Archive for the 'Nepal' Category

Last footfall in Nepal

Published
by
asianwindow
on March 20, 2010
in Nepal and Travel
. 0 Comments

In The New York Times, Ethan Todras-Whitehill on the Annapurna Circuit trek:

The path is wide, the terrain easy, yet I keep losing my footing, tripping over stones and my own feet because I can’t watch the trail. My eyes refuse to leave the white mountain filling the sky before me, the 24,786-foot Himalayan peak Annapurna III. It dominates the horizon as surely as a sunset does, but with millenniums-old glaciers ringing its crest like a necklace of diamonds, it feels more dazzling than even the brightest setting sun.

Just over a third of the way through the legendary 150-mile Annapurna Circuit trek, circling the Annapurna massif in Nepal, I have finally reached a height where no smaller mountains obscure my sightlines to the peaks. Ahead, four days on, lies Thorong La, a daunting 17,769-foot pass, the high point of the circuit and start of the trail back down. But I’ve already reached euphoria. Annapurna III is too everything — tall, close, imposing, beautiful — to be true.

Everyone who’s been to Nepal tells you the Himalayas are big. But nobody prepared me for the reality of breathing hard at altitudes already near those of some Rocky Mountain peaks, only to see a mountain rise another full height of the Rockies above me. More:

Nilam’s story

Published
by
asianwindow
on February 22, 2010
in Nepal
. 0 Comments

Kunda Dixit at Nepali Times:

Every once in a while, travelling through Nepal, you come across a sight so incongruous that you have to blink your eyes to believe it.

We were in Gaighat, there was some chukka jam or other, and there were no vehicles on the streets. Neighbourhood children were playing badminton on the dusty road. Suddenly, there was the deep reverberating sound of a heavy-duty motorcycle.

A woman, dressed in jeans and T-shirt was driving past in a 123 cc Enticer. Sitting behind her was another woman carrying a bag. They roared off in a cloud of dust and parked alongside a building down the road. I learnt that she was Najbul Khan Nilam with a colleague from a battered women’s shelter called Muldhar.

Nilam, 33, is an iconoclast. As a Muslim woman living in rural eastern Nepal and being an activist for women’s empowerment is not an easy thing to be. And it is her own personal history has brought her this far. From her childhood, Nilam bore the brunt of the triple discrimination of what women from her community have to put up with it from family, community and society. But there was something in her genes that made Nilam rebel. More:

China intensifies tug of war with India on Nepal

Published
by
asianwindow
on February 18, 2010
in China, India, Nepal and Tibet
. 0 Comments

Jim Yardley from Kathmandu in The New York Times:

For years, Nepal never bothered too much with policing its northern border with China. The Himalayas seemed a formidable-enough barrier, and Nepal’s political and economic attention was oriented south toward India. If Nepal was a mouse trapped between elephants, as the local saying went, the elephant that mattered most was India.

But last week a Nepalese government delegation visited Beijing on a trip that underscored, once again, how China’s newfound weight in the world is altering old geopolitical equations.

As Nepal’s home minister, Bhim Rawal, met with China’s top security officials, Chinese state media reported that the two countries had agreed to cooperate on border security, while Nepal restated its commitment to preventing any “anti-China” events on its side of the border. More:

Clock ticks for Nepal to settle its future

Published
by
asianwindow
on January 27, 2010
in Nepal and Politics
. 0 Comments

Jim Yardley from Kathmandu in The New York Times:

For anyone living in a country where reforming health care is regarded as an insurmountable challenge, consider the political calendar in the struggling Himalayan republic of Nepal. By May 28, or roughly four months off, the entire country must be reorganized.

First, a new constitution has to be drafted to reaffirm fundamental rights for Nepalese citizens, restructure the national government and create states in a country where none previously existed. The positions of president and prime minister (the king has been deposed) must be clarified: Should the country have a directly elected, powerful executive? Or should a parliamentary system prevail?

Then there is the army. Or armies. Two of them. One is the Nepalese Army. The other is the People’s Liberation Army controlled by the country’s Maoists. For a decade, the two sides fought a savage guerrilla war. Now the peace plan stemming from a 2006 accord calls for blending them together, except no one can agree how to do it, so both armies remain intact, resistant to civilian oversight and increasingly testy. More:

The next big quake?

Published
by
asianwindow
on January 23, 2010
in Nepal
. 0 Comments

Satellite image of Nepal. From geology.com

After Haiti’s devastating earthquake, there are five places that geologists worry could be the next big one. Among the five is Nepal. From Foreign Policy:

Fault line: Himalayan Frontal Thrust, Main Boundary Thrust, Main Central Thrust

Last big quake: 1988, Nepal-India border region

Reasons to worry: Just south of the Himalaya Range, and only 150 miles southwest of Mt. Everest, the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu is right on the border between the Indian and Eurasian plates. Despite there being no major earthquakes in the area in recent years, geologists warn that the numerous faults along the Himalayas put the Nepalese capital at risk of a massive seismic event.

Worse, Nepal’s earthquake preparedness is dismally low, thanks to poor construction methods and a rapidly increasing urban population. More:

Nepal’s rhinos and tigers and bears

Published
by
asianwindow
on January 13, 2010
in India, Nepal, Travel and Wildlife
. 0 Comments

From the Wall Street Journal:

Nepal is known for its Himalayan mountain trekking and India for its historic sites and teeming cities. But both countries offer inexpensive safaris in several national parks that, considering how chaotic life in Nepal and India can be in other respects, are surprisingly professional and well organized, though their ideas of protecting visitors may not be yours.

I didn’t think I was in Africa, where vast herds of many species surround you. But from the back of a Nepalese elephant I saw two crocodiles, a peacock, lots of deer and, most importantly, two rhinos. In the world of safaris, viewing a one-horned Indian rhinoceros is a real accomplishment. There are only about 2,500 left in the world, almost all of them in Chitwan and Kaziranga National Park in northeast India.

The rhinos seemingly had no fear of elephants; they let us get right next to them. The tourists climb a special mounting platform and sit on the elephant’s back, protected by wooden rails. The ride took us through beautiful forests, lakes and, appropriately, plains of 10-foot-high elephant grass. All-inclusive, the South African safari I took two years ago cost more than $500 a night, but in Nepal, there was no way I could have spent $500 in a week. More:

‘This is about my dignity but it’s also about Indian democracy’

Published
by
asianwindow
on January 10, 2010
in India and Nepal
. 0 Comments

On the night of December 6, 2009, Neetu Singh, a Nepalese citizen and final-year editing student at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, was picked up by the city police on charges of anti-national activity, taken to Mumbai and deported to Nepal the following day. The incident came to light only when The Indian Express first reported it on December 30. Neetu, who accuses her influential politician husband Amaresh Singh of engineering her deportation, says once she landed in Kathmandu, she was sent off to a town some 500 km away from the capital, where for days she lived in virtual house arrest, surrounded by policemen. With the policemen now gone, Neetu says she finally has some access to the outside world. In an exclusive interview with Yubaraj Ghimire, she recounts the events leading to her deportation and her subsequent ordeal.

Can you lead us through the events of your deportation?

It was around 10.30 at night on December 5. I had just finished saying my prayers before going to bed when I heard a knock on the door. I opened it to find two women, accompanied by the matron of my hostel. One of the policewomen, Anjali Khare from the Prabhat police station in Pune, said I would have to accompany them to the police station for some “verification” related to a case involving a certain Srinivas Rao.

Who is Srinivas Rao?

Some months ago, Fazilat Khan, who is in charge of security at FTII, had told me that some Srinivas Rao, who called himself a CBI personnel, was enquiring about my activities. When I heard that, I felt insecure and informed Kiran Moghe, the Maharashtra president of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA). She lodged a complaint with the Prabhat Police station on my behalf. I have never seen this Rao. More:

Yeti scalp

Published
by
asianwindow
on December 24, 2009
in Nepal
. 0 Comments

Originally published in The Guardian on 23 December 1960:

Sir Edmund Hillary and Mr Desmond Doig, who have been on a yeti-hunting expedition in Nepal, arrived in London by air yesterday with the scalp of what is believed in Khumjung village to be a yeti. With them was Khumjo Chumbi, village headman, who is guardian of the scalp.

Sir Edmund said he would rather withhold his theories until the scalp had been examined by a zoologist, and until French and American experts had completed tests of the hair. But unless “something turned up” concerning the scalp he did not believe in the existence “of a strange new animal.”

Khumjo Chumbi, however, was in no doubt about the scalp’s nature. He said he had heard a yeti crying three times in one day, and his children had seen one. More:

The Thangmi myth of origins

Published
by
asianwindow
on December 13, 2009
in Culture, Heritage, India, Nepal and Science
. 0 Comments

Dr Mark Turin in the Independent. Dr Turin is a linguistic anthropologist specialised in the Himalayas:

In the beginning, there was only water. The gods held a meeting to decide how to develop this vast expanse. First they created a type of small insect, but these insects couldn’t find a place to live since there was only water and no solid land. Consequently, the gods created fish which could live in the water. The insects took to living on the fins of the fish, which stuck far enough out of the water to allow the insects to breathe. The insects collected river grass and mixed it with mud in order to build dwellings on the fins of the fish in each of the four directions: south, west, north, and east.

Then a lotus flower arose spontaneously out of the water, with the god Vishnu seated in the middle. Out of the four directions of the lotus flower came an army of ants. The ants killed all of the fish-dwelling insects and destroyed their houses. The ants took the mud that the insects had used for their dwellings and left, gathering another species of grass as they went. They mixed this with the mud to construct new houses. Then the snake deities arose. It was still dark, so the sun was created. More:

Also in the Independent:

The beckoning silence: Why half of the world’s languages are in serious danger of dying out

In a small office room in the back of Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology – a place in which you almost expect Harrison Ford to walk around the corner at any moment, fedora on head, whip in hand – Turin looks over the contents of a box that arrived earlier in the morning from India. “[The receptionists] are quite used to getting these boxes now,” says the 36-year-old anthropologist, who is based at the university. Inside the box, which is covered in dozens of rupee postage stamps, are DVDs representing hours of chants, songs, poems and literature from a tiny Indian community that is desperate for its language to have a voice and be included in Turin’s venture.

For many of these communities, the oral tradition is at the heart of their culture. The stories they tell are creative works as well as communicative. Unlike the languages with celebrated written traditions, such as Sanskrit, Hebrew and Ancient Greek, few indigenous communities – from the Kallawaya tribe in Bolivia and the Maka in Paraguay to the Siberian language of Chulym, to India’s Arunachal Pradesh state Aka group and the Australian Aboriginal Amurdag community – have recorded their own languages or ever had them recorded. Until now. Turin launched the World Oral Literature Project earlier this year with an aim to document and make accessible endangered languages before they disappear without trace. More:

Click here for the Digital Himalaya Project and here for Himalayan Languages Project.

To see and hear recordings of the Thangmi in Nepal, click here.

Night and day

Published
by
asianwindow
on December 13, 2009
in Nepal
. 0 Comments

From the New York Times:

Pema Sherpa was opening the door of his rented yellow cab when the first blow came. A meat cleaver sliced open the back of his head and everything flashed white. The sun had not yet risen over the stretch of attached brick two-story houses on 62nd Street in Woodside, Queens; it was 5 a.m.

The cleaver came down again, this time on Mr. Sherpa’s chest, chopping through the layers of clothing he had donned against the early-morning chill. And again, slicing gashes into the rubber soles of his sneakers.

Bleeding on the pavement, Mr. Sherpa beheld his attacker: Debindra Chhantyal, his mild-mannered partner and countryman.

Each man had come from Nepal over the past decade, and attended the same taxi-training school in Jackson Heights. For a year, they had split the $1,400-per-week leasing fee on a yellow cab, Medallion 6M83, trading 12-hour shifts behind the wheel, seven days a week.

They seemed to be running side by side on a familiar treadmill. But their lives were actually mirror images of the immigrant experience in New York. More:

Gurkha soldiers in Afghanistan

Published
by
asianwindow
on December 13, 2009
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Nepal and Terrorism
. 0 Comments

From The Atlantic: The Gurkhas, who come mostly from the rugged hills of rural Nepal, have fought for the British in almost every war since 1815. Today, members of the Royal Gurkha Rifles are fighting in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. Video by Anup Khaple.

Nepal’s big game

Published
by
asianwindow
on December 11, 2009
in Nepal and Sport
. 0 Comments

Signs of change in the Himalayas as Copenhagen summit begins

Published
by
asianwindow
on December 7, 2009
in Climate change, Nepal and environment
. 0 Comments

John Vidal in Jomsom, Nepal in the Guardian:

On a 1,000-mile journey from the world’s greatest water source in the Himalayas, down rivers and then by train through Nepal, India and Bangladesh to the Bay of Bengal, we saw evidence of profound changes in weather patterns right across south Asia. Wherever we went we were told of significant temperature increases, and found governments slowly waking up to the threat of climate change and communities having to respond in any way they could to erratic rains and more serious droughts, floods and storms.

The starting point was Jomsom, a small town in the Kali Gandaki valley, 2,300 metres high and at the heart of the Annapurna range. This remote town, which saw its first ever car last year, has experienced no snowfall this winter. The temperature soared way above normal to 27C, and only fell to 13C, against a usual -4C, while the snowline has risen above 5,000 metres. The Gandaki river, fed by 1,200 glaciers, flows to the Ganges and on to Bangladesh.

“The temperature is higher, so there’s less snow, and less meltwater in spring to plant crops. People have no need to come down from the mountains in winter. They can grow chillies and peppers now,” said Sunil Pant, a Nepalese MP. “But now they cannot grow wheat or staple foods.” More:

Top adventure destinations for 2010

Published
by
asianwindow
on December 1, 2009
in Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet
. 0 Comments

Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan as a Himalayan group are among the top ten adventure destinations for 2010 picked Gadling.

Travelers to Nepal can choose a myriad of adventure options, including hiking the Annapurna Circuit, making a trek up to Everest Base Camp, located at 17,500 feet, or tackling a mountain such as Island Peak, which stands at 20,305 feet, but remains popular for non-technical mountaineers looking to add a Himalayan summit to their resume. As the birth place of adventure travel, Nepal knows how to cater to the backpackers, vagabonds, and modern day nomads, that pass through its borders.

[A section of the Puna Tsang Chhu river in Bhutan]

Kayakers looking for remote regions in Bhutan

From the New York Times:

Heflin was part of an expedition to the area several years ago — the subject of a 2007 documentary, “Adventure Bhutan” — that explored several remote sections of the Mangde Chhu. This year’s return expedition reunites Heflin with two others from that trip: the adventure photographer Jed Weingarten and Willie Kern, a kayaker who was part of an expedition that completed a first descent of the Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet.

The Mangde Chhu and Puna Tsang Chhu contain some of the most impressive terrain in the world. The rivers run at the bottom of lush green canyons, framed by massive vertical rock walls. There, the group would be difficult to reach should it run into trouble.

Portions of both rivers run as difficult as Class VI, the most hazardous classification of rapids. Some sections of the Puna Tsang Chhu, Heflin said, are “unrunnable.” More:


‘The greatest climber of his generation’ found dead in the Himalayas

Published
by
asianwindow
on November 15, 2009
in Nepal and Sport
. 0 Comments

From the Guardian:

Tomaz-HumarThe man considered the greatest mountaineer of his generation, who had been told 10 years ago that he would never walk again, was found dead in the Himalayas today after breaking his leg and becoming stranded on his latest extraordinary adventure.

Slovenian Tomasz Humar, 40, contacted his base camp on Monday to say he had broken his leg while climbing solo in Nepal. Satellite phone contact was made with him the following day, but a source at the camp reported Humar had sounded very weak and said: “This is my last.” It was the final contact he made.

The father-of-two, once rescued by the Pakistani air force in a celebrated mission, scaled the world’s toughest mountains and had been attempting to climb Langtang Lirung, a 7,227m (23,710ft) peak. Rescuers in Kathmandu said that four Sherpa guides with rescue equipment had flown to Langtang Lirung base camp, 6,000m up, earlier in the week and had trekked the slopes where Humar was supposed to be, but could not find him. Heavy snowfall on Wednesday and Thursday also forced climbers to postpone searches. More:

Nepal Cabinet to meet on Everest

Published
by
asianwindow
on November 3, 2009
in Climate change and Nepal
. 0 Comments

From Reuters:

Nepal’s cabinet plans to meet at the base camp of Mount Everest this month to highlight the impact of global warming on the Himalayas ahead of next month’s U.N. negotiations on climate change, a minister said on Monday.

The base camp is located about 5,300 meters (17,400 feet) up the 8,850 meter (29,035 feet) mountain and is the point from where climbers to the Everest summit begin their ascent.

“The cabinet meeting is meant to draw the attention to the adverse impact of climate change to the Himalayas including Sagarmatha,” Forest Minister Deepak Bohara told Reuters, using the Nepali name of the mountain.

The Maldives held the world’s first underwater cabinet meeting last month, in a symbolic cry for help over rising sea levels that threaten the Indian Ocean archipelago’s existence. More:

From Bhutan to Bronx

Published
by
asianwindow
on September 26, 2009
in Bhutan and Nepal
. 0 Comments

From the New York Times:

Nearly every immigrant group in New York City has a neighborhood, or at least a street, to call its own. But for refugees from the tiny South Asian nation of Bhutan, the closest thing to a home base is a single building in the Bronx – a red-brick five-story walk-up, with a weed-choked front courtyard and grimy staircases.

Eight families – more than 40 people – have taken up residence here in the past several months, part of a stream of thousands of Bhutanese refugees who have flowed into the United States in the past year and a half. With the help of resettlement agencies, many have found apartments in the Bronx, and the largest concentration has ended up here in the building on University Avenue.

This is their small toehold in a strange new world. The only life most have known was in the rural plains and Himalayan foothills of Bhutan and the dusty refugee camps of Nepal. Few have ever lived in homes with electricity or indoor plumbing, or between walls made of anything but bamboo. More:

Krishna gone missing

Published
by
asianwindow
on September 16, 2009
in Culture and Nepal
. 0 Comments

A Nepalese woman’s 53 hours lost on the streets of Queens. From New York:

The park should have been right there. A long set of stairs, leading through a children’s playground to a track where Krishna Gurung was planning to jog. She was running every day now, trying to lose the twenty pounds she had gained since coming to New York from Nepal. She looked around in frustration. It was seven o’clock on a Friday morning and raining again, as it had been for what seemed like weeks. Who knew the U.S. had a rainy season? No matter-she would jog with an umbrella.

The 53-year-old Krishna had come here, to Woodside, Queens, to visit her daughter Anu, whom she hadn’t seen since Anu moved to the States twelve years ago. Krishna had been here for a couple of months now, and Anu and her husband, Shyam, had taken her on family outings around Manhattan and down to Washington, D.C. Krishna’s native Pokhara is a city of 200,000, but New York was a different story. Krishna spoke no English; her tongue refused to form those mushy R’s and meowing vowels. Even the street and building numbers had to be translated for her. The Nepali language has its own way of writing numbers, insidiously close to ours but not identical. The numeral 1 looks like 9, 4 like 8, 5 like 4. To help keep Krishna safe, Anu and Shyam had defined a kind of comfort zone for her. Roosevelt Avenue, shaded by the elevated track of the 7 train, formed its southern boundary, and Broadway the northern one. The house, on 62nd Street, represented the area’s westernmost point; the intersection of Roosevelt Avenue and Broadway (the two streets merge) its eastern one. The area spans less than twenty blocks, and as long as the 7-train tracks were in sight, Krishna could find her way home by following them. Anu had also outfitted her mother with an emergency kit: a cell phone with the home number preprogrammed, some cash, and a laminated card with Anu’s home address in English on top. More:

The Republic of Thamel

Published
by
asianwindow
on August 30, 2009
in Nepal and Travel
. 1 Comment

thamel

Sudeep Chakravarti from Kathmandu, Nepal, in Hindustan Times:

It’s so Thamel. “When I Miss Pattaya, you come running Rangeela.” The comment appears to be about a transvestite beauty contest held annually at a fleshpot in Thailand. It is followed by a Kurosawa growl. I’m in Itta, a dimly lit, monsoon-musty, handkerchief-sized Japanese eatery.

The transvestite, in soap-opera sari, coiffed, face painted, is primly seated. Her companion, a young Japanese man in a neat beard and scruffy Ché T-shirt, is angry. Then ‘Rangeela’ flounces through the bead curtain and down the dank stairway. The man takes a huge pull of Everest beer, and notices that I have noticed.

“Fugyu,” he insists. To save him face, I turn back to take a bowl of miso soup from a tray that recently held superb tempura. The menu again catches my eye. It has a compelling message bordered by photos of a yellow rose, and a basket containing a towel and soap: “What is life when wanting love? Night without a morning! Love’s the cloudless summer sun, Nature gat sick adorning.”

Outside, two local bands, Anuprastha at Kathmandu Pub & Café, and an unnamed one at Namaste Café & Bar, are competing cover to cover – The Doors to The Doors, Rolling Stones to Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam to Pearl Jam – and decibel to decibel, in a frenetic meld of “Come on baby light my faiyah can’t get no satisfaction brown shoo-gur garble screech garble yeah.” More:

[Image: cc: shinyai]

The heights of mass tourism

Published
by
asianwindow
on July 17, 2009
in Nepal and Travel
. 0 Comments

In May, journalist Billi Bierling became the first German woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest from Nepal. She was shocked at the naivete of many mountaineers and astounded that, these days, Everest base camps offer hot showers, Internet access, TVs and fresh strawberries. Lena Greiner has the story in De Spiegel.

cc/TopGold
cc/TopGold

“Namaste, where can I put my bicycle?” Billi Bierling asks the waiter in Nepalese in Katmandu’s tourist district of Thamel. The grey mountain bike is the trademark of the 42-year-old journalist from the Bavarian town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

It’s an essential tool for her work — interviewing mountaineers on behalf of Elizabeth Hawley, the famous chronicler of Himalayan expeditions. “I’d go crazy driving a car in this chaotic traffic,” she says.

Every day Bierling cycles along the narrow streets of the Nepalese capital through a whirl of dust, honking cars, rickshaws and street vendors to talk to climbers before and after they have embarked on their expeditions. Hawley’s database contains the details of all Himalayan expeditions undertaken since 1963. what route was taken, who reached the summit when, was artificial oxygen required, how was the weather, were there accidents? more

Nepal bans airline staff pockets to fight bribes

Published
by
asianwindow
on July 1, 2009
in Nepal
. 0 Comments

From BBC:

Staff at Nepal’s main international airport are to be issued with trousers without pockets, in an attempt to wipe out rampant bribe-taking.

The country’s anti-corruption body said there had been growing complaints about staff at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan airport.

A spokesman said trousers without pockets would help the authorities “curb the irregularities”.

The move comes after the prime minister of Nepal said corruption was damaging the airport’s reputation, AFP reported. More

Nepal’s cursed palace opens its doors

Published
by
asianwindow
on May 27, 2009
in Nepal and Travel
. 0 Comments

In the Guardian, Ed Douglas takes a tour of the compound that witnessed a royal bloodbath and the death of the monarchy in Nepal:

narayanhiti

The two banknotes I handed over to get inside Kathmandu’s newest museum told the story. On one were the mild features of King Birendra, whose reign ended in June 2001 when Birendra’s son, the Eton-educated Crown Prince Dipendra, killed dad, mum, his brother and sister, and five others before turning the gun on himself. Allegedly. On the other, newer banknote, there is a picture of Mount Everest – and no king at all.

That’s because Nepal’s monarchy is now history. After years of grim authoritarianism and mismanagement by King Gyanendra, who succeeded his brother, Nepal’s people finally got the chance to boot him out last year, via the ballot box. Gyanendra quite literally handed his crown to the new government and after 240 years, Nepal’s ill-starred Shah royal dynasty was gone.

So what to do with their digs? Even before Gyanendra quit the throne, plans were laid to turn the Narayanhiti palace into a national museum. This opened in February to intense public interest. Nepal’s then prime minister, Maoist and former rebel leader Prachanda, cut the ribbon. Ordinary citizens queued round the block to see where Birendra died and how their recent monarchs lived. More:

A humble road to the noble truths in India and Nepal

Published
by
asianwindow
on May 24, 2009
in India, Nepal and Travel
. 0 Comments

The Buddhist Circuit in southern Nepal and northern India has drawn monarchs and monks, relic-hunters and curiosity seekers for centuries. From the New York Times:

map1WE arrived in time for dinner – rice soup, cabbage and potato curry, roasted wheat and cassia tora tea. Ladling our fill into stainless-steel bowls, we joined the other visitors scattered around the mess hall, careful to keep a respectful distance from our generous yet reclusive hosts: the monks and nuns of the Dae Sung Suk Ga Sa Korean Monastery in Nepal.

Heads shaved and clad in gray robes, they ate silently at their own small table near the kitchen. Then they vanished, only to reappear one-by-one in the upstairs shrine room, which we had entered earlier and where they took the meditation cushions closest to the three golden images of the Buddha, lighted by strings of electric lanterns overhead. We remained in the back.

When the head monk strode in, our worlds finally merged. As he beat time on a wooden instrument, we performed a Korean chant of the Heart Sutra, a traditional teaching on emptiness. Yet what filled the room was full and deep, the atonal harmonies of a Buddhist ensemble – at once jarring, beautiful and transportive. More:

Nepal on edge: Maoist, army row triggers crisis

Published
by
asianwindow
on May 4, 2009
in Nepal
. 0 Comments

Updated on Tuesday:  Nepal’s prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has resigned after the president overturned his decision to fire the army chief. The prime minister’s Maoists followers have threatened to take to the streets. More:

Nepal has been thrown into a political crisis as the country’s Prime Minister sacks the army chief and the President asks him to stay in his post. An AP report from Kathmandu on Monday noon:

rookmangud-katawalSecurity forces went on high alert Monday to avert street clashes in Nepal’s capital amid a government power struggle over the prime minister’s attempts to fire the army chief.

The prime minister, from Nepal’s Maoist party, unleashed the crisis Sunday by trying to fire the army chief because of his moves to block the enlistment into the military of former Maoist rebels. The firing sparked mass protests and was later rejected by the country’s president, from the main opposition party.

Nepal’s Maoists fought a bloody, 10-year war against the government before joining the political mainstream in 2006 and winning the most votes during elections last year after the Himalayan country abolished its centuries-old monarchy. However, many of the former Maoist fighters remain restricted to U.N.-monitored barracks under a peace accord. More:

Spectre of a ‘soft coup’: From The Telegraph, Calcutta:

Close on the heels of a spillover of Indian diplomacy in Colombo on the election in Tamil Nadu, a similar challenge is unfolding in Nepal with implications on both sides of the border.

Within hours of sacking Nepal’s army chief General Rukmagat Katuwal today, Prime Minister Prachanda has been forced to commit ideological heresy for the second time in as many days.

Prachanda was to have begun a high-profile visit yesterday to China, the country which was the inspiration for his Maoist insurgency, but the trip has been cancelled with the likelihood of a “soft coup” over the dismissal of the army chief actually ousting the revolutionary Prime Minister from office instead. More:

What next for Nepal after Maoists sack army chief? Click here to read the Reuters report on what could happen next in the young Himalayan republic.

Revisiting Nepal’s palace massacre

Published
by
asianwindow
on April 9, 2009
in Nepal
. 0 Comments

From Time:

Former Crown Prince Paras, who lives in Singapore.

Former Crown Prince Paras, who lives in Singapore.

It’s a story worthy of Shakespearean tragedy, populated by characters plucked from a farce. There is the beloved monarch, magnanimous and complacent. There is the moody crown prince. There is the prince’s cousin – a “playboy” with a belly and a ponytail – who, after years of silence, professes alone to know the truth of his royal family’s demise. And in the background are the Maoists, once guerrillas, now rulers, keen to spin this whole set piece to their political advantage.

Nepal’s palace massacre in 2001 – when the Crown Prince Dipendra allegedly gunned down 10 members of his own family, including his father, King Birendra Shah, before shooting himself – has, for the most part, receded into memory in this impoverished Himalayan nation.

More:

The Prince and the PR Man

Published
by
asianwindow
on April 3, 2009
in Nepal
. 0 Comments

A former journalist turned PR man interviewed Nepal’s deposed Crown Prince Paras Bikram Shah in Singapore’s New Paper. Paras exiled to Singapore after Maoists took control of Nepal; his father lives outside Kathmandu. The interview, says Eric Ellis at Asia Sentinel, “seems designed to re-launch Paras as a political player.”

nepal-prince“In the inteview Paras outlined a web of palace intrigues which culminated in the infamous ‘Blood On the Snows’ regicide of June 2001 at Kathmandu’s Narayanhity Palace by, as goes the official version of the tragic events, Paras’ predecessor as Nepal’s Crown Prince, his cousin Dipendra.

But this wasn’t just a regicide – the act of killing a monarch – in this case Nepal’s popular King Birendra. It seems it was also a patricide (Birendra was Dipendra’s father), a matricide (his mother Aishwarya was wasted), a sororicide (his late sister Princess Shruti), a fratricide (his brother Nirajan too), an avunculicide (his murdered uncle Prince Dhirendra) and whatever the correct ‘cides are for aunts and in-laws and cousins. There were ten royal victims in total, including Dipendra himself, who survived the massacre for 56 hours to become King before succumbing to his wounds. So add another regicide as well and, per that much-disputed official version, Dipendra’s suicide.

In the Mesenas interview at Paras’ Singapore penthouse, Paras says he decided to open up because “the Nepali people need to know the truth.” The New Paper writes that Paras “now wants to clear his name” about “the ugly rumours of his involvement in the incident.” More:

Nepal under Maoism: War without bloodshed

Published
by
asianwindow
on March 30, 2009
in Heritage, Nepal and Politics
. 0 Comments

From The Economist:

dahalNEPAL’S Maoist prime minister, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, or “Prachanda” (fierce), recently said that running a country was harder than running a guerrilla war. He should not have been surprised. The Maoist-led coalition government was formed after the ex-guerrillas pulled off a stunning election victory last April, just two years after they tramped in from the jungle. It faced three giant tasks: to bring better government to one of South Asia’s poorest countries; to help sustain a peace process that followed a bitter, decade-long struggle; and to preside over the writing of a new constitution. Achieving all this, within the 30-month term allotted to a government, was bound to be difficult. Yet there is now a growing fear that failure-in a country that has seen civil war, a royal coup, the abolition of the monarchy, huge protests and an ethnically based rebellion in recent years-may spark a fresh crisis before long.

More:

Also in The Economist:

Nepal’s royal palace: Versailles in green nylon

kathmandu_palace

THE stuffed tigers have seen better days. The big dynastic portraits, of double-chinned Nepali princes and their fair-skinned consorts, are catching dust. But the Narayanhiti Palace, Kathmandu’s recently-vacated royal residence, is less remarkable for its faded splendour than for its dreadful modern design.

Completed in 1969, on the site of an older palace, it is built in concrete and marble, with acres of laminated wood panelling and hideous pink carpet. The royal bedchamber, last occupied by King Gyanendra, whose 2005 coup led to the abolition last year of his 240-year-old Shah dynasty, is rather poky. A bedside clutter of family snapshots and porcelain knick-knacks is simply poignant.

More:

Nepal: Wireless in the mountains

Published
by
asianwindow
on March 2, 2009
in Nepal
. 0 Comments

A home WiFi kit and a solar-powered relay station transform healthcare and education for a remote village in western Nepal. From Seed magazine:

nepal

A two-story traditional roundhouse in Nangi village, constructed from insulating straw and mud with a stone roof to protect against the harsh mountain climate. Inside, residents eat, sleep, cook and congregate. Courtesy: Nick Pattinson / Seed

There is no road to Nangi. Reaching this remote mountain village in western Nepal involves a full day’s hike up near vertical paths from the nearest town, Beni. I set off at first light with my guide, Mahabir Pun, a former teacher from Nangi, and it’s not long before my pack is straining my shoulders and my legs are complaining. We see no other Westerners, just local people commuting up and down between villages, and traders carrying impossibly large baskets of oranges from the higher slopes to the markets below.

As we climb, stopping frequently to rest and admire the view while snacking on peanuts and sweet oranges, we chat in panting bursts. Mahabir, something of a celebrity in these parts, despite his grubby outfit and self-effacing manner, tells me about his lifelong quest to transform his tribe’s villages through the unlikely medium of WiFi. Nangi village, home to around 800 people, has no telephone line or cell phone receptivity.

More:

Peak performance

Published
by
asianwindow
on February 17, 2009
in Nepal and Sport
. 0 Comments

Climbing Mt Everest is all in a day’s work for three Nepalese brothers. Now, they want to stay on top of the peak for 24 hours, praying for world peace. The BBC’s Charles Haviland has the story.

Three Nepalese brothers are to try to break a world record by staying on top of Mount Everest for 24 hours. Pemba Dorje Sherpa, aged 31, and his younger brothers Nima Gyalzen and Phurba Tenzing, intend to use their stay on the summit to pray for peace in Nepal and the world. They will take with them a 30cm (12-inch) statue of the Buddha to the peak. And they are vowing to stay there for 24 hours whatever the weather. Climbing Everest is almost second nature to the brothers, two of whom met the BBC at their small trekking agency in a back street of Kathmandu to explain their plans.

more

The gentle touch of the Gurkhas

Published
by
asianwindow
on February 15, 2009
in Afghanistan and Nepal
. 0 Comments

Nepalese troops sent to Afghanistan are proving well-equipped in the battle for hearts and minds. Kim Sengupta reports from south of Garmsir in The Independent:

An Apache helicopter-gunship had just been blazing away at Taliban fighters up ahead when the Afghan farmer ambled up to the Gurkha soldier in the field for a chat. He was concerned, he said, that his community was missing out on the wheat allocation which others had been getting further north.

In the midst of the mayhem the young Gurkha talked patiently to the white-bearded Afghan in a mixture of Pashtu and Urdu. The wheat situation certainly seemed unfair, he nodded, and he would pass on the complaint to the appropriate people.

The scene south of Garmsir, in Helmand, may seem somewhat surreal. But it is not unusual for the Gurkhas in Afghanistan to combine warfighting with community relations. For British forces it is a valuable way of keeping contact with the population in a conflict which will ultimately be decided on who wins the battle for hearts and minds.

More: