said Damodar Dhaka, the co-owner.

"This is normally our high season, and before the earthquake business was fantastic," Dhaka said.