@ Rolpa [Libang] photos and journal from my October trip #Nepal

Posted on October 11, 2011 by

Libang

Unlike many other Nepali districts Rolpa has a distinct image of its own. Unfortunately that ‘distinctiveness’ is not necessarily positive and/or based on positive vibe. Think about Iraq and Afghanistan of the past decade. Rolpa once was Nepal’s ‘ground zero’. During the height of the Maoist insurgency that began in Rolpa’s Thawang village in 1996 (and ended in 2006 in Kathmandu) the district headquarter Libang had shrunken inside a 3-km radius ‘Green Zone’. The GZ was surrounded by barbed wire and protected/guarded 24-hours a day by the armed soldiers. It was dangerous to venture out of the Green Zone for government officials and anyone who wasn’t friendly to the rebels. The area outside the GZ belonged to them. That was way back in 2000-2001. Continue reading →

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Rukum to Dang

Posted on October 10, 2011 by

Here are some photos from my bus ride on what people are forced to call a ‘highway’ that connects Rukum with Dang. In between these districts is Salyan. The road isn’t blacktopped which meant a bumpy ride that lasted for about 7 hours. The funniest thing is that I ended up, albeit reluctantly, sharing a hotel room with a man I met in the bus, at the end of the trip, and disagreed on the need of the road networks in Nepal. The bus halted at

Tulsipur, the final destination, where I got off along with the person. It was too late for me to go to Ghorahi (and stay there) to catch a bus from there to Rolpa the next morning. So the man took me to the hotel that he knew as he also stayed nearby and ate there when his wife didn’t stay with him.

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Kids of Rukum: fishing, diving, clashing, and smiling

Posted on October 9, 2011 by

>>This post contains 46 photos.

Look ma, I lost my tooth.

This a sequel to the previous post titled People and Faces from Rukum’s Headquarter Musikot [RIP, Steve Jobs]. In this post I present photos that I took (of kids) during my excursion in Musikot, the headquarter of Rukum. I somehow encounter kids willing to be photographed (and very happily) during my trips. From Helambu (heading back to school and doko girl) to Dadeldhura (garlanded & Dasain tika on their foreheads). Continue reading →

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People and Faces from Rukum’s Headquarter Musikot [RIP, Steve Jobs]

Posted on October 9, 2011 by
rukum headquarter places and faces

The lady on the left was about to smoke a cigarette when she saw me holding a camera. She didn

It was a bumpy, and at times scary, ride on a Bolero early in the morning but that saved me a day’s walk to arrive in Musikot, the headquarter of Rukum district. As I ordered the food I took out the iPad from my bag and started browsing the Twitter app. A tweet by Kyle G Knight, a Kathmandu-based Fulbright fellow, attracted my attention. The tweet was an extract from a New York Times article with the link at the end: “with Apple’s resources, he could’ve revolutionized industry to manufacture devices more humanely, and chose not to: http://nyti.ms/pY0oeT” Continue reading →

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Limping all day long with a Donkey caravan to reach Rukumkot

Posted on October 8, 2011 by

(Oct 22 note: Photos related to this post will be posted later this week.)

Ten minutes to the walk, I felt a pinch on my knee. Left side of the left knee.

It was 6:40 am. I was heading downhill to Kakri. They said the village was about 30 minutes of walk away. There was one brief moment of confusion when I couldnt find the path that disappeared into the excess soil from the road work. I made a couple of jumps and found the path.

I felt another pinch on the same spot of left knee. I thought about yesterday’s walk. I could feel pain on calf. And on both legs. Thighs were paining too. But this particular pinch, piercing pain, was different. For calf or thigh pain walking more is the way of cure. Muscles get used to with the process in a matter of hours. I wasn’t worried about those pains. But this pain had a needling effect.

This pain started to grow as I walked. Soon I was limping. It took me 1.5 hours to cover the trail that others had said I would cover in 30 minutes. I think I could have walked that distance in 45 minutes if my knee hadn’t let me down. Now I was hardly dragging myself on the route stopping mainly to give the knee some rest and to take photos of two dense neighborhoods of Kakri village. Continue reading →

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