Taken in totality, Nepali mainstream cinema concerns itself with a specific ideological inclination, a tendency towards ‘melodramatic realism’.
Disguised as social realism, this is cinema of affirmation cloaked in the language of critique. This tendency is not indigenous but inherited: <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Lights-camera-copy-paste,1146">a diluted echo and imitation of Bollywood</a>.&nbsp;
Film directors, driven by the understandable desire for commercial viability, have adopted Bollywood's worst tendencies: its emotional maximalism and narrative predictability. But they have done so without the budget, without its system, without its technicality.
The result is cinema that mimics form without function. The cinematography with its saturated colour and glamour-obsessed image is an aesthetic colonisation. Let us name it what it is: a cinema of sympathy.
<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/powerful-movie-upacks-questions-of-identity">Social injustice</a> is not interrogated but assumed. Suffering is not resisted but aestheticised. Characters do not struggle to change the world, they endure it. They are saints in ragged clothes, martyrs in the mountains, whose nobility lies in their passivity. In this cinema, pain is purity, and purity is always poor.
These films are said to reflect contemporary society—but they do so in the way a mirror reflects a dream: distorted, beautified, bathed in the light of sentimentalism. They portray not society as it is, but as it feels to remember. What we have, then, is not realism, but a kind of sentimental mythos.
The culprits are not hard to find. They are the most celebrated directors of our time. Their films win national awards, their actors become stars. Yet what unites them all — from rural dramedies like Kabaddi, family melodramas like Prasad, or soft-issue social parables like Saili — is a fundamental conservatism of narrative logic.&nbsp;
If there is politics, it is personal. If there is history, it is just the setting. Society, in these films, is static. The caste system, the labour exodus, gendered violence, these are presented as conditions of nature, not conditions of power. To suffer within them is to be good, to fight against them would be, it seems, impolite.
What defines this tendency is its inability to dramatise complexity. The films are either naively dualistic or neurotically symbolic. <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/she-is-the-story">Women are either goddesses or ghosts</a>. Men are either stoic heroes or cartoonish predators. The poor are noble. The rich are cruel. Nothing is ambiguous. Nothing is difficult. Nothing is allowed to breathe.
Most insidious is the rise of populist humour, that soft, crowd-pleasing comedy which diffuses even the most tragic premises, like a nervous laugh at a funeral. Laughter that is not disruptive.&nbsp;
This humour, often rooted in exaggerated dialect, village caricature, or romantic incompetence, serves to neutralise discomfort. It appears not only in comedies but in ‘social drama’, where it functions as an emotional pressure valve. A girl is nearly sold into marriage — but wait, here comes the lovable drunk uncle with a one-liner.&nbsp;
The humour, while infectious , mocks just the symptoms like arranged marriage and patriarchal values, but not the structures themselves. There is no class struggle here, only romantic miscommunication. When misogyny appears, it is played for laughs, when caste lines emerge, they're side-stepped in favour of musical reconciliation.&nbsp;
Politicians are corrupt, yes, but hilariously so. Systemic failure is rendered absurd, not grotesque. Their jokes are universal. But in avoiding discomfort, they also avoid depth. They laugh with the people, not for them.
But why are we laughing? And what are we laughing at? If the answer is that we are laughing without bitterness and rage, at our own condition, then our cinema is no longer a mirror but a lullaby.
Even stylistically, the image is clean but unimaginative, the dialogue is moralistic, almost liturgical. The endings are too often redemptive, even when they pretend to be tragic. One watches these films not to be challenged, but to be comforted: to be reminded that pain is meaningful, that goodness suffers, that, in the end, Nepal is still beautiful.
But cinema is not therapy. It is not the job of film to make pain feel poetic. To reduce our political and economic trauma to matters of individual heartbreak is not just aesthetically lazy, it is dangerous. This is how ideology works: not through propaganda, but through sentiment.&nbsp;
The films, by making injustice feel tragic instead of intolerable, teach audiences not to resist reality, but to accept it.&nbsp;
This is not to say that all cinema is compromised. There are filmmakers, few but growing—who refuse the consolation of melodrama, like Min Bahadur Bham's <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/must-see/Kalo-pothi-review,3101">The Black Hen</a>, and Sujit Bidari's <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepali-new-wave-cinema">Butterfly on the Windowpane</a>, which create spaces of silence, of interiority. Their characters are not metaphors, but people. Their conflicts are not tidy, their resolutions are not redemptive. In short, they resist the tendency.
But <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/min-bahadur-bham-s-cinematic-quest">these exceptions only highlight the rule</a>. The mainstream appetite, whether among producers or the public, still favours the emotionally saturated, the morally clear and the forced humour.&nbsp;
"Show Nepal," they say. "Make it cry. Make it real. But not too real."
What has become of anger in our cinema? What has become of satire, irony, provocation? Where are the films that disrupt rather than reflect? That confront the audience, rather than embrace them?&nbsp;
If art is meant to mirror society, then what society are we mirroring? A quiet one, perhaps, a stoic one, a beautiful one. But not a just one.
This is the paradox of our cinema: in trying so hard to reflect the people, it forgets to challenge them. In trying to represent suffering, it aestheticises it. In trying to honour tradition, it enshrines conservatism.
Cinema should not be devotional. It should not be a hymn. It must be a question. And until directors begin to ask those questions — not in press kits, but in the language of cinema itself — we will remain, for all fanfare and film festivals, a national cinema without a national consciousness. &nbsp;
Abishek Budhathoki is a multidisciplináry artist specialising in media and mass culture. He has directed a number of short films and has also worked on feature films and documentaries.

Nepali cinema’s melodramatic realism

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The Soaltee Kathmandu has become the first Autograph Collection hotel in South Asia, joining Marriott Bonvoy’s handpicked portfolio of over 30 brands and 330 independent hotels. The Collection celebrates properties that are “Exactly Like Nothing Else.” The hotel offers 285 rooms and suites and has lush 12-acre grounds in the Tahachal area. The interior reflects Kathmandu’s architecture and history Thangka paintings, wooden jaali windows, and exposed brickwork. A curated installation called “The Storyteller” runs through its public spaces, telling the hotel’s 58-year legacy through personal tales and guest contributions.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250618110628_6c5d27e5b3e14d4b5e41b51509de269d10758ce551ad7b34300f0f23ab81e6fb.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20250618110628_6c5d27e5b3e14d4b5e41b51509de269d10758ce551ad7b34300f0f23ab81e6fb" data-rendition-name="original" width="3000" height="2000" loading="lazy" alt="The Soaltee Kathmandu"> </figure>  Dining options include Garden Terrace, which serves a signature Nepali thali. Kakori offers Awadhi-Indian dishes like Murgh Chapli Kabab and Dal Kakori. Bao Xuan brings authentic Chinese flavours. Patio provides open-air dining with live music and garden views. And Rodi Bar and the Sports Lounge offer vibrant spots for drinks and relaxation. For wellness, the Soaltee has a spa with traditional Newa massage, a clay tennis court, a 24-hour fitness center, and an outdoor pool. The hotel’s 25,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor spaces are perfect for weddings. Sustainability is woven into its operations, with energy-efficient systems, an in-house water bottling plant, an herb garden, and locally sourced materials.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250618110628_4af1ce467ba944fd09750bb3443d6f7b04ae280a20736cbeb76806868adb09c8.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20250618110628_4af1ce467ba944fd09750bb3443d6f7b04ae280a20736cbeb76806868adb09c8" data-rendition-name="original" width="3000" height="2000" loading="lazy" alt="The Soaltee Kathmandu"> </figure>  “This is a proud moment for us,” says Avinash Deshmukh, General Manager. “The Soaltee Kathmandu, Autograph Collection, marries Nepal’s cultural heritage with contemporary luxury, offering guests a chance to experience Kathmandu’s vibrancy in a way that’s truly unique.” Ranju Alex, Regional Vice President of Marriott International – South Asia, adds, “Bringing our 19th brand to South Asia with this property reflects our commitment to culturally rich destinations. It’s a milestone for Marriott and a new chapter for this historic hotel.” Since its founding in 1966, The Soaltee Kathmandu has frequently hosted dignitaries, celebrities, and travelers. You can visit The Soaltee Kathmandu, Autograph Collection, to explore its offerings or book an event. For reservations or details, check <a href="http://www.marriott.com/" target="_blank">www.marriott.com</a> or contact Riya Neupane at <a href="mailto:riya.neupane@soaltee.com" target="_blank">riya.neupane@soaltee.com</a>.

The Soaltee Kathmandu, Autograph Collection

Hard Rock Cafe Kathmandu at Sherpa Mall in Darbarmarg is taking part in the World Burger Tour from 14 June to 5 August. Anannual competition held across over 100 Hard Rock Cafes worldwide marks the opening of the first location in London on 14 June 1971.&nbsp;
The competition invites chefs to craft burgers that reflect their local cultures. Kathmandu’s offering is the Choila Burger, created by chef Biplov Maharjan. Inspired by Nepal’s Newa cuisine, it features a seared buffalo patty topped with a spicy house-made choila sauce, a fried egg, and a cabbage-cucumber relish.&nbsp;
The competition highlights the diversity of flavours across the brand’s global cafes. In Rome, guests can try the Lasagna Burger, layered with Ragu Bolognese and bechamel sauce. In Atlantic City, the Jersey Shore Burger comes with a house-made blueberry maple aioli and provolone cheese.&nbsp;
This year’s World Burger Tour features Austin-based chef and content creator Olivia Tiedemann as mentor and judge. Tiedemann draws on her experience from culinary school, private chef work in the Hamptons, and appearances on The Tonight Show and TODAY.&nbsp;
“I’m amazed by how they’ve transformed classic burger concepts with their unique local influences and personal stories,” says Tiedemann.
Her feedback, combined with social media votes from guests and sales data, will help select the top five burgers later this summer. The finalists will appear on Hard Rock Cafe menus worldwide for a limited time, with one eventually named the winner.
Narayan Subedi, General Manager of Hard Rock Cafe Kathmandu, views the event as a way to share Nepal’s culinary traditions. He says: “Our chef gets to flex his creativity, and our guests get to try our new burger inspired by bold Newari flavors.”
Hard Rock International has grown beyond its humble beginning, and now has a massive collection of over 88,000 pieces of music memorabilia, including John Lennon's hand-written lyrics to 'Imagine' and Jimi Hendrix's Gibson Flying V guitar.

Hard Rockin' Choila Burger

Turkish Airlines and Thai Airways International signed a Joint Business Agreement at the IATA Annual General Meeting in New Delhi on 1 June to enhance strategic cooperation between the flag carriers of Türkiye and Thailand. It will build on Thai starting daily flights between Bangkok to Istanbul, and combine the strengths of the two Star Alliance member airlines.&nbsp;
Turkish Airlines Chair Ahmet Bolat said: “This marks a significant milestone to further develop the tourism potential between Türkiye and Thailand with seamless travel experiences and expanded connectivity.” Thai’s CEO, Chai Eamsiri, said: “The agreement between Thai and Turkish Airlines on operating codeshare flights on the Bangkok-Istanbul route is an opportunity for both carriers in enhancing their route networks.”&nbsp;

Turkish-Thai

The past, the present, and the future are really one: they are today. -Harriet Beecher Stowe  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2024122609120_5c63a3201a7231b9334f98a3a1af867acfc1264e29fc3081810a565a270bde6f.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2024122609120_5c63a3201a7231b9334f98a3a1af867acfc1264e29fc3081810a565a270bde6f" data-rendition-name="original" width="2700" height="2700" loading="lazy" alt="Miss Moti #1241"> </figure>

The past, the present, and the future are really one

They say you can choose your enemies, but not your neighbours. This rings true especially for small nation states bordering much larger ones.
And that is also what Mao Zedong told King Mahendra in Beijing in 1967, and it is the message successive Chinese leaders have given to Nepal’s rulers ever since: be clever, don’t rock the boat, learn to live with India.&nbsp;
In Beijing in 1988, Deng Xiaoping and Rajiv Gandhi demarcated each other's &nbsp;spheres of influence: south of the Himalaya India calls the shots, and north of it (including Tibet) China does.&nbsp;
Lila Nyaichyai, who did her PhD on Chinese Public Diplomacy in Nepal from Yunnan University, says China’s main concern in Nepal is stability.
“As a country grows to become a global power, its aspirations do too,” she says. “But China hasn’t cared much about whether Nepal is a monarchy, a democracy, or a federal republic as long as it is politically stable for development.”
Nepal’s royal rulers navigated the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States successfully, getting both to contribute to the country’s development. But the dramatic rise of India and China as global powers, and the fact that they are rivals in Nepal’s immediate neighbourhood has made the need for balance much more critical now.&nbsp;
A template could be the way Finland survived the Cold War between next door Soviet Union and the West. It did not join the Warsaw Pact, but its reference group was the other Nordics. The country decided to keep Moscow at arms length by appeasing it — a strategy that came to be called ‘Finlandisation’.
“Finlandisation was this attitude of yielding to pressure from a big brother,” Finnish journalist and author Katri Merikallio explained to me during a recent visit to Helsinki. “Finland remained independent, but its sovereignty was narrowed. There was a price to pay. We must acknowledge the risks that such a balancing involves, both for the sovereignty of a nation but also for internal politics.”
It was a survival tactic that saved Finland from being arm-twisted by the Soviet Union, like Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. But today with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, ‘Finlandisation’ is not in vogue anymore and Finland has joined NATO.
Nepal’s strategy of ‘equidistance’ between New Delhi and Beijing is somewhat similar to how Finland survived the Cold War. But it is a little more complicated than that. Indian strategists do not like the term ‘neutrality’ to characterise Nepal’s dealings with its regional rivals China and Pakistan.&nbsp;
South Asia is now in America’s blindspot with Trump’s turbulent second term, and without Washington’s countervailing presence geopolitics has become much more slippery than Prithvi Narayan Shah’s yam analogy.&nbsp;
Back in Kathmandu, former Foreign Minister Bimala Rai Paudyal of the UML contends that despite their differences, bigger countries do come to an understanding, often at the expense of smaller neighbours. An example of this is China’s refusal to get involved in Nepal's Limiyadhura dispute with India.
“It will not be easy, but we must maintain our policy of equidistance in dealing with India and China,” Rai Paudyal told us. “We must assure both that we are not a security threat, and that Nepal’s prosperity and stability is in their national interest as well.”
Nepal is the oldest nation state in South Asia, and has survived invasions, expansionist empires, and neighbours who do not see eye to eye with each other thanks to master strategists like Jang Bahadur Rana, Chandra Shumsher and King Mahendra.
Today, Nepal is one of the few remaining open societies in Asia with a free press, and a fragile yet rambunctious democracy. Yet feckless governments with leaders unskilled to steer a safe course in a volatile region means Nepal has never been as vulnerable to outside interference as it is today (page 1).
Here in Helsinki, NATO membership has finally finished off Finlandisation. It is a lesson for Nepal about how quickly the geopolitical terrain can shift and upend a nation’s established foreign policy doctrine. &nbsp;
Nepal needs to be supple and agile, pragmatic and self-confident. This will require monumental political reform marked by greater accountability, transparency, and good governance at home.&nbsp;
In other words, secure relations with our two giant neighbours needs sturdier domestic politics.
Sonia Awale in Helsinki

Love thy neighbours

Sagar Tamang first met Laxmi Tamang in video calls between Malaysia and Pokhara. He was working as a security guard in Malaysia, and had sent her a <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/facebook-nation">Facebook </a>request. Before long, between messages and calls, they were in love and planning a future together. Laxmi could see it clearly: after six years Sagar would <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/diaspora-diaries/migrant-worker-returns-to-create-work-at-home">return home</a> to Sankuwasabha, they would get married and have children, live in the home that Sagar had built, and she would open up her tailoring shop with Sagar’s savings from abroad. But Sagar revealed that he was experiencing shortness of breath and his legs had begun to swell. She pleaded with him to come back, but he would only return after his roadside property back home was built. Sagar’s parents had already built a new house with his income and were planning another nearby. The symptoms worsened over time, prompting Sagar to eventually consult a doctor. Both his <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/A-mysterious-rash-of-kidney-failures,3639">kidneys had completely failed</a>. A seemingly healthy, energetic 28-year-old suddenly turned into a dialysis patient. Sagar lived with his mother, father, five sisters and four brothers in Sankuwasabha, and the family depended entirely on a piece of land they farmed. An older brother left home to seek work elsewhere but that was not enough. So, after just finishing Grade 10 Sagar decided on an <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/overseas-job-seeker-now-creates-jobs-in-nepal">overseas job</a>. He arrived <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-malaysia-nepal-migrant-scam-nexus">in Malaysia</a> at just 20, saddled with loans, and an immense pressure to raise the economic status of his family. But upon arrival, he found that he would be working in agriculture, not as a security guard as per his contract. Toiling for 11 hours in the sun every day, he felt worn down and disillusioned with the<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/push-factors-driving-nepalis-out?fbclid=IwAR0Og_Lv1SMmn69MAkgqu1Ywu8IoLuB_v9KpnjG2F8PR-OAOCDvL6kLoKlk_aem_AX_Vm0Bo8vLUzR_RAr8GpJ8dDX53u8v0zPMP1GzR590UiMfz5jHkg7k14WF5cAQOHwY"> promise of life abroad</a>. His living situation, made up of a tightly regulated, crowded compound with other migrant workers, was no better. Only when he heard the distorted voice of his mother through his flip phone did Sagar find a sense of solace. Over the next two years, Sagar developed friendships with other Nepalis working with him, and eventually accepted that his life abroad was nearly permanent. He planned to stay aboard at least 10 years. And after writing a letter to his company, he was able to successfully switch to security guard work. Although the hours were longer, it beat the difficult manual labour Sagar was previously forced to complete for a meagre salary. Sagar fell into a routine he thought he would follow for the next eight years: get ready, go to work, return to the compound, and call Laxmi before going to sleep. But two years ago, his health reached a breaking point, and he had to return to Nepal for dialysis. Upon his arrival, he was rushed to Bir Hospital for immediate treatment. To this day, Sagar has never stepped foot inside the houses his family built with his overseas earnings. Read also:<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/dirty-dangerous-difficult-and-dehydrating"> Dirty, Dangerous, Difficult ... and Dehydrating</a>, Pinki Sris Rana <h2>Dialectics of dialysis</h2>  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025051509054_5b8972cf42e1d1ae531b7d32c0492380964f065432a8dd0a7e41674b7160b266.jpg" data-media-id="editor_7" data-image-id="2025051509054_5b8972cf42e1d1ae531b7d32c0492380964f065432a8dd0a7e41674b7160b266" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Dying to work overseas NT"><figcaption>HARD LABOUR: Sagar Tamang in a dialysis session at the National Kidney Centre in Kathmandu (right) after both his kidneys failed while working abroad in harsh conditions.</figcaption></figure>  It is estimated that <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/dirty-dangerous-difficult-and-dehydrating" target="_blank">one in four </a>Nepali kidney patients is a returnee migrant. <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/A-mysterious-rash-of-kidney-failures,3639" target="_blank">Factors </a>such as excessive heat, dehydration, and unhealthy diets can lead to chronic kidney disease, including kidney failure. Many returnees head straight to a dialysis bed in Kathmandu instead of taking the first bus home. In dialysis wards across the country, scores of young men under 40 sit in hospital beds, unable to work or earn for their families anymore. Many remain in debt for treatment, or have had to relocate to seek care. For patients with no source of reliable income, even finding a willing landlord to rent out a room in the capital can be almost impossible without the right connections. However, Sagar’s cousin, who had also developed chronic kidney disease while working abroad and had moved to Kathmandu from Sankhuwasaba for dialysis, took him in. Laxmi finally met Sagar two months later. She found it hard to hold back tears whenever she saw his face. She was able to stay with her brother in Bhaktapur for some time, but eventually the couple decided to marry. Laxmi’s mother and sisters urged her to put off the marriage until Sagar had completed a kidney transplant. The couple eloped. Two days after their marriage, Laxmi’s family called them to come to their home in Nagarkot to celebrate. Now, the couple lives in a rented house near the National Kidney Centre with other dialysis patients and their families. Sagar walks to his dialysis session three times a week. In this house, there is a sense of solidarity among patients, and Laxmi especially feels a comfort knowing that her neighbours understand her position as the wife and caretaker of a dialysis patient. Members of the house cook for each other, help with transport to the hospital, and sometimes even <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/when-disaster-strikes-home">lend money</a>. So far, Sagar has used his savings from abroad to pay for the direct and indirect costs of his treatment. However, the money is running out as the couple grapples with the city’s <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/is-free-health-care-possible-in-nepal?fb_comment_id=3363039693768713_5667191770020149">cost of living and medical bills</a>. The government offers free lifetime haemodialysis for patients, but the Rs5,000 monthly allowance does not come consistently, in full, or just never comes at all despite repeated requests to the patient’s municipal office. Those receiving treatment in the Kathmandu Valley also access medicine through Bhaktapur’s Shahid Dharmabhakta National Transplant Centre (SDNTC), but under the hospital’s insurance are required to pay for 10% of the cost.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025051509058_2001d2b6d07ca8406575bd1c89f714b5b224d64bf25437b55bda0e21475fdbc4.jpg" data-media-id="editor_12" data-image-id="2025051509058_2001d2b6d07ca8406575bd1c89f714b5b224d64bf25437b55bda0e21475fdbc4" data-rendition-name="original" width="2773" height="4160" loading="lazy" alt="Dying to work overseas"><figcaption>Sagar with his wife Laxmi in Pokhara.</figcaption></figure>  Once his family’s primary earner, Sagar can no longer make or send money due to his condition. His family runs a goat and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/are-you-sick-of-chicken">poultry farm</a>, but has been forced to take loans to stay afloat and cannot send money for Sagar’s treatment. Until recently, Laxmi worked 12 hours a day as a tailor and house cleaner. Sagar, his mother and Laxmi, have been making trips to SDNTC in preparation for his transplant. In Nepal, only relatives or the spouse of the patient are allowed to be donors for their <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/saving-kidneys-to-save-nepal">kidney transplant</a>. This can be debilitating for patients whose families are unwilling or unable to donate due to pre-existing health issues such as hypertension or diabetes. Wives and mothers are the most likely demographic to donate to a male patient. Due to Sagar’s inability to come home and officiate his marriage it is yet to be recognised by the municipality, making Laxmi an ineligible donor. After finding out his father’s blood type did not match and refusing his younger sister’s offer to give her kidney, he and his mother decided that they could start the transplant process together. Even Nepal’s prime minister K P Oli has had a double kidney transplant, but for those who cannot find a donor within the family, the remaining years of life is measured by the humming and erratic beeps of a dialysis machine three times a week. It is going to be a lengthy and expensive process, but it is the only hope for Sagar. And what are his immediate plans after a successful transplant? To return home, to finally see his siblings, father, neighbours and friends, he tells us. He has seen his father once since his <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/searching-for-a-homeland-away-from-home">return to Nepal</a>, but has not seen his siblings since he left for Malaysia. They have not visited him in Kathmandu yet, but he hopes that they will before his transplant. The couple believes that after his transplant, anything is possible: finally getting their marriage recognised, opening up a tailoring shop, having children, building a life in Sankuwashaba. Laxmi strongly objects to Sagar ever leaving Nepal again, but he remains open to the idea.

Dying to work overseas

A plate of momo filled with spiced meat served with an achar or jhol is often the go-to order after flipping through the multi page menus at Kathmandu’s eateries.&nbsp; In many ways Momo is the perfect meal: ubiquitous, affordable, quick, filling, fresh, and healthier than other fast food. &nbsp; Making the dumplings from scratch is fun, too. Momo parties require much labour but they bring families and friends together as each member takes responsibility for one of the steps: prepping the filling, rolling out the dough, cutting out circles, or blending the all-important sauce.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250516090524_8820f29eec104a6921e1273bf518f0656af604568bc68093e36f43fe8ecc51fd.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20250516090524_8820f29eec104a6921e1273bf518f0656af604568bc68093e36f43fe8ecc51fd" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1001" loading="lazy" alt="Momo Loco NT"> <figcaption>Photos: SUMAN NEPALI</figcaption> </figure>  This is where mastery of the vital skill of momo-folding can set you apart. And momo parties abroad can bring together long lost friends amid much nostalgia. Prashanta Khanal has two entries for momos in Timmur, his cookbook of dishes from across Nepal. One is momo-cha (‘dumplings with a buffalo meat filling and served with soupy jhol achaar made from sesame seeds and soybeans’). The other is the longer momo, often called Tibetan style. &nbsp; “The momo seems to have come to Kathmandu around the 17th century, when the long standing India-Nepal-Tibet trade route got more organised,” says Khanal. “At first, only trader families in the Valley made momo. They became wildly popular only about four decades ago, after they started being sold commercially.”&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250516090524_92d5ab4d34dccdbe592895fede973981f9021f864865d5be7f50c6a30e7d07d1.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20250516090524_92d5ab4d34dccdbe592895fede973981f9021f864865d5be7f50c6a30e7d07d1" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Momo Loco NT"> </figure>  Khanal reckons that momo was initially just a food of the valley, and he credits refugees from Tibet starting in the 1950s for spreading the food beyond the valley.&nbsp; Legend has it that dumplings were invented in northwestern China about 1,800 years ago by Zhang Zhongjing, a prominent physician in the eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD). The legend goes that Zhongjing created ear-shaped dumplings to cure frostbitten ears, when he wrapped minced lamb, black pepper, and herbs in dough scraps. Eating these ‘Jiaozi’ would cure the patient by improving blood circulation.&nbsp; The food then spread through the region, through present-day China, Mongolia, and Tibet, and were actually already called momo. Each place developed its own variation. “The Mongolian momo has mutton or lamb, uses minimal spices, and is served not with sauce but with butter tea” explains Khanal, “and the Tibetan momo contains sheep, yak or mountain goat.”&nbsp; The Chinese retained a distinctive style of dumplings called dim sum. And when Newari traders brought the momo to Kathmandu, it was customised for local taste and ingredients. The strongly spiced buffalo meat is unique to the Valley. “Sherpa momos are usually spiced lightly, usually just with ginger, garlic and onion,” adds Khanal.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250516090524_7e9d7e122c2bd64b248714e09aea84f9713eda930b563a3805aa642b79eb1918.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20250516090524_7e9d7e122c2bd64b248714e09aea84f9713eda930b563a3805aa642b79eb1918" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Momo Loco NT"> </figure>  Khanal has several recommendations for momos in Kathmandu: “Jazz Upstairs in Lazimpat has very juicy momos, and there is a store called Moti Didi Ko Momo in Thamel that is spiced mildly and comes with a cooked tomato achaar.”&nbsp; Some of the more unique vegetarian fillings can be found in the khuwa momos in Baneswor, the spinach-cheese momos at Shambala Cafe in Boudha, and sun-dried turnip-green momos in Mustang. Here are some other momo spots inside Ring Road that scored highest in a Nepali Times online survey: &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <h2>Cafe ‘97 (Sanepa)</h2> This is an understated eatery with pictures of the Annapurna range and faded lanterns as decor. A plate of steamed buff momo is Rs160 and takes about 15 minutes from freezer to steamer in the open kitchen, and to the table. Ten momo come arranged around a small bowl of a spicy thin achar that does not stick to the momo but tastes good. 7.2/10.&nbsp; <h2>Akabare Jhol Momo (Dhobighat) &nbsp;</h2> Akabare Jhol Momo is a franchise with branches in Dhobighat, Baneswor, Putali Sadak and more. The name references the famous Mughal and the Nepali idiom about not needing to peddle a quality product with super potent chillies. Despite ‘Jhol Momo’ in the name, the Dhobighat branch also has choila, bara, biryani in the menu. A plate of chicken jhol momo is Rs170 and you are even offered a choice of warm or cold jhol, plus tomato achar and a dry chili condiment. The momo is very good and the jhol tasting of toasted sesame seeds could even stand alone as a soup. 8.6/10.&nbsp; <h2>Drop In (Bhanimandal)&nbsp;</h2>  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250516090516_c95bd4d0236e31b23f4254703d55059fe60a67b5f8dcc9d573b36249bfdab270.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20250516090516_c95bd4d0236e31b23f4254703d55059fe60a67b5f8dcc9d573b36249bfdab270" data-rendition-name="original" width="1333" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Momo Loco NT"> <figcaption>Photos: VISHAD RAJ ONTA</figcaption> </figure>  Drop In is a hallowed momo spot up a flight of stairs that lead to two small rooms near the Bhanimandal basketball court. A plate of pork momo costs Rs200 and comes with 12 dumplings, not ten. The elongated momo are accompanied by a generous bowl of orange achar in which you can mix in toasted dry chili pickle or green chili vinegar. While they could be more generous with the filling, the dough is thin and the momo are light and feel authentic Tibetan. 9.4/10. &nbsp; <h2>Narayan Dai ko Masangalli Ko Momo (Patan Darbar Square)&nbsp;</h2> Narayan Dai ko Masangalli Ko Momo is another popular momo-cha chain. This branch is tucked into the entrance into Patan Darbar Square from Mangal Bazaar. Seating is at low tables on tree stump stools, and a plate of buff momo is Rs180. Perhaps this was an off day, but the jhol left stuff to be desired and filling carried too much whiff of buff. Don’t know who Narayan Dai was, but he would probably have set things right. 5.1/10.&nbsp; <h2>Nice Momo (Pulchok)&nbsp;</h2>  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250516090516_88f6e60282d8be90fb16b0643cfe1f9d455de65ac2e2439f54bcc51a2bb40a54.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20250516090516_88f6e60282d8be90fb16b0643cfe1f9d455de65ac2e2439f54bcc51a2bb40a54" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1201" loading="lazy" alt="Momo Loco NT"> </figure>  This den behind Labim Mall has a rather shady ambience but there is outside seating too. A plate of chicken momo is Rs180, served up quick, and they are very light and almost sweet. There are two sauces, a red tomato achar and a darker red hot sauce. 7.6/10.&nbsp; <h2>House of Momo (Tripureswor)&nbsp;</h2> The House of Momo is a stall on the ground floor of the United World Trade Center Mall. The solo lady running the stall instantly serves up a plate of chicken momo for Rs150 in a leaf bowl. There are two strong achar, mild and hot. While the filling is bland and the momo falls apart on the fork, the sauces and the convenience sort of make up for it. 7.1/10 <h2>Tas and Sekuwa Mahal (Teku)&nbsp;</h2>  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250516090520_fadd2362d613bc1449c92998fe51b1d5ab667af2f4a17fccdeea274c7355180f.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20250516090520_fadd2362d613bc1449c92998fe51b1d5ab667af2f4a17fccdeea274c7355180f" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1333" loading="lazy" alt="Momo Loco NT"> </figure>  It may not be the best idea to order momo at a place called Tas and Sekuwa Mahal, but it has a mutton momo on the menu at Rs280. Many plates of tas leave the kitchen before the momo are ready, which come with a peanut and a tomato achar. The mutton filling is chewy and dense, but with the spices it is pretty hard to tell apart from buff except for a slight aftertaste. 6.1/10.&nbsp; <h2>Bakery Cafe (Baneswor) &nbsp;</h2> The Bakery Cafe is a classic momo spot with a mascot of a man with a giant momo head, and staff wearing ‘I &lt;3 MOMOS’ t-shirts. This Baneswar branch has a huge interior with many unfilled seats, eerie compared to the bustling rallies and bus stop right outside. Get your momo any way you like: veg, buff, chicken, pork, mutton. Eight, ten or twelve-piece, steamed, Tibetan, T.S. Fried, C, jhol.&nbsp; The quality of the momo is undeniable. The filling has a perfect flavour and the two sauces complement each other and stick to the dumpling, which also holds up when you take a bite. But Rs350+ for an eight-piece chicken plate is above market rates. 8.7/10 <h2>Swadista Momo (Patan Dhoka)&nbsp;</h2>  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250516090516_8f8ab76fb12fcae799be632ab1a98d6ca2f058cbd060756e3e84c4d0191998ee.jpg" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20250516090516_8f8ab76fb12fcae799be632ab1a98d6ca2f058cbd060756e3e84c4d0191998ee" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1063" loading="lazy" alt="Momo Loco"> </figure>  Located just past Patan Dhoka, a plate of buff is only Rs140 at Swadista and almost always instant, and a plate of chicken is on the cheaper side at Rs150 and takes about five more minutes to arrive. The best part is the three excellent jhol choices: the standard beige soybean-sesame, an orange tomato and a fiery red chili. The trick is to create a small opening in the momo skin and let the soup seep through. 8.7/10.&nbsp; <h2>Shandar Momo (Old Baneswor)&nbsp;</h2> Shandar Momo was recently in the news for tragic reasons. Its Baneswor branch looks small from the outside but opens into a large area, busy with both dine-in eaters and many takeouts being prepared. A plate of buff is only Rs145, and comes in a sectioned plate where you can separate different sauces. The place lives up to its ‘Shandar’ name, with a wonderfully spiced momo and toasty jhol with a distinct pleasant cardamom flavour that can be addictive. 7.9/10 <h2>Ghangri Cafe (Jhamsikhel)</h2> Ghangri Cafe’s signature open top momo is served with a trio of tomato, peanut and vinegar achar. The open top lets you experiment with different combinations of condiments poured straight into the filling. While deviating from the momo norm quite a bit, and expensive at Rs375 for a plate of open chicken steamed, the gimmick works and makes for an engaging, unique experience. 9.0/10.&nbsp;

MOMO LOCO

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On the afternoon of 28 May, a massive glacier avalanche destroyed the idyllic village of Blatten in the Valais region of Switzerland. Footage of the disaster rapidly circulated around the world, sparking renewed conversation about the increasing instability of the mountain cryosphere and climate-related risks. The population of nearly 300 people had been evacuated a week prior due to concerns that unstable slopes above the glacier could trigger a catastrophic event. This is remarkable, and a testament to the value of hazard monitoring and anticipatory action. Shocked by the intensity of avalanche impacts and devastating loss, people struggled to comprehend the alternative: what if the village had been full? In Nepal, the people of the Langtang Valley, survivors of a massive glacier avalanche that killed over 300 people in April 2015, know exactly what it feels like for an entire village to be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/17/nepal-earthquake-langtang-village-everyone-was-dead">‘wiped off the map’</a> in a little more than a minute. The avalanche that buried the village of Langtang was similarly catastrophic, as the avalanche fell over 3,000m and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/19/world/asia/nepal-avalanche-langtang.html">carried nearly as much force as the Hiroshima atomic bomb</a>. Unfortunately, the people of Langtang had no warning. While these two disasters are quite different, there are some important connections between them. As the world contemplates the threat of increasing climate-related glacier hazards and wonders if and how Blatten will rebuild, I would like to draw attention to the ever-present risk of similar disasters in the Himalayas, where the scale of the problem is (arguably) larger and resources are (inarguably) more limited. As events like these become increasingly common, we need to build monitoring and <a href="https://www.undrr.org/implementing-sendai-framework/sendai-framework-action/early-warnings-for-all">early warning systems for all</a> at-risk communities. We also need more comparative analysis of the ways mountain people make sense of climate-related risks, particularly around wicked questions like hazard zoning and resettlement or relocation. How do institutions determine where to invest in hazard monitoring and early warning systems? Who gets to decide where people can rebuild, what kind of risks are ‘acceptable’, or whose uncertainties matter? As a survivor of the Langtang disaster and an applied anthropologist, this is not a thought exercise for me. I spent more than two years working with the Langtangpa community as a volunteer, and the last ten years conducting research focused on the aftermath of the Langtang avalanche and the ways people cope with disaster and climate risk in the Himalayan region. Since late 2022, I have been <a href="https://www.stimson.org/project/early-warning-systems-for-cascading-disasters-in-nepal/">working with the Stimson Center </a>to consider how we might build systems to assess and monitor the changing risks of cascading hazards in the Himalayan region. As the Swiss and a range of international organizations consider how they might provide warning for other Alpine villages living beneath glaciers, we need to expand the conversation to consider the many Himalayan villages that are similarly at-risk. The question of climate causality currently haunts the Blatten disaster -- just as it has for other similar events in recent years, including the Langtang avalanche. While attribution is incredibly complicated, many scientists have already highlighted the ways that melting permafrost and loss of seasonal snowcover and glacial mass created instability in the overall system above the Birch Glacier on Kleines Nesthorn. Not all glaciers are receding. In Blatten, recurring slope failures had also been piling debris on the glacier slowly over the years, pushing the ‘glacier tongue’ forward and weakening its integrity – and this acceleration attracted attention and focused monitoring. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7334623807573278721/">A recent post from Christian Huggel, a leading cryosphere scientist based at University of Zurich</a> examined these details and clearly stated: “Considering all these processes it would be absurd, ignorant or dishonest to state that anthropogenic warming has not played any role in the ice-rock avalanche disaster in <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/all/?keywords=%23blatten&amp;origin=HASH_TAG_FROM_FEED">Blatten</a>. Interestingly, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/01/this-is-ground-zero-for-blatten-the-tiny-swiss-village-engulfed-by-a-mountain">other scientists have indicated that “exact attribution is almost beside the point.”</a> Tellingly, it took almost ten years for formal scientific recognition (see <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01624-z">this Nature paper published in 2024</a>) in part because it was seismically triggered, overshadowing the climate-related signal.That said, many Langtangpa highlighted these connections immediately after the disaster, as many are doing in Blatten right now. <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/the-courage-and-endurance-of-the-langtangpa">My friends in Langtang have spent the last ten years rebuilding their lives</a> while wondering if another event of this magnitude might be possible.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250607140612_5ccfd4786416a151e1c2d44f79add3c196da34e1c30af9188de10982b45d72f8.jpg" data-media-id="editor_9" data-image-id="20250607140612_5ccfd4786416a151e1c2d44f79add3c196da34e1c30af9188de10982b45d72f8" data-rendition-name="original" width="1250" height="885" loading="lazy" alt="Blatten NT"> <figcaption>Copernicus statellite image of the avalanche that buried the village Blatten in Switzerland on 28 May, 2025.</figcaption> </figure>  &nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250607140616_306112d2eb5330d0a5117bae3fc372861afce5137b52f793285e6b1cf89ca31a.jpg" data-media-id="editor_10" data-image-id="20250607140616_306112d2eb5330d0a5117bae3fc372861afce5137b52f793285e6b1cf89ca31a" data-rendition-name="original" width="1733" height="1053" loading="lazy" alt="Langtang NT"> <figcaption>The deadly earthquake-triggered avalance that destroyed Langtang village in Nepal on 25 April, 2015.</figcaption> </figure>  Like the people of the Swiss Alps, the Langtangpa have been living with avalanches for centuries, and they have used both situated knowledge and practical systems to adapt to changing risks. But, in Langtang as in Blatten, the scale and impact of this singular tragedy was both unprecedented and unforeseen. Tellingly, Langtang was not a scientific hinterland: groups from a dozen different countries were conducting glaciological, hydrological, and climatological research there prior to the disaster. Blatten is a case where the scientists knew where to look. But even in relatively well-studied places like Langtang, disasters can emerge in our blind spots.&nbsp; <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/lives-on-the-line-in-the-himalaya">Last year’s Thame glacial lake outburst flood</a> (GLOF) also began in an overlooked and understudied area – <a href="https://www.stimson.org/2024/rethinking-himalayan-cryosphere-risk-assessment-in-the-wake-of-nepals-thame-disaster/">prompting scientists to rethink the ways we assess glacial lakes</a>. Issues related to <a href="https://www.icimod.org/mountain/permafrost/">melting permafrost</a>, which seems to have been a factor for both the Blatten disaster and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tashi-lhazom-5a433b22b_rebuildtil-limifloodrelief-fromtearstohope-activity-7332420946013691904-N0sH?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop&amp;rcm=ACoAAADxlvsBK3zQKg0X2xPLPS94HyMEettoSU4">the cascading ‘thermokarst lake outburst flood’ that recently occurred in the Limi Valley</a>, are increasingly recognised as a pervasive risk but it is difficult to monitor and the science is young. A multitude of different cryosphere-related disasters are possible across the Himalaya, and background risk is increasing. How do we triage between these different kinds of hazards? How do we know where to look? While it might not have been possible to monitor the glaciers and cryosphere features that contributed to the Langtang disaster, we need to be actively looking for other places where monitoring systems and early warning is possible in Nepal and the broader Himalayan region. Of course, we do need to be precise in our analysis and communication around climate attribution, but consensus does exist on some general trends: climate change is driving new hazard interactions that can generate extreme flows. Therefore, we also need to recognise the undeniable: that background risk is undeniably rising, that lives are at risk, and that we need to invest in building systems that can help anticipate events like Blatten (which takes time, time that others don’t have) immediately. The fact that Langtang has been fully rebuilt and community leaders were effective in determining the shape of their own future and ‘building back better’ their way (as complicated as that may be), demonstrates that a future can be possible, amid uncertainty. But the future of many other communities in the Himalaya, who should never have to go through what the Langtangpa went through if we can avoid it, still remains at-risk without more scientific attention and investment. Meanwhile, the monsoon is arriving in Nepal and another disaster could happen any day now. Coverage of the Blatten disaster has been rightfully robust. Praise for the scientists and authorities who identified these risks and correctly analyzed the situation is also deserved, for that is difficult work. A wider call to learn from this event and use insights to inform policy on climate risk assessment or questions of managed retreat is also exceedingly necessary and urgent. As many scientists are saying: events like this will happen again. This is a scary time in the mountains, in the Alps, in the Himalaya, and many other regions. That said, not all places are equally exposed or vulnerable. To reiterate a core question that I have been asking for years: <a href="https://dialogue.earth/en/climate/opinion-climate-disasters-integrate-local-knowledge/">Whose uncertainties matter</a>? When and why? We know that climate-related loss and damage will not be equally or equitably distributed, and that is one of the core reasons for the UN’s Early Warnings for All program. Blatten is being talked about this week <a href="https://globalplatform.undrr.org/2025/preparatory-days/global-ew4all-multi-stakeholder-forum">while the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction is going in Geneva</a>, from where some of my Nepali colleagues posted photos of them posing with a sign that speaks to the justice issue: ‘Early warnings work. They must work for everyone.” Working toward this noble goal will require a concerted and committed global effort. -- Austin Lord, PhD is a Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center and an environmental anthropologist who has been conducting research in Nepal for the past 13 years on disaster and climate risk management, water and energy policy, infrastructure development, and environmental governance.

Blatten, Langtang, and Disasters Yet to Come?

The spring 2025 <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/peak-climbing-season-2025-s4abrxny">mountaineering season</a> has started with an early reminder of the fine balance of glory and risk on <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/knowing-our-mountains-43v4iyvo">Himalayan peaks</a>.&nbsp; Everest as always is the biggest draw. But on the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/il-y-a-d-autres-annapurnas-dans-la-vie-des-hommes">75th anniversary of its first ascent</a>, Annapurna has seen record numbers of expeditions, and climbers are also commemorating 70 years of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/saving-kangchenjunga">Kangchenjunga</a>’s first successful climb in 1955.&nbsp; But as a stark reminder of the <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=2912">dangers of Himalayan mountaineering</a> that have been exacerbated by a <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/the-third-pole-is-warming-faster-than-expected">warming climate</a>, came on Annapurna with the tragic deaths of two promising young Nepali high altitude guides.&nbsp; <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/mt-everest-pvt-ltd">Everest</a> is seeing big numbers because it is Everest, and it is there. Some 220 international climbers and their guides from 22 expeditions have already arrived at Everest Base Camp, but this number is expected to cross 450, and could even beat the 2023 record of 478 foreign climbers.&nbsp; There seems to be greater demand for Everest permits because the fee is being hiked up from $11,000 to $15,000 starting this autumn. But the $4,000 increase is not expected to reduce the crowds, and therefore<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/overkill-on-everest"> the risks, on the world’s highest mountain</a>.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250418050440_f2cb0157d4779ee131d4b7ef8b67302904cad74b37aee48a778bbdcff05ed824.jpg" data-media-id="editor_8" data-image-id="20250418050440_f2cb0157d4779ee131d4b7ef8b67302904cad74b37aee48a778bbdcff05ed824" data-rendition-name="original" width="1121" height="800" loading="lazy" alt="Number of climbing permits 2025"> </figure>  The Department of Tourism starts issuing permits for the mountain only in early-April, which many find absurd because mountaineers start preparing for their Everest climb years in advance.&nbsp; “That is just the process, we want to make sure climbers have all of their paperwork in order once they land in Nepal,” says Goma Rai from the Department of Tourism.&nbsp; Even as expeditions make their first forays up the Khumbu Icefall on Everest, there has already been considerable activity on other <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/in-just-2-years-a-nepal-peak-becomes-snowless">Himalayan peaks</a>. Makalu (8,485m) has already seen <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nepali-times-buzz/seven-summits-women-climb-again,1486">successful summits </a>this season. Ten guides fixing ropes reached the top of the world’s fifth highest mountain on 10 April. &nbsp; There are two Indian expeditions on Kanchenjunga, which at 8,586m is the third-tallest mountain in the world. The Indian teams are climbing from the Nepal side of the border peak because climbing from the Indian side is not allowed. &nbsp; One of the teams is led by three-time Everest summiteer Col Ranveer Sing Jamwal which is on the last leg of the ‘Har Shikhar Tiranga’ campaign to plant an Indian tricolour on the highest point of all 28 Indian states.&nbsp; <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/those-who-stay">Unpredictable weather</a> and its technical nature makes the north face of ‘Kangch’ treacherous. There have been 12,884 Everest summits since 1953, but there have only been 250 ascents of Kanchenjunga in 70 years. Annapurna saw 45 summits over 6-7 April before the weather worsened. On 7 April, an avalanche swept away Ngima Tashi Sherpa and Rima Rinje Sherpa. Pemba Thenduk Sherpa, who was also roped up, survived. “It was a <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/five-years-after-avalanche-langtang-is-locked-down">big avalanche</a>, taller than a Kathmandu house when it came down,” recalls Pemba Thenduk. “Me and my client were right under a serac and were saved. We realised our two friends had been swept away but could not find them.”&nbsp; After four days of searching with two helicopters, the expedition company Seven Summit Trek abandoned the search. Nima Tashi was the unsung hero who helped save the life of an incapacitated Malaysian climber, carrying him down from 8,400m on Everest last year. A video of the rescue by Ngima Tashi and Gelje Sherpa became an international sensation. But luck ran out for Ngima Tashi and Rima Rinje on Annapurna last week. ‘We have lost two of our finest <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/without-sherpas-there-is-no-mountaineering">Sherpa guides</a>,’ Seven Summits said in a statement. ‘It is no longer possible for anyone to survive this long under the ice, and prolonging search means risking the lives of other Sherpas.’ In the past 75 years, Annapurna has seen the highest fatality rate among Himalayan peaks, with one third of those trying to climb it not making it down alive. This year, guides ran out of fixed rope because there were so many crevasses on the north face. They also reported bigger and more frequent rockfalls and avalanches.&nbsp; South African climber John Black was nearly caught in the avalanche that killed the guides. He then made the agonising decision to turn back soon after leaving Camp 3 last week on Annapurna.&nbsp; “I was uncomfortable and uneasy. Some may call it gut, others may call it calculated,” says Black, who actually shared a chocolate with the two Sherpas just before they were swept away by the avalanche. “It is certainly a sharp reminder that the risks are real and things can change in a heartbeat.”&nbsp; After the avalanche, there has been criticism of some climbers deciding to be helicoptered off the north face despite not showing signs of immediate emergency. A problem in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-himalayan-odyssey">Himalayan mountaineering </a>in recent years has been the greater numbers of inexperienced climbers who are not only risks to themselves, but also to guides and other climbers. Many do not know when to turn back when the going gets tough. “Some climbers struggled with crampons, some seemed to lack decent techniques for <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/if-the-ice-is-gone-we-are-done">climbing rock and ice</a>,” says Black. “In many cases, the climbers were too slow and struggled to move efficiently across tricky terrain. On a mountain like Annapurna, speed is the only thing you can do to reduce exposure to danger.”&nbsp; The problem has been made worse by instant gratification through social media posts. The challenge of climbing a Himalayan peak has been replaced by an <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/love-of-books-goes-online">Instagram</a> summit fetish, and expedition companies try to accommodate the wishes of their clients.&nbsp; The other expedition that generated a controversy even before it started is of a four-member team of British Army veterans who are ‘acclimatising’ by breathing xenon gas ahead of the climb to enhance production of their red blood corpuscles. Although this is said to be an ‘experiment’, use of the gas by the Mission Everest Expedition has been criticised because it is banned by the Anti-doping Agency as performance enhancing. Dimantha Dilan Thenuwara, a Sri Lankan IT professional, is attempting the gorgeous Ama Dablam. He plans to take both the Sri Lanka and Nepal flags up to the summit, and wear the daura suruwal Nepali national dress on top. He wants to promote a message of ‘prosperity through unity’, especially among <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/south-asia-2040-qxr16oup">South Asian countries</a>.&nbsp; Thenuwara describes himself as a pampered child who was best friends with his dad, who was killed in the 2004 Sri Lanka Tsunami. The tragedy drives him to climb.&nbsp; “This expedition is a mission that began 20 years ago,” says Thenuwara, who had to grow up quickly, and put himself through tech school. He is financing the trip himself, and believes strongly in the need for youth to remember their roots. The Ama Dablam climb is<a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=6738"> preparation for an expedition</a> to climb K2 later this year.&nbsp; Another notable expedition is of Peter Hamor of Slovakia and the Italian couple Nives Meroi and Romano Benet, who are attempting a new route on 7,590m Yalung Peak in the Kanchenjunga massif. A two-member British team is already at <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/letters-from-everest-base-camp-1-vfqcer0e">Everest Base Camp</a> to go up the Lhotse face and make one more attempt to jump off the mountain in wingsuits. &nbsp;

Glory and risk on Himalayan peaks

Architecture can be a powerful agent of change, shaping not just spaces but the way people live, connect, and experience the world.&nbsp; For Nepal, which is <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/natures-fragile-gift-to-nepal">gifted by nature</a> and rich in <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/ambassador-fund-cultural-preservation-nepal,2092">cultural heritage</a>, &nbsp;reviving rural architecture with modern amenities could hold the key to more <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/what-sustainable-tourism-means-in-practice">sustainable tourism </a>that benefits local people more. “<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/bayalpata-hospital-in-nepal-wins-global-design-award">Design and architecture</a> are amazing tools to create a unique experience for visitors,” says Spanish architect Tomeu Esteva of Esteva i Esteva Architecture Studio. “Difficult destinations have beautiful hotels with design and comfort.” Esteva was in Kathmandu with his colleagues at an event organised by the Spanish Honorary Consulate at Dwarika’s Hotel last week to showcase buildings which Nepali architects can adapt with local material and design inputs.&nbsp; Rural architecture holds a unique significance: it is more than a shelter and must reflect <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/inking-an-idenity">local identity, culture</a> and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/saving-humla-from-heritage-loss">heritage</a>. An area’s natural and cultural harmony can be upset by <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/protecting-protected-areas-from-infrastructure?fbclid=IwAR1wK0MDFlFST_2EYb3f54LS4-fPt6rYfLG1DJ1JaQsU3w8-ezyXIxGOqzk">poorly planned development</a>, speakers at the event said, but the environment can be improved and revitalised by well-integrated structures.&nbsp; Another Spanish architect, Belen Moneo, has designed hotels at elevations of 3,700m in her home country Spain that supply natural spring water spas. “<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/lost-in-reconstruction">Creativity in construction</a> must be encouraged. Rural architecture always shows possibilities of what we can do better,” Moneo explains, adding that designs must enhance <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/the-healing-power-of-nature">the beauty of nature</a> and give a natural feel at a time when steel, glass and cement dominate <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/rebuilding-kathmandu-after-the-1934-quake">urban design</a>.&nbsp; This is why the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/weaving-nature-into-craft">use of natural products</a> such as bamboo, local timber, straw and rammed earth are in demand from customers who want a fresh eco-friendly look encouraged in construction of rural architectural structures. The demand for boutique hotels has increased world over, with &nbsp;more and more tourists favouring aesthetics, experience and comfort over price. While creativity is an important part of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/architecture-for-mountains">construction and architecture</a>, incentives to build and use <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/Building,370">rural construction materials</a> still remain minimal, and Moneo emphasises the significance of design and execution.&nbsp; Esteva helped design the Vana Retreat in Dehradun that kept the natural environment in focus, with the structure giving an elaborate aesthetic experience to visitors. Another example is Hotel Las Mercedes in the Dominican Republic which was designed and constructed by Moneo and the company she co-founded Moneo Brock, respecting and revaluing the traditional architecture of the area. Hotels providing such experience could attract tourists and revenue. The Spanish ambassador to Nepal Juan Antonio March Pujol said, “The role of architecture and architects in developing tourism is crucial, not only in urban areas but rural settings as well.”&nbsp; The concept of rural boutique hotels gained traction in Spain during the 1990s, particularly in regions like Majorca with economic and environmental sustainability as the main focus. In Nepal <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/12-full-opinion/guiding-nepal-s-tourism-industry">the tourism industry</a> directly employs about 1 million people, and makes up about 8% of the country’s GDP. In Nepal, the stone homes of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/reviving-himalayan-vulture-and-culture">Mustang and Manang</a>, bamboo and mud structures of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-tarai-s-shrinking-forests">the Tarai</a>, and the Kathmandu Valley’s terra cotta tile skylines, graceful temples, and tranquil bahal courtyards are all examples of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-traditional-seismic-resistant-designs">Nepal’s traditional architecture</a>.&nbsp; Nepali architect Sarosh Pradhan has been working for the past eight years on the Brakka Village project in Manang Valley north of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/municipalities-want-to-manage-annapurna">the Annapurnas</a>. Other examples of this kind of rural architecture for high-end tourism are the Shinta Mani Hotel in Mustang and Khumbu Lodge below <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/mt-everest-pvt-ltd">Mt Everest</a>. Says Pradhan, “There are places in Nepal that radiate purity and embrace simplicity. Creating projects in such settings require deep reflection and thoughtful planning.”  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250421030444_a07a23f6b60fa89c0f35b9dc1aaf19937da4881e6bfb2e1858f3c27dff91729f.jpg" data-media-id="editor_19" data-image-id="20250421030444_a07a23f6b60fa89c0f35b9dc1aaf19937da4881e6bfb2e1858f3c27dff91729f" data-rendition-name="original" width="4608" height="2184" loading="lazy" alt="A new architecture for Nepal's tourism"> </figure>  Rural architecture is not easy, and sometimes more expensive. Inflation, energy efficiency, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/those-who-stay">the climate crisis</a>, and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/cost-of-living-in-a-big-city">increased costs of living</a> pose obstacles to sustainable rural architecture. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/forgotten-international-starchitects-in-nepal">Forgotten international starchitects in Nepal</a>, Anne Feenstra and Varun S Bapu Esteva says faith and trust between client and architect is necessary for any project to be successful. He adds that architects must practice being humble, the process of designing always involves learning and not imposing their ideas on clients. Nepal is uniquely positioned for the growth of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/hiking-up-the-benefits-of-tourism">rural tourism</a> because of its stunning countryside as well as its internationally renowned traditions in holistic wellness. Creating infrastructure that is small, thoughtfully planned and that respects both tradition and contemporary hospitality standards is crucial. “Projects in Nepal can be made cost effective by using materials from houses that have been brought down,” says Esteva. “Pilot projects involving <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/local-government-by-the-people-for-the-people-of-the-people">local people </a>and simple designing also helps the process.” <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/vacant-homes-become-homestays-in-nepal">The growth of homestays in Nepal</a> is a step in the right direction, but they are still a bit too rustic for the international traveller who also wants comfort and is willing to pay extra for it. Upgrading the facilities in homestays and ensuring that the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/an-archive-of-nepali-heritage">architectural heritage</a> of the locality is preserved using locally sourced building material could allow owners to charge more. Says Sangita Shrestha of Dwarika’s Hotel, “Our effort is to build upon rural architecture by empowering local communities and using what is available locally. We can fine tune and encourage indigenous design and training.” The vision goes beyond just boosting the economy, it is about building a future where tourism helps villages grow in a healthy and lasting way. Instead of using up resources, it gives back to the land and the people. It supports local communities by<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/staying-in-nepal-to-create-jobs"> creating jobs</a>, improving infrastructure, and protecting natural beauty. When done right, tourism can be a tool for <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/progress-and-or-preservation">preserving culture and nature</a>, not harming them. Architects must therefore see their work as more than just designing buildings, they also need to care deeply about people and places, especially in rural areas that can benefit the most.&nbsp; With global interest in sustainable and off-the-beaten-path travel increasing, Nepal stands at the cusp of a <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/missing-out-on-nepal-s-tourism-potential">tourism transformation</a> that values community-driven, eco-conscious hospitality. A mix of modern ideas and traditional knowledge could transform rural tourism in Nepal. Says Shrestha, “Young architects should spend time with <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/latest/the-unsung-heroes-of-conservation">local and indigenous communities</a>, listen to their stories, and learn from their <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/life-and-livelihood-in-remote-nepal">ways of living</a>. These communities have deep knowledge about the land, materials, and climate. If this wisdom is used in new designs, it can help create tourism spaces that truly benefit everyone.” &nbsp;

A new architecture for Nepal's tourism

Frontpage topic

A Nepal-based <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/a-few-good-agents" target="_blank">ethical</a> migrant worker recruiter has created waves internationally to be only the second company worldwide to be certified recently under the International Recruitment Integrity System (<a href="https://iris.iom.int/" target="_blank">IRIS</a>). International Manpower Recruitment (IMR) was recognized for its high ethical recruitment standards. &nbsp;This comes as Nepal reels from news involving the misuse of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/labour-mobility/revisiting-visit-visas" target="_blank">visit visas</a> by immigration officials, recruitment related <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/free-visa-free-ticket-policy-in-limbo" target="_blank">corruption</a>, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/migrating-for-domestic-work" target="_blank">bans</a>, and vested interest groups which have overshadowed the role of migration as a powerful <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/migration-is-development" target="_blank">development</a> tool.&nbsp; IRIS is an initiative of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to promote ethical recruitment of migrant workers. It is a bit like fair trade certifications for consumer products like coffee, tea or chocolate that assure conscious consumers that they are not complicit in labor abuses, even if it means having to pay a premium. Certifications like IRIS give responsible companies wanting to ethically hire Nepali workers more confidence that workers will not be cheated. It is remarkable that a <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/fee-free-migration-is-possible" target="_blank">Nepali recruiter</a> has been recognised as a global pioneer in obtaining this certification after a rigorous audit process. Only one other recruiter in Singapore has received this global certification so far, and a Kenyan company got it after Nepal’s IMR. All this is happening when the international labour market is <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/free-visa-free-ticket-policy-in-limbo" target="_blank">not yet ready</a> for ethical recruitment. Many employers still do not pay for the costs and fees that workers incur, unhealthy competition among recruiters persists, and individual brokers prey on workers. &nbsp;Complying with ethical practices therefore are not always generous, and can even threaten business sustainability of companies. IMR in Nepal has been one of the biggest recruiters in some years despite being ethical, but there have also been periods when the numbers have gone down to zero. The company was just recovering from Covid-19 impact when I first covered its work in this <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/a-few-good-agents" target="_blank">column</a> in 2021 titled ‘A Few Good Agents’. Just before the lockdowns IMR had lost business because Nepal <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-and-malaysia-rewrite-rules-for-migrant-labour" target="_blank">banned</a> the emigration of Nepalis to Malaysia, its primary destination market. Now, Malaysia has again <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/free-visa-free-ticket-policy-in-limbo" target="_blank">stopped</a> the intake of foreign workers. IMR has faced three big episodes of business downturn after it decided to become fully ethical in 2018. During such times when they sent very few workers—59 in 2019, 166 in 2020, and 75 in 2025 so far—traditional recruitment in which workers pay fees is always convenient and a profitable fall back option. There are many hiring companies looking for Nepali workers, but do not abide by the ‘employer pays’ principle. And many workers are desperate to migrate overseas even if it means by paying unjustifiably high recruitment fees.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250611080648_dc1079727ad0567a9cf457e8014e325b08cb54766bdf6f145021168237824985.jpg" data-media-id="editor_11" data-image-id="20250611080648_dc1079727ad0567a9cf457e8014e325b08cb54766bdf6f145021168237824985" data-rendition-name="original" width="4032" height="3024" loading="lazy" alt="Valuing moral migration NT"> </figure>  But ethical recruiters cannot fold to the pressures of business downturns, no matter how easy or tempting. To stay undeterred, what is required is commitment to ethical standards. The IRIS certification to Nepal’s IMR is a reward for precisely that: commitment. But how will this well-vetted stamp translate to jobs for Nepali workers? In theory, we can be hopeful that certifications like IRIS can help responsible hiring companies separate the wheat from the chaff since the industry is full of unethical players globally.&nbsp; It also may not always be practically feasible for employers to conduct their own due diligence as it can be time consuming, costly, and they may not be familiar with the Nepal market. The cost of not doing proper due diligence can also be damning for the reputation conscious brands.&nbsp; Exports from several Malaysian manufacturing companies, for example, were <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/us-ban-on-malaysian-glove-exporter-affects-nepalis" target="_blank">banned</a> after forced labour allegations. UK scheme operators faced sector wide <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/low-hanging-fruit-in-uk-farms" target="_blank">reputation damage</a>, while also losing licenses. All this when there are reliable companies which could have conducted the same recruitment drives in a responsible manner, and there are desperate jobseekers who would excel at those jobs.&nbsp; With standards like IRIS, identifying the ‘few good agents’, will be easier. There is also hope that the business downturns for ethical actors will not come in such frequencies and last so long by making diversification to new markets and sectors easier. Now with certifications like IRIS, good recruiters can distinguish themselves with more authority.&nbsp; Diversification is often difficult as good actors in the space do not have the reach, network or other means to demonstrate that they are indeed a different breed. International certifications like IRIS bring more visibility to the end of the labour supply chain actors. The workers also need to understand what such certifications mean. All overseas opportunities in Nepal are advertised as ‘free visa free ticket’ to abide by the law and misused to an extent that no one takes it seriously.&nbsp; Certifications like IRIS and other ethical accreditations would help migrants identify reliable recruiters, rather than just <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/fee-free-migration-is-possible" target="_blank">relying</a> on familiar but fraudulent individual brokers who they trust more. <div class="embed-block"><div><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://cdn.iframe.ly/api/iframe?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2F-mh1uk3fvQc%3Fsi%3DUhdQFbVY_olM4bg8&key=87ca3314a9fa775b5c3a7726100694b0" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen scrolling="no" allow="accelerometer *; clipboard-write *; encrypted-media *; gyroscope *; picture-in-picture *; web-share *;"></iframe></div></div></div> The value of this stamp of approval cannot be underestimated. After exposes of malpractice, the Nepali recruitment industry in the past has been tarred with the same brush, for example employers have pulled out from the UK seasonal visa recruitment.&nbsp; This is not a positive outcome for job seekers deprived of good recruitment opportunities. With certifications like IRIS, journalists, activists and others can also be more constructive in their exposés by putting the spotlight on ‘alternate’, well-vetted players and good practices.&nbsp; If these expectations from international certifications can translate to practice and ethical recruiters like IMR see their businesses expand, it will have a positive spillover effect across the industry. A strong business case for ethical recruitment standards will inspire more actors to forego ridiculously high profits from the traditional worker-paid model and transition from traditional to hybrid methods, then from hybrid to ethical models. Already, there are a handful of professional recruiters in Nepal who are committed to ethical recruitment and have received other international certifications. A critical mass of ethical actors in the space would raise the standards of the Nepali recruitment industry as a whole. Recruiters serve an important purpose which is often easy to overlook amidst all the malpractices by linking workers from the remotest parts of Nepal to rewarding, jobs abroad. The positive spillover also goes beyond the recruitment industry to achieve larger development goals. For example, <a href="https://www.migration-lab.com/" target="_blank">Migration Lab</a> has partnered with IMR in two projects to send workers from marginalised communities including <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/migration-is-development" target="_blank">Musahar</a> youth and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/quake-survivors-migrate-for-work" target="_blank">Jajarkot</a> earthquake victims to Malaysia at zero cost.&nbsp; These were <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mh1uk3fvQc" target="_blank">piloted</a> to making migration accessible to those in the periphery, which <a href="https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099951004022532326/pdf/IDU-c2bf0781-1145-4639-8b64-321016ade046.pdf" target="_blank">it is not</a>. Migration is a powerful tool and using it strategically for good is possible, provided recruitment drives are free from the usual malpractice and abuse. We are still a long way from the practice where hiring companies and workers will actively seek out recruiters who are well vetted with internationally recognised certifications. But the fact that a Nepali recruiter has achieved a demanding international certification, and is the second in the world to do so, is promising.&nbsp; Upasana Khadka heads <a href="https://www.migration-lab.com/">Migration Lab</a>, a social enterprise aimed at making migration outcomes better for workers and their families. Labour Mobility is a regular column in Nepali Times.

Valuing moral migration

On 3 June I was woken up at 5:30am by a call from a Kuwait-based domestic worker. A common friend had put us in touch.
“Why are you up?” I asked Sharmila, knowing that it was close to 3 AM in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepalis-in-kuwait-apply-to-return-home">Kuwait</a>. She had just got off work. Yet, that was the least of her problems.
It was her first day at this new house, where she had arrived at 9pm. Her previous employer had not been good, so with much difficulty she had been ‘returned’ to the placement office that had brought her to Kuwait.
This time, she was hopeful things would be better. At the placement office, where she waited for three weeks, there were around two dozen ‘khadama’ like her from Nepal and Sri Lanka waiting to get placed in other houses. The Nepalis, she said, had come either on <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/go-away">visit visas </a>through the UAE or through India to bypass the ban on domestic workers.
Sharmila herself had come via India. Regardless of which route they came from, they were legal since the Kuwaiti placement office that brought them are legally registered and workers had valid papers.
Meanwhile in Nepal, a ‘visit visa scandal’ has broken. The Centre for Investigation of the Abuse of Authority (CIAA) is investigating immigration officials, among others, over misuse of visit visas to facilitate human trafficking in exchange for big bribes.
There is <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/no-comment">social media outrage</a> in Nepal’s cybersphere, and calls for Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak’s resignation. That migrant workers travel on visit visas or via irregular routes such as India is well known. That there are ‘settings’ at airports with attached rates so everyone involved can get a cut is also open secret, and has always been.
A primary reason for the misuse of visit visas is the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/migrating-for-domestic-work" target="_blank">ban</a> on <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/history-of-female-im-mobility-in-nepal" target="_blank">domestic workers</a>. To be sure, there are others who also use visit visas for short-term work since the government does not approve short-term labour permits no matter how lucrative the stint.
Nepalis traveling to countries like the US through unconventional routes, jobseekers keen to find employment in the destination country itself, or by recruiters who want to circumvent legal safeguards or because there are delays in paperwork.
The misuse of visit visas under the guise of tourism is a consequence of restrictive policies like the domestic worker <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/ban-the-ban" target="_blank">ban</a> ostensibly to protect them from abuse. And when there are massive profits involved, there is also little incentive to change. Persistent bans on overseas household work have lasted despite failure to contain migrants, and the unintended but predictable risks they put outgoing workers in.
In the government’s eyes, someone like Sharmila is non-existent as a migrant because she did not receive labour approval. Her agent is non-existent because she did not travel through a vetted recruitment agency in Nepal. Her employer is non-existent because they did not have to get the ‘demand’ attested at the Nepal Embassy.
All these details would have been well-documented had domestic workers been able to migrate regularly. Domestic or care work is already an invisible sector and the ban puts workers even more at risk from exploitation and abuse.
Meanwhile complicit recruiters and employers get a pass without any accountability. Only vetted recruiters who meet criteria that are stricter than that for regular worker recruitment should be allowed to arrange jobs abroad for domestic workers. Sharmila relied on an unauthorised individual agent who she never met in person, and who did not even turn on his camera when they had video calls.
The ban not only means that workers leave through irregular channels many are also inexperienced and unprepared. Talk to any <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/every-day-is-closer-to-pay-day" target="_blank">domestic worker</a>, especially new ones, and they will tell you how the first few months are the hardest. Modern home appliances are foreign to them and there are language barriers. As per the law, domestic workers have to go through mandatory training specifically designed for them which they are deprived of because of the ban.
“I have never taken care of babies in my life,” Sharmila said on the phone. “How will I take care of the children here?”
Women’s access to jobs, both in Nepal and overseas, needs attention. Sharmila, for example, said that she could not afford the Rs200,000 that was demanded for a cleaning job in the UAE. As an orphan, no one wanted to give her loans even at high interest rates. For her job as a domestic worker in Kuwait, she did not have to pay any fee.
Many migrants land <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/homes-away-from-home" target="_blank">good homes</a>, and they do not look at the agents as villains but as enablers who helped them bypass the ban. How else would they be employed and provide for their families? A bad migration episode does not deter many from retrying their luck again through irregular channels.
Instead of the ban, more concerted, proactive <a href="https://migrationpolicycentre.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/1st_dilemma_4th_response.pdf" target="_blank">efforts</a> to manage this highly vulnerable sector rife with abuse are needed via stronger embassies, bilateral labor agreements, monitoring, pre-departure training and awareness campaigns, Regular communication, as well as <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/migrating-for-domestic-work" target="_blank">alternate</a> jobs both domestically and overseas.
This problem is not unique to Nepal. Sri Lanka’s <a href="https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/Working-paper/PDF/wp2021-44-ban-on-female-migrant-workers-skills-differentiated-evidence-Sri-Lanka.pdf" target="_blank">restrictive policies on</a> emigration has encouraged informal and illegal activities involving lower-skilled <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/two-decades-of-debate-on-female-migration">female migrant workers </a>because they have to circumvent the policy. This has led to higher exposure to recruitment related vulnerabilities and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/nepal-s-corruption-carousel">corruption</a>.
In a former diaspora-run paper called Sahayatra, UAE-based Dalbir Singh captured in 2007 the views of many UAE-based migrants regarding the government <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/lift-the-ban-on-domestic-workers">ban on domestic workers</a>. Migrants had a similar view: that domestic work sector should not be banned given that it puts workers in more vulnerability, but more protection is needed given the vulnerabilities in the sector.
The article noted that a river should not be blocked just because it floods. It was known 18 years ago and even earlier that bans do not protect domestic workers, and there is a long history of flip-flopping between bans of various kinds.
The last one was put in place in 2017 after a Parliamentary committee visited the Gulf and decided it was unsafe for domestic workers, regardless of gender. After a similar 2020 trip, the committee instructed the government to revisit the ban considering country-specific policies and several preconditions, which were still deemed restrictive, but better than previous rules. Implementation has been weak despite the proposal around <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/ban-on-female-migrant-workers-to-be-lifted" target="_blank">lifting</a> the ban starting with a pilot agreement with the UAE.
Will the latest ’visit visa scandal’ lead to constructive discussions around how to manage emigration better? Or will it just lead to a further clamp down on visit visa misuse by proposing bizarre alternates as has been done in the past? The most recent <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/history-of-female-im-mobility-in-nepal" target="_blank">proposal</a> that got quashed, for example, included a requirement to get "written consent from the guardian and local government for women under 40 to travel to the gulf and Africa.”
For <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-hard-working-students-overseas">Nepali youth</a> with a <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/push-factors-driving-nepalis-out">preference for overseas jobs</a>, there are enough vacancies and unfilled jobs in the world. They do not have to be compelled to become fake visitors, seek backdoor entry as students, rely on unauthorised agents, or even fight wars.
But for that we need to prioritise regular, safe pathways and responsible employers, and not create bottlenecks in the name of protection.
BANNING and UNBANNING
Timeline of Nepal regulations on overseas household work
1985-1995
&gt; Consent required from a guardian to go for foreign employment.
1995-2000
&gt; Women permitted to go for foreign employment in certain organised sectors (1997)
&gt; Ban on labour migration for women (1998)
2000-2005
&gt; Conditional ban provided women obtains security guarantee from Nepal’s diplomatic missions in countries outside the Gulf (2000)
&gt; Reapproval needed after visiting Nepal (2003)
&gt; Letter of approval from local governments and family members (2003)
&gt; Foreign employment for females in organised sector in Malaysia opened (2005)&nbsp;
2005-2010
&gt; Restrictions on female migrants to work in organised sector lifted (2007-2008)
&gt; Complete ban on domestic workers to Lebanon (2009)
&gt; Ban lifted for women to go to Gulf countries.
2010-2015
&gt; Women allowed to migrate to any country including as domestic workers with a government target of 150,000 female migrants, mostly to Gulf countries (2011)
&gt; Age ban for women domestic workers less than 30 years to work in Gulf countries (2012)
&gt; Temporary ban on domestic workers in Gulf countries (20-14)
&gt; Age ban for women under 25 for domestic workers in Gulf countries (2015)
2015-2020&nbsp;
&gt; Women above 24 allowed for domestic work through select recruitment agencies if a separate bilateral agreement is signed (2016)
&gt; Ban on domestic workers after field visit by Parliament Committee (2017)
&gt; Ban lifted for current domestic workers to visit Nepal during holidays and remigrate (2019)
&gt; Parliament committee recommends country-specific approach instead of blanket ban (2020)&nbsp;

Revisiting visit visas

Israel’s ongoing war of annihilation in Gaza has wiped out hospitals, schools, homes, water, and food, reducing the Palestinian territory to a wasteland and leaving a death toll of more than 53,000 people. But an equally lethal campaign has been unleashed against the foundations of Palestinian society and identity.
The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has targeted libraries, repositories, and institutions of Palestinian culture and heritage in a mission to eradicate the history, literary accomplishments, and political and social existence of Palestine as a place and people.
“The losses in Gaza are vast, incalculable, as we are still in the throes of a genocidal war that has already destroyed 70% of the Gaza Strip and killed or maimed 10% of its embattled population,” says Raja Khalidi, Co-Administrator of the Khalidi Library, an Arab public library founded by the Khalidi family in East Jerusalem more than a century ago. “So has the Israeli war machine in Gaza and the West Bank wrought indiscriminate destruction that threatens erasure of Palestinian written, architectural, and archaeological cultural heritage.”
In a recent report on the destruction of libraries, archives, and museums in Gaza since the conflict erupted in 2023, the solidarity organisation <a href="https://librarianswithpalestine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/LAP-Gaza-Report-2024.pdf">Librarians and Archivists with Palestine</a> (LAP) stated that “the destruction of cultural heritage in Gaza impoverishes the collective identity of the Palestinian people, irrevocably denies them their history, and violates their sovereignty.”
“The greatest loss remains the normalisation of the daily massacres of Gazans, including children. Every Palestinian life is a record, a history. The Zionist war machine realises this and the targeting of children, in particular, is an attempt at destroying the future narrative of Palestine,” says Ahmad Almallah, a Palestinian poet who grew up in Bethlehem and now lives in Philadelphia in the United States.
Bordered by Israel to the east and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Gaza comprises 365 square kilometers of land that is home to about 2.1 million Muslim and Christian Palestinians who have lived under siege for more than half a century. Many Palestinians fled to Gaza following Israeli dispossession of their villages and homes during the Al-Nakba, or the ‘Catastrophe,’ in 1948. Then the territory was part of Egypt. Israel subsequently seized Gaza during the Six-Day War of 1967 until 1993, when the Oslo Accords made way for it to be administered by the Palestinian Authority.
The Islamic resistance organisation, Hamas, then took power in 2005. Its launching of a <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepalis-confirmed-killed-in-hamas-attack">raid and attack within Israel in October 2023</a>, which resulted in the death of 1,200 Israelis with 251 taken hostage, triggered the current Gaza war. Since then, the IDF has sustained a relentless military onslaught leading to the obliteration of every facility for human habitation in Gaza and the escalation of a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/hamas-israel-gaza-crisis-hunger-palestinians-war-9caf8f6eb19efe038c1fd50aa1d2d8ec">humanitarian crisis</a> due to lack of food, water, shelter, and medical services.
While a ceasefire began on 19 January, disputes between Israel and Hamas about progress in hostage and prisoner exchanges led to the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq6yp5d5v9jo">ceasefire fracturing on 18 March</a>. The IDF resumed its offensive with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu further threatening to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-gaza-hamas-katz-annex-idf-palestinian-witkoff-rcna197434">annex parts of Gaza</a>.
This month <a href="https://www.unesco.org/en/gaza/assessment">UNESCO</a> reported that Israel had destroyed 107 important cultural sites in the Palestinian enclave, including historic buildings, mosques, churches, and museums. And last year, LAP detailed the damage and destruction of <a href="https://librarianswithpalestine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/LAP-Gaza-Report-2024.pdf">22 libraries and archives</a>, including Gaza’s Central Archives, which contained valuable documentation of the enclave’s 150-year history. 
The Diana Tamari Sabbagh Library, which held tens of thousands of books, was also destroyed, as was the Omari Mosque and Library, which was built in the 7th century and held a major collection of rare books dating to the 14th century. Four university libraries in Gaza also suffered damage, including the Al-Quds Open University Library and the Jawaharlal Nehru Library of Gaza’s Al-Azhar University. Historical records destroyed in Gaza include those that proved Palestinian land and property ownership.‘
Several years ago, the occupation destroyed the National Library in Gaza, razing its towering structure to the ground. With its destruction, the dream of creating a repository for both ancient and modern Palestinian works was obliterated. The site that once promised to preserve a rich cultural heritage became little more than a platform for displaying political party flags and leaders’ portraits,’ Palestinian novelist <a href="https://internationaleonline.org/contributions/the-library-and-the-massacre-a-novelists-testimony-on-the-destruction-of-libraries-in-the-gaza-strip/">Yousri al-Ghoul</a> wrote in January.
The current conflict continues attempts to erase Palestinian history and identity that began during the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-nakba-how-the-palestinians-were-expelled-from-israel-205151">Al-Nakba</a> when Palestinian homes and their contents were looted and destroyed.
“As a child of the first intifada in Palestine, even words, the raw material for books, were very dangerous toys to play with. The Israeli occupation banned using the word ‘Palestine,’ and children and teenagers caught inscribing the word on a wall were either shot dead or arrested and subjected to torture. But that didn’t stop Palestinians from writing the word and piling on it poems, literature, and personal and natural history,” adds Almallah.
Together with this loss, Palestinian writers, intellectuals, artists, and journalists have been killed, putting in jeopardy the continuity of knowledge and culture within society and its transmission to the next generation. Those who have lost their lives since 2023 include the writer <a href="https://www.all4palestine.org/ModelDetails.aspx?gid=7&amp;mid=121099&amp;lang=en">Abdul Karim Hashash</a>, who has written many books on Palestinian poetry and culture, and <a href="https://madisonrafah.org/meca-colleague-and-friend-doaa-al-masri-killed-in-gaza/">Doaa Al-Masri</a>, Librarian at Gaza’s Edward Said Library.
In 2016 the International Criminal Court identified the desecration of a people’s cultural heritage as a <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2016/09/541172">war crime</a> in a case about Islamist attacks on UNESCO-protected monuments in Timbuktu in Mali. Subsequently, in 1954, <a href="https://www.unesco.org/en/heritage-armed-conflicts/1954-convention">the Hague Convention</a>, an international treaty stipulating the protection of cultural property in armed conflicts, was established and has now been signed by 136 countries.
More recently, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67922346">South Africa</a> included allegations of cultural dispossession in the case it launched in 2023 of genocide by Israel in Gaza in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). It will likely take the court years to reach a ruling. But in January last year, it issued initial orders to Israel to prevent and punish acts and public incitement to commit genocide by its military, an order that Israel continues to ignore.
“The international community has failed Palestinians, it has failed Gaza now. It has not done anything to stop the genocide and the massacring of children. I don’t expect they will do anything to save our books. But despite all Zionist attempts to silence them, we are witnessing Palestine becoming part of world heritage; Palestine is now everywhere,” says Almallah.
In the meantime, there are important institutions in the region taking action to ensure the tactics of erasure will not succeed. In Jerusalem, the <a href="https://www.khalidilibrary.org/en">Khalidi Library</a>, which is home to a rich collection of thousands of books and Islamic manuscripts representing an Arab literary heritage over many centuries, is a testament to cultural resilience. It also conducts extensive manuscript conservation, restoration, and digitization work and has been a pillar of vibrant Palestinian scholarship, thought, and writing since the early 20th century.
Khalidi emphasised that, looking ahead, in any reconstruction plan for post-war Gaza, “the first task will be for competent organisations, such as UNESCO, to launch a proper survey of the destruction of cultural heritage in Gaza… then ensure the future preservation and restoration or digitisation of salvaged collections.”
<a href="https://www.ipsnews.net/2025/05/palestinians-call-out-israels-mission-to-destroy-their-history-and-cultural-heritage-in-gaza/">Republished</a> under an arrangement with Inter Press Service (IPS).

The loss of an identity

With just under two months remaining till the end of the current fiscal year, the<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-government-changes-again"> Nepal government</a> this week is set to announce its budget for the year 2025/26.&nbsp; Nepal’s budget has grown steadily over the past decade, from Rs618 billion in the fiscal year 2014/15 to Rs1.79 trillion in 2022/23. But this upward trend tells only half the story, as the total expenditure has consistently fallen short of the planned budget.&nbsp; Short of flamboyant promises and populist schemes, successive Nepali governments, regardless of party, have consistently failed to utilise the allocated budget. This year, Nepal spent just 36% of the allocated development budget. Such recurrent underspending diminishes the government's ability to simulate the<a href="https://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/Details/aggregatedemand.html#:~:text=What%20Is%20Aggregate%20Demand%3F,%2C%20services%2C%20and%20capital%20goods." target="_blank"> aggregate demand</a> and slows economic growth.&nbsp; The country’s current annual average total expenditure shortfall is just over 20%, largely due to bureaucratic and institutional inefficiencies that continue to hamper budget implementation. Furthermore, poorly-made project proposals, shoddy planning, slow-moving procurement activities, quick turnover of technical staff, and inefficient inter-ministerial coordination contribute to a limited capacity to administer development across Nepal.&nbsp; This has led to a culture of frantic, &nbsp;last-minute budget spending on Nepal, with <a href="https://internationalbudget.org/wp-content/uploads/Nepal-Budget-Credibility-and-the-Sustainable-Development-Goals.pdf" target="_blank">40</a>% of the allocated development expenditure spent on the final month of the fiscal year, leading to a misuse of resources and poor project results. These inadequacies are compounded by the lack of coordination between federal, provincial, and local governments, especially as capacity constraints at the subnational level have been a long-standing issue. Experts express particular concern over provincial and local governments, where staff are often short on technical skill and administrative know-how required for budget implementation.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250528030544_6eb2a05152532fbffd1ec32f130b0d030baf2b46963be269b68bc50417d1a814.png" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20250528030544_6eb2a05152532fbffd1ec32f130b0d030baf2b46963be269b68bc50417d1a814" data-rendition-name="original" width="512" height="485" loading="lazy" alt="Budget NT"> </figure>  For instance, provincial governments spent just 34% and local governments spent 24.4% of its budget in the fiscal year 2022/2023, which suggests a persistent deficit in planning, implementation, and resource management. &nbsp;&nbsp; A breakdown of the recurrent and capital expenditures reveals even deeper dysfunctions and gaps between the allocated and actual spending of recurrent and capital expenditure. Recurrent expenses are government spending to maintain <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/nepals-uncivil-servants">public services</a> and administration, including interest, pensions, salaries, social security, and subsidies. Meanwhile, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/till-debt-do-us-part">capital expenditure</a> involves investing in long-term assets such as development programs, equipment, and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/climate-smarter-himalayan-infrastructure">infrastructure projects </a>to expand the productive capacity of the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/now-the-economy-stupid">economy</a>. As it stands, Nepal’s recurrent expenditure is staggering compared to capital spending. <a href="https://scispace.com/papers/relationship-between-capital-and-recurrent-expenditure-with-hpoenzfmk4" target="_blank">Studies</a> show that the money spent on recurrent expenditure tends to have a stronger and more immediate effect on the GDP.&nbsp; In the fiscal year 2022/2023, Rs1.18 trillion was allocated for recurrent spending, while Rs380 billion was earmarked for capital expenditure. However, actual spending fell short of allocations in both expenditures, with recurrent expenditure falling short by an annual average of 14.7% and capital expenditure by a much larger average of 35.30% over the last nine years. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This consistent underspending in capital expenditure is particularly alarming, and has direct impacts on the macroeconomy. It also plays a crucial role in creating economic momentum through the proper business <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/why-invest-in-nepal">investment </a>climate and business confidence.&nbsp; When capital expenditure falls short, aggregate demand contracts result in fewer<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/few-jobs-created-by-nepal-employment-drive"> employment opportunities</a>, reduced household consumption, and delayed infrastructure projects that discourage business investment.&nbsp; Meanwhile, the dominance of recurrent expenditure driven by rising administrative and social security expenditures continues to crowd out funds for capital investment, perpetuating a cycle where budget numbers grow, but transformative development fails to take shape. &nbsp; The core challenge in Nepal's budget execution can be explained by the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/principal-agent-theory" target="_blank">principal-agent</a> problem theory - an economic theory that explains the misalignment of conflicting incentives between two parties. In the context of Nepal, the Ministry of Finance is the principal authority that allocates the budgets and resources, while the line ministries are the agents assigned to propose and execute the budget.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250528030544_3b3b12a4065ae34b9703e848ff91f40ff570ce4b771e44d4338c4b134054f42e.png" data-media-id="editor_12" data-image-id="20250528030544_3b3b12a4065ae34b9703e848ff91f40ff570ce4b771e44d4338c4b134054f42e" data-rendition-name="original" width="512" height="377" loading="lazy" alt="Budget NT"> </figure>  However, a disconnect in incentives between the Finance Ministry and line ministries often leads to budget misallocations, which in turn cause inefficiencies and poor budget outcomes. &nbsp; One of the key dimensions of the problem is asymmetric information. The Line ministries possess detailed information of their needs and priorities in projects that are unavailable and unverifiable to the MOF. This information gap further incentivises ministries to propose higher budgets than actually needed.&nbsp; This is common behavior and expected in budget negotiations, as ministries compete for limited funds and seek to maximise their budget. Consequently, funds may be disproportionately allocated to ministries that lobby more effectively or exaggerate needs rather than those that would deliver the greatest public benefit. &nbsp;&nbsp; Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-in-the-red">Nepal in the red</a>, Ramesh Kumar This budgetary misallocation distorts not only priority projects &nbsp;but also induces &nbsp;inefficiencies in implementation. Where funds flow into inefficient use as a result, the government cannot deliver effective services or complete development projects within scheduled deadlines. This results in delayed spending, wastage of resources, and underperformance, which undermine economic growth and confidence in government. &nbsp; Closing the persistent gap between allocated total budgets and total expenditures and between the allocated and actual recurrent and capital expenditures requires the Finance Ministry to strengthen its <a href="https://ieg.worldbankgroup.org/what-monitoring-and-evaluation" target="_blank">monitoring and evaluation</a> to appropriately administer resources after the budget announcement.&nbsp; For this, the Finance Ministry must ensure effective monitoring of how line ministries spend their allocated funds throughout the fiscal year, so that it can hold the other ministries accountable and identify bottlenecks or time delays in budget implementation. This can be achieved through periodic reporting of progress, linking budget release with performance, and using combined financial management information systems. In addition, linking future budget allocations to ministries’ past performance in budget utilisation would create stronger incentives for responsible and efficient spending. When ministries know that their ability to secure funds in the next fiscal year depends on how well they manage and execute their current budget, they are more likely to submit realistic proposals and prioritise timely implementation. Doing so would help to synchronize the incentives of the Finance Ministry and line ministries in order for Nepal to effectively execute the budget and direct resources toward projects aligned with our national priorities, ultimately minimising the country’s budget deficit. Siddhartha Rayamajhi holds a BA in Economics from Kathmandu University.

How Nepal can budget wisely

A growing number of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/searching-for-a-homeland-away-from-home">adult adoptees of Nepali origin have started returning to the land of their birth</a>, and seeking not only emotional reconnection but formal recognition through the Non-resident Nepali (NRN) card or citizenship.&nbsp; But these returnees are too often met not with welcome, but with suspicion, obstruction, and at times, open hostility.&nbsp; After becoming the first adoptee to obtain an NRN card, I recently returned to Nepal to successfully claim <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-citizenship-amendment-bill-explained">NRN-citizenship</a>. That success does not signify a welcoming state structure towards adoptees. On the contrary, it was an odyssey through psychological, legal and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/making-overseas-migration-better">transnational hurdles</a>. In fact, my case is among the more straightforward ones: my birth parents are alive, and my adoption paperwork is complete and legally valid. Yet even in this privileged scenario, officials created several hurdles and used intimidation instead of supporting my <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/now-what">return to Nepal</a>, which would be expected from a public service agency. I was able to counter this with legal knowledge and persistence.&nbsp; But for most adoptees it is not so easy. A systemic overhaul is urgently needed. Thousands of children were involuntarily removed from their country of birth under fabricated or incomplete documentation. Then there is the negligence of <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=15215">adoption </a>agencies and government institutions, which often failed to preserve adoption records. Nepal’s citizenship laws are built on assumptions that do not hold for internationally adopted citizens -- they presume patrilineal continuity, uninterrupted documentation, and lifelong presence within the country. But <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-baby-export">intercountry adoption</a> especially interrupts all of these.&nbsp; It severs legal ties with birth parents, replaces surnames, and shifts <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=19930">jurisdiction abroad</a>. What remains is often a fragile or incomplete paper trail, if at all. Yet adoptees are still expected to prove family ties that the law itself dissolved, claim a birthplace without official records, and seek recognition while being treated as foreigners. At first glance, it may seem as though we as adult adoptees are asking to be written into a legal framework that was never meant for us. But this perception ignores both <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/12-full-opinion/nepal-s-history-foretold">Nepal’s historical promises</a> and the core of its own <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepals-unequal-citizenship-law">citizenship policy</a>. The country follows jus sanguinis — the right of blood — as its guiding principle, meaning that descent from a Nepali parent should be sufficient to establish eligibility. In theory, this includes adoptees who can prove their birth and parentage. But the practical process demands documentation that many adoptees simply do not possess due to systemic negligence during the adoption era such as a citizenship certificate of a parent or grandparent, an original Nepali birth certificate, verified family links, or a local ward recommendation. The structural failure of the government to rectify those mistakes and grant birthright citizenship is in violation of the human rights of its five thousand adoptees. In my own file, for example, my birth father and adoptive parents signed a clause agreeing not to erase my religion or name and to facilitate my return to Nepal. These were not symbolic gestures — they were official commitments enshrined in Nepali legal documents. They demonstrate an intention by the Nepali state to protect the child’s identity and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-assam-connection-revived">connection to the country</a>, not to erase it.&nbsp; The state must therefore do its part to honor the clauses it required others to sign. Failing to do so does not just betray individual adoptees—it undermines <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/constitutional-guardianship-in-nepal">Nepal’s credibility in its own legal system</a> and its obligations under <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/latest/stop-stalling-transitional-justice-global-human-rights-bodies">international human rights</a> and children’s rights frameworks.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250522230540_980907d76717d6d91e3f40ac73cdbddd83fe2887f385994541aa19ea4f434992.png" data-media-id="editor_12" data-image-id="20250522230540_980907d76717d6d91e3f40ac73cdbddd83fe2887f385994541aa19ea4f434992" data-rendition-name="original" width="1015" height="922" loading="lazy" alt="Born in Nepal, treated as a foreigner NT"> <figcaption>Adoption agreement between Kul Prasad Adhikari and the family Sacré-Bonnarens with official government stamps detailing Clause 3 about facilitating the return of the adoptee to his/her own country. </figcaption> </figure>  Yet, what adult adoptees now face is the opposite. The hostility we encounter at orphanages, local wards, and District Administration Offices (DAO) stands in sharp contrast to the protective spirit of the original documents. More troubling still is the contradiction between Nepal’s 2010 suspension of intercountry adoption — initiated after international concern over <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/from-the-nepali-press/children-and-crime">child trafficking</a>, falsified documentation, and lack of regulatory oversight — and its ongoing refusal to facilitate the legal return of adoptees.&nbsp; Reports by UNICEF and Hague Conference observers documented cases of children being declared<a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=4734"> orphans </a>while biological families were still alive, prompting countries like the US, France, and Italy to halt adoptions from Nepal.&nbsp; In 2007 and again in 2010, Nepal pledged reform, but while the pipeline of adoptions was shut down, no system was created for those sent abroad to come back home. The very individuals whose lives were shaped by <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/higher-corruption-in-high-places">the corrupt system </a>Nepal sought to abolish are now being left in limbo. Here are four moments from my NRN citizenship application that highlight the scale of the problem: "You’re not Nepali!"&nbsp; -Kaski DAO official holding my birth certificate At the Kaski DAO office, I was told to my face, while the officer held my Nepali birth certificate in his hands, that I was not Nepali. My Belgian citizenship documents also stated my place of birth as Kaski, and my adoption papers clarified my connection to my birth and adoptive parents. Yet the verdict was final. It was only after we requested to speak to the Deputy Officer and argued based on Nepal’s own adoption documents that we were permitted to begin the procedure. Ironically, the Legal Handbook for Non-Resident Nepalis explicitly lists birth in Nepal as one of the primary forms of proof for establishing NRN eligibility, yet even this was dismissed at the local level. "You don’t speak Nepali, you’re not Nepali!"&nbsp; -Kaski DAO official Several officers opposed the Deputy's decision. They began obstructing the process, questioning my motive, and ridiculing my language ability. One insisted that I respond without my lawyer, as if speaking Nepali, even imperfectly, could serve as legal proof of citizenship.&nbsp; Another official absurdly accused me of speaking with a Hindi accent. I was told, over and over again, that I was not Nepali. Yet language proficiency is not a criterion for citizenship by descent, making these remarks not only discriminatory but legally unfounded. I know my rights and persevered, but many adoptees would be deterred by such hostile behaviour. "You faked your birth certificate!"&nbsp; -Kaski DAO official The accusation of forgery came from a more senior officer. Like most adoptees, I only had English translations of my adoption records, and the originals were not preserved by the ward office. The ward office of my birth parents facilitated the renewal of the certificate based on the English translation. The Embassy of Nepal in Belgium had accepted this same document for my NRN card. Yet at the Kaski DAO office, it became grounds for suspicion. Here lies the deeper issue for adoptees: due to incomplete or untranslated records, ward offices often need to reconstruct or reissue birth certificates to align with the format required for legal procedures in Nepal. If Nepal failed to preserve its records, why punish the adoptee? "You should be grateful you’re even considered for citizenship!"&nbsp; -Kaski DAO official Despite having fulfilled every legal requirement, my file was repeatedly placed at the bottom of the pile. When we questioned the delay, we were told to be grateful that I was even being considered. But citizenship is not a gesture of goodwill. It is a legal right. Adoptees, like all Nepalis born <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/born-in-nepal">in Nepal</a>, are entitled to that right, regardless of where they grew up. The ability of lower-level staff to delay or obstruct files at their discretion reveals a deeper structural problem: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/nepal-must-reboot-human-rights-rule-of-law">access to rights in Nepal</a> too often depends not on the law, but on the personal attitudes of those tasked with upholding it. While the hostility was jarring, there were also moments of empathy. The Deputy Officer and Chief Officer acted with integrity, supported my case, and even apologised for the unnecessary delays. But this does not erase the need for structural change. Adoptees returning to claim citizenship are not asking for special treatment. They are invoking rights already granted to them under international law, including<a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=16505"> the Convention on the Rights of the Child </a>and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These frameworks guarantee the right to identity, family, and nationality. Nepal has an obligation to honour them. Countries like<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/delayed-dreams-for-korea-bound-nepalis"> South Korea </a>have embraced returnee adoptees as part of their diaspora. Nepal must do the same. Public education campaigns and training for administrative staff are urgent. DAO officers must be equipped to understand who adoptees are, what records they can bring, and how their return is not a threat, but a form of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/justice-delayed-justice-denied-byrx8a1c">justice</a>. The roughly 5,000 Nepali children adopted abroad were once exported as orphans. Now, many are returning as adults — educated, legally prepared, and determined. They are not visitors. They are citizens.&nbsp; And they will not wait. They will claim their rights, case by case, until the system is forced to evolve. Hari Prasad Adhikari Sacré, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University in Belgium, specialising in education, multilingualism, identity and intercountry adoption.

Born in Nepal, treated as a foreigner

<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/human-face-of-a-himalayan-climate-crisis" target="_blank">Janmu Sherpa</a> was a grandmother with a dozen goats and a tea house in Donggang in the Rolwaling Valley. Her stopover served trekkers en route to Tso Rolpa Glacial Lake and the trail over Tashi Laptsa Pass to Khumbu. In 2018, I spent months in the Rolwaling Valley studying how <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/rastraraj_bhandari_what_climate_activists_are_doing_wrong" target="_blank">mountain communities perceive</a> climate change. Unlike my climate-anxious self, Janmu was calm, even hopeful, despite having lived through floods, landslides, and the 2015 earthquakes. “No one knows when Tso Rolpa will burst, so we cannot stop our daily chores. Let fate decide,” Janmu Sherpa had said. Last year, fate did decide. On 22 June 2024, the Dorji Phungmo Glacial Lake burst. The resulting flood swept through the Rolwaling River, washing away homes and hotels in Donggang. Janmu <a href="https://thehimalayantimes.com/nepal/climbers-valley-devastated-by-floods-immediate-relief-sought" target="_blank">was among</a> the missing, and later declared dead.&nbsp; I learned of her disappearance during a recent cycling trip through Panauti along the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/a-flood-of-tears-on-the-rosi" target="_blank">Rosi Khola</a>, which was devastated by deadly flash floods on 28 September 2024.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025051918054_14898953b7a5808b51440f7a6fa35a7d66146bbb1d62bf88729a83a558ca8ebf.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="2025051918054_14898953b7a5808b51440f7a6fa35a7d66146bbb1d62bf88729a83a558ca8ebf" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="A pre-monsoon déjà vu"> <figcaption>Tso Rolpa glacial lake at 4,580m has grown seven times in size in the past 60 years due to global warming. </figcaption> </figure>  Tipper trucks rumbled through the dusty road, carrying stones and gravel from unregulated quarries and sand mining along the Rosi. This was destruction disguised as development, and the crusher industries had <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-revenge-of-the-rivers" target="_blank">magnified the impact of record rainfall</a>. On the other side of the mountain, along the Lele and Karmanasa Khola, families are still reeling from last year’s floods. Here, too, a quarrying frenzy exacerbated the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/nepal-valley-suffers-quadruple-disaster">destructive power of the floods</a>. There are thousands of untold stories like Janmu, and the estimated 200 who perished in the September floods. Most have been forgotten, their deaths blamed on fate. I write this from afar, as Kathmandu hosts the Sagarmatha Sambaad this week to draw global attention to the impact of the climate crisis on the Himalaya. The summit took place as pre-monsoon rains lashed the Rosi and Lele Valleys. Even before the start of the rainy season, more debris flows from the mining operations destroyed repaired roads and neighbourhoods rebuilt after floods last year. The rivers that flooded Kathmandu in September 2024 are still vulnerable. Aside from a few sandbanks built by local hands, nothing has changed. No national reckoning. No systemic response. Instead, everything is blamed on climate change.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025051918054_57fa57586b1e370e715daf837aa4cae3e73b0f029bb0ccef8be768e85656cc5f.jpg" data-media-id="editor_7" data-image-id="2025051918054_57fa57586b1e370e715daf837aa4cae3e73b0f029bb0ccef8be768e85656cc5f" data-rendition-name="original" width="1499" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="A pre-monsoon déjà vu NT"> <figcaption>Janmu Sherpa's village of Donggang is directly downstream from Tso Rolpa Glacial Lake.</figcaption> </figure>  <a href="http://as%20kathmandu%20hosts%20the%20sagarmatha%20sambaad/" target="_blank">Janmu Sherpa’s story</a> haunts me not just because of her loss, but because she shaped my journey as a climate activist. She taught me that climate action is not just about carbon or conferences, it is about livelihoods, listening, and the impossible trade-offs faced by communities where survival is more urgent than sustainability. As monsoon clouds gather again, there is a sense of dread not just about floods, but for the apathy that follows. We are trapped in a cycle of climate inaction fueled by corruption, state neglect, and a development model that treats rivers as resources to be drained, not lifelines to be protected. It is no longer a question of if the floods will come, but when, and how devastating they will be. And yet, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/politicians-and-cronies-blamed-for-kavre-floods" target="_blank">those in power remain unmoved</a> even when disaster strikes their own backyard. We are still chasing climate finance and hosting international summits, while local insurance markets stagnate and communities fend for themselves. To be sure, global advocacy matters. The Himalayan climate crisis must be on the international agenda. Melting glaciers here affect billions downstream. But adaptation cannot begin and end in air-conditioned conference halls. It must bring real preparedness to villages, valleys, and riverbanks of Nepal.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025051918058_3ec77114d434385351ad1637fd5ab42dc6a76b94b0e90f1c6e683c71535f6e6a.jpg" data-media-id="editor_10" data-image-id="2025051918058_3ec77114d434385351ad1637fd5ab42dc6a76b94b0e90f1c6e683c71535f6e6a" data-rendition-name="original" width="1701" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="A pre-monsoon déjà vu"> <figcaption>The Sagarmatha Sambaad climate conference in Kathmandu this week. Photo: PRADEEP RAJ ONTA / RSSseasonmedia2007</figcaption> </figure>  I visited the communities ravaged by floods in September and as I wrote in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/flood-of-despair" target="_blank">Nepali Times</a> then, top-down responses are always too little, too late and too ineffective. The only real solution is bottom-up, community-led adaptation. Those who lived through the floods know what needs to be done, and those privileged and in power need to enable them. Community-led adaptation is not just a buzzword. It is our only viable path forward. It means empowering local people with the tools, knowledge, and resources to protect themselves. It means investing in early warning systems that reach the last mile and actually work, restoring ecosystems that buffer floods, and supporting indigenous knowledge that has long helped communities live in harmony with nature. It means letting go of our belief that somehow our degrees in climate change and attendance in global climate conferences enable us to tell communities how they should be responding to climate change. It means shifting power and funding to the grassroots, where resilience is not theoretical — it is lived, practiced, and urgently needed. As the rains return, I am reminded of Janmu Sherpa’s voice of quiet wisdom. Her innate resilience did not save her life. Let us not wait for the next flood to act. Let us protect what we still have. Rastra Raj Bhandari is co-founder and fellow at the Himalayan Water Project, where he leads the research on climate finance opportunities for the Himalaya.

A pre-monsoon déjà vu

Nepali Times #1265 (13-19 June 2025)

Global temperature increase is nearing 1.5°C since pre-industrial times, pushing the planet close to irreversible climate tipping points. The Himalayan region is warming even faster than the global average. The exhibition At the Tipping Point: Art and Ecology from the Rooftop of the World seeks to bring the climate emergency into focus, showing that it is not a distant threat, but a present reality reshaping the natural world around us. The exhibition at Taragaon Next features work from 12 artists, including Amit Machamasi, Chris Jordan, Himali Singh Soin, Joana Moll, Maksud Ali Mondal, Monica Ursina Jäeger, Robertina Sebjanic, Salil Subedi, Samyukta Bhandari, Saurganga Darshandhari, Ursula Biemann and Utsa Hazarika.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250617150624_dcdda5b774c21e7f4d2a7e2182aa37a627ebd18f2733491689589d65d287ad82.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20250617150624_dcdda5b774c21e7f4d2a7e2182aa37a627ebd18f2733491689589d65d287ad82" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1200" loading="lazy" alt="Himalayan tipping points NT"> <figcaption>Amit Machamasi’s Not the Same Anymore, The Irony, and Seeds and Tools</figcaption> </figure>  They highlight the strategic location of Nepal and call for a ‘fundamental rethinking of the ecological imagination- where the local and the global, the visible and the invisible, the scientific and the spiritual converge’ though photographs, paintings, multimedia visuals and sounds. “The world will wake up when you say Everest, it is an important barometer to look at ecology, especially that of Nepal,” says curator Arshiya Lokhandwala from India. “The idea was to look at not only local but global issues as well.”&nbsp; The exhibition began on 5 June with powerful performance art titled Earth Emergence by Salil Subedi who falls from the back of a tractor trailer filled with wet red clay. Amidst sounds of gongs and singing bowls, the audience is taken into a journey of Mother Earth as Subedi approaches what appears to be Mount Meru.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250617150624_965e76bb3c322fc8915428ce168e7ef4419e73be744bb7427e8970cd3a2514db.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20250617150624_965e76bb3c322fc8915428ce168e7ef4419e73be744bb7427e8970cd3a2514db" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Himalayan tipping points NT"> <figcaption>Salil Subedi's Earth Emergence. Photo: NABIN BARAL</figcaption> </figure>  Chris Jordan's Midway: Message from the Gyre and Albatross was eight years in the making and depicts the stark fallout from environmental degradation. His eerie images of dead baby albatrosses covered in plastic waste serve as a powerful critique of globalised consumerism. Samyukta Bhandari’s Echoes of Survival addresses the plight of sparrows amidst urban noise. The exhibits consist of a labyrinth of exposed wiring, ceramic sparrow figurines and mirrors, representing the friction for coexistence between sparrows and humans. The mirrors with the sparrow figures symbolise the sparrows colliding with windows.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250617150624_09ba776a03042e47faa97d3ba2cecf7d4adf88b04f02461ff1edd1ba2a488671.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20250617150624_09ba776a03042e47faa97d3ba2cecf7d4adf88b04f02461ff1edd1ba2a488671" data-rendition-name="original" width="1280" height="960" loading="lazy" alt="Himalayan tipping points NT"> <figcaption>Photo: SUDIKSHA TULADHAR</figcaption> </figure>  Maksud Ali Mondal’s Fungal Habitat presents a self-sustaining ecosystem through the life cycle of a mushroom. As the audience moves through the exhibit, the scent of fungi permeates, underscoring the fact that decay and renewal are a part of life. The Newa traditions of food, harvest, and communal bonds is the highlight of Yomari wo Yomha ji and Grain of Gold by Saurganga Darshandhari. Says the artist, “In Newari tradition, Yomari is made of rice flour, and the grains are grown from the soil. Hence, linkage with the earth is established. These traditions are passed on from one generation to another, and the sweet delicacy is usually made by women, so I tried to create happiness through cooking and linking it to yomari, and the bird, so that she can fly as free as a bird."  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250617150624_df04d076e834c362b00ba17aa0b71988a22b941b35ee0ba7ee9ed0f7cda27cb0.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20250617150624_df04d076e834c362b00ba17aa0b71988a22b941b35ee0ba7ee9ed0f7cda27cb0" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Himalayan tipping points NT"> <figcaption>Photo: NABIN BARAL</figcaption> </figure>  Such communal bonds are very much tied with the land and harvest, but rapid and haphazard urbanisation has had much adverse impact, as Amit Machamasi’s Not the Same Anymore, The Irony, and Seeds and Tools portray. What were once farmlands are now being plundered and plotted to give way to unplanned and disastrous development. “There must be development, roads must be expanded, but not at the cost of nature,” says Machamasi, as he explains one of the other photographs on display: “The small crow was photographed when the tree that it was residing on was cut off for development.” Our misguided approach to development has a dire impact on the overall ecology, from heat stress in the Tarai to the drying of natural springs in the hills to receding glaciers in the mountains.&nbsp; At the Tipping Point: Art and Ecology from the Rooftop of the World Until 31 August 10:00AM to 5:30PM Taragaon Next Hyatt Regency premises

Himalayan tipping points

“एकादेशमा…” is how every bedtime story that Nepali parents tell children starts. It is a portal to shared childhood memories, and a collective moral code.&nbsp; The stories live in our hearts, and as adults quietly mould the way we see the world. The jolts of everyday life and distance from parents fade treasured oral traditions, and fairy tales that once stitched generations are lost.&nbsp; Some of these tales come to life in Roshan Bhandari’s exhibition, Once Upon A Time / एकादेशमा at Takpa Gallery. Folktales have been transformed into visual stories, showing fables passed down through generations, heard crackling through old radios, and discovered in the pages of well-worn books. Bhandari moves between abstraction and figuration, creating a masterpiece of deliberate fusion. Yet, they remain grounded in the figurative, allowing viewers to follow a narrative thread. The result is a dramatic, emotional landscape of unfolding stories. He explains: “A lot of it is abstract because it carries the soul. And the soul has no shape. You cannot shape the soul and the subconscious. It flows.” &nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025061308068_ca93afbf07dc2dac0e8d4a5c7011ddd3c555ba4cce553686700be1fdd3746e11.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2025061308068_ca93afbf07dc2dac0e8d4a5c7011ddd3c555ba4cce553686700be1fdd3746e11" data-rendition-name="original" width="1440" height="1080" loading="lazy" alt="Morals in murals NT"> </figure>  The final piece in Bhandari’s previous series, The Story of Mountain - Contemplation, now stands as the opening to this new collection. The painting captures a young girl in a moment of introspection, embodying the quiet inner strength of Nepalis. &nbsp; She is suspended in time, mirroring the weight of everyday life in the mountains, marked by limited access to roads, healthcare, and education. The bold brushwork reflects the layered complexity of her emotions, caught between the harshness of reality and the strength it takes to endure. Around her, mountain goats graze calmly, life goes on, but she pauses. Not necessarily in defeat but in reflection. It is a moment of stillness we so often overlook in our own fast-paced lives. “She’s my kind of Mona Lisa,” Bhandari says with a broad smile. The aggression of the brushstrokes speaks to the intensity of her struggles, while the vibrant colour palette suggests that there is hope even in hardship. Life, the painting reminds us, is a balance between chaos and calm. Whispers of Nature tells the story of a radiant woman from the Tarai who can speak to birds and animals, but is an outcast, accused of witchcraft.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025061308068_31790cb4120cfe78f79e868fccbfa91617bf534acb4b9e339f1fb5a6d57ced53.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="2025061308068_31790cb4120cfe78f79e868fccbfa91617bf534acb4b9e339f1fb5a6d57ced53" data-rendition-name="original" width="1440" height="1080" loading="lazy" alt="Morals in murals NT"> </figure>  A Tale of Virtue and Reward on the other hand highlights the timeless truth that compassion, even when quietly practiced, never goes unnoticed. It portrays the contrasting outcomes of benevolence and malevolence -- a moral reflection on how the intentions behind our actions shape the fate that follows. Many of the wildlife-inspired tales in Bhandari’s work echoes a bygone era, when humans and animals lived in closer harmony. Though fantasy made animals talk, reason and relate, the core of these stories remain real. They make us ponder the growing rift between humans and nature today. &nbsp; Tied by Love, Freed by Empathy echo themes of freedom, coexistence, and justice, while From Humble Roots to Golden Roads offers lessons in how small acts of goodness can pave the way to hopeful outcomes. Each piece carries tales of timeless truths and its own distinct moral core. “Roshan Bhandari’s visual form is incredibly attractive. There is a sense of movement within the paintings, almost as if something is alive inside them,” says Tsherin Sherpa, artist and founder of Takpa. “The narratives are woven in such a unique and engaging way. These age-old stories are presented through a contemporary visual lens, which makes them feel both timeless and fresh.” &nbsp; Once Upon A Time / एकादेशमा Till 21 June Tuesday-Thursday: 11AM-6PM Friday-Sunday: 11AM-7PM Closed on Mondays Takpa Gallery, Lazimpat

Morals in murals

Bhumi is a 25-year-old tourist guide and Sagar, 48, is a Nepali-Canadian visiting Lumbini. The two find themselves unexpectedly paired in a guest house. It is their intimacy and conversations that form the story behind director Ghimire Yubaraj’s play Lost and Found being staged at Shilpee Theatre till 31 May. Their conversations are occasionally interrupted by calls from their families, providing fleeting glimpses into their personal lives, yet never telling the full story. The audience is left anticipating how this relationship will unfold. The stage set shifts back and forth between the guesthouse cafe and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/telling-the-story-of-buddha-s-lumbini">the palace of Siddhartha Gautam in Lumbini</a>. Bhumi and Sagar exchange strong opinions on nation, philosophy, and history. Why did Siddhartha abandon his wife Yasodhara and newborn son Rahul, and leave the palace?&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250528110532_18b7d824d19579ccd40691b992ba3b9f870b8e616f5a84ec4bd6140bef355a54.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20250528110532_18b7d824d19579ccd40691b992ba3b9f870b8e616f5a84ec4bd6140bef355a54" data-rendition-name="original" width="2048" height="1365" loading="lazy" alt="Drama of loss and discovery"> </figure>  The story of the Buddha has resonance for the characters. Bhumi, we learn, was raised by a single mother, and Sagar is a husband and father growing distant from his own family. Bhumi is vibrant and outspoken, her laughter is infectious yet laced with an eerie undertone that hints tension ahead. Sagar, on the other hand, is more reserved but gradually softens, absorbing some of Bhumi’s lively energy. Bhumi is a strong and self-assured woman, unafraid to speak the truth about herself. She openly shares her sexual desires, how she enjoys intimacy and multiple partners, and declares her desire to live life on her own terms. Such <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/she-is-the-story">a portrayal of a young woman </a>is rarely seen on the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepali-cinema-s-melodramatic-realism">Nepali stage and cinema</a>. Bhumi also suffers from multiple personality disorder, she has sudden episodes as her body trembles, and she transforms into different people, revealing hidden truths that the viewers must piece together from the intense scenes. Two cafe servers played by Suhana Acharya and Govinda Oli are ever-present and add another dimension to the intricate layers of narrative and occasional play-within-a-play. Their presence complements the dialogue between Bhumi and Sagar with moments of humour and intrigue, but their own stories reveal personal struggles shaped by vastly different journeys of different people at different paths of life.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250528110532_9b439c55a747b352fd043f398f7923d0c615a61c340dae6bfb9e1ec56092c517.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20250528110532_9b439c55a747b352fd043f398f7923d0c615a61c340dae6bfb9e1ec56092c517" data-rendition-name="original" width="2048" height="1365" loading="lazy" alt="Drama of loss and discovery"> </figure>  The play keeps the audience on its toes for the entire hour and forty-minute runtime. Transitions between scenes are swift and the acting is spot on, we are almost peeking at real life stories unfolding. Bhumi and Sagar talk about their problems. Bhumi on her struggles with citizenship due to an absent father, and frustrated by <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/born-in-nepal-treated-as-a-foreigner">systemic injustices</a>. Sagar is in an unhappy marriage, navigating interpersonal conflict with his wife and the children, and the legal complexities of divorce. People are torn by the threads of life, love, and relationships. People give up on people. And people give up on themselves. They struggle to show up for themselves in a world where personal and societal struggles make survival increasingly alienating. People then seek survival in unexpected places and personal quests. Each problem is so uniquely tangled up to each individual and their own life story. This shapes how one sees the world and connects with, or fails to, with another. Hence, the complexity of human relationships and human emotions. Lost and Found manages to somehow capture all of this in a story of two drifting souls seeking to find their own survival. In his director’s note, Ghimire Yubaraj writes: ‘Why is humanity so restless in today’s world? Why do relationships, built through personal choice and care, break apart so quickly? And in the name of peace, why has humanity strayed so far from it?’ The ending and the climax collide. What begins as a light-hearted conversation between Bhumi and Sagar saying their goodbyes, quickly unfolds into an intense revelation. This ending epiphany reshapes the entire narrative, and leaves the audience stunned even after the curtains close. Lost and Found Till 31 May Shilpee Theatre, Battisputali Sun-Fri except Tue: 5:15PM Saturday: 5:15PM, 1PM (Matinee)

Drama of loss and discovery

An international conference on looted cultural objects in Nepal was strategising about how to repatriate sacred icons, when news broke that a 400-year-old jewel studded gilt-copper necklace stolen from Kathmandu was up for auction in Belgium. The Matrika Necklace from the reign of King Pratap Malla (1641-74 CE) was being auctioned at the Veilinghuis Loeckx in Gent and the event beamed live on <a href="http://invaluable.com/" target="_blank">invaluable.com</a> on 17th June. It was advertised for was €1,200.&nbsp; But that was before participants at the Kathmandu conference sent frantic emails to the Brussels auction house and the Dutch gallery where the necklace was sourced from. The item was withdrawn from the auction because of 'questions about provenance'. The auction house initially mentioned Astamangala Gallery in the Netherlands as provenance when it was actually stolen from a Kathmandu temple, and the item was similar to another rare necklace looted from the Taleju Temple in 1976, and now housed at the <a href="https://www.artic.edu/" target="_blank">Art Institute of Chicago</a>. The 400-year-old object has been taken off display there after Nepali activists started demanding its return. Interestingly, the necklace in Chicago was also in the logo design of the International Conference on the Recovery of Cultural Heritage held in Patan from 16-18 June where experts and activists from Nepal and around the world discussed the repatriation of stolen cultural artefacts. In Nepal, the idols were being worshipped when looted, and activists said their return helped in healing and reconciliation of communities.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250618140640_65c8453ff13d38de4292817bbe639416e4e4bca1d5d5e6ba9f6ef6fa10d57abe.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20250618140640_65c8453ff13d38de4292817bbe639416e4e4bca1d5d5e6ba9f6ef6fa10d57abe" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1272" loading="lazy" alt="Taleju necklace"> <figcaption>Taleju necklace</figcaption> </figure>  One panelist was Devendra Bhattarai, the journalist who broke the story of the necklace depicted in the logo. He found it ironic that the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was deporting undocumented Nepalis, while wanting to hold on to Nepal’s heritage items in its museums. “The US authorities want evidence that the object was stolen, and to prove that Nepal’s royal family is not allowed to sell or gift such artefacts,” Bhattarai said. “A cultural artefact cannot be gifted, even by the royal family, and there can be no such proof.” “We from the community are asked to provide proof when the burden of proof should lie with the holders of the artefacts,” said Kanak Mani Dixit of Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign (NHRC) that convened the conference. “Collectors and museums prevaricate and want to run you down, your patience, your interest, your time, hoping that we will lose interest.” NHRC partnered with Nepal’s Department of Archaeology to organise the international conference, which also looked into the impact of cultural property thefts from Kathmandu Valley, Simraungad in the Tarai, Nuwakot, and monastic villages in the trans-Himalaya. “There were and are hundreds of monasteries in Mustang, but most of them are totally empty,” historian Ramesh Dhungel told one session. “It makes you want to cry. The monks sleep in locked rooms with their idols so they are not stolen at night.”  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250618140640_80a15c5bc9da2eaf8b96fcbb42fd7fdb9b78d00e2258e1995c21ac6f70211dbc.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20250618140640_80a15c5bc9da2eaf8b96fcbb42fd7fdb9b78d00e2258e1995c21ac6f70211dbc" data-rendition-name="original" width="3933" height="2381" loading="lazy" alt="cultural recovery conference"> <figcaption>Historian Ramesh Dhungel during his panel discussion. Photo: BIKAS RAUNIYAR</figcaption> </figure>  Most of the looting of cultural heritage items in Nepal took place during the absolute monarchy days in the 1980s. Dhungel remembers three helicopter loads of stolen thangka, idols and scrolls airlifted from Olangchungola to Kathmandu at the time. Most of them ended up with American and European collectors, and unsold items are still at the National Museum in Chhauni.&nbsp; There are documents to identify the powerful people in Kathmandu who sold the artefacts to smugglers and middlemen. But there were also the likes of Lain Singh Bangdel and Jürgen Schick who did pioneering work to document the pillage in their books Stolen Images of Nepal (1989) and The Gods Are Leaving the Country: Art Theft From Nepal (1997). Today, anonymous investigators at Lost Arts of Nepal have been using social media to document the whereabouts of stolen objects in museums so that repatriation activists can bring them back. Even as the international conference was ongoing on Wednesday, Lost Art of Nepal posted a finding about a 800-year-old Bodhisattva Avalokiteswar statue that had been at Thambahil in Kathmandu next to a Shiva Linga at the temple. It was stolen in the 1980s and auctioned by the Doris Weiner Collection at Christie's in 2012 for $2,490,500 and is now at the Berkeley Art Museum.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250618170620_415b139c11cbcee8c27cb9742d06882bc2468db682621fa2445b8c3797e1f81a.png" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20250618170620_415b139c11cbcee8c27cb9742d06882bc2468db682621fa2445b8c3797e1f81a" data-rendition-name="original" width="2044" height="1100" loading="lazy" alt="Heritage recovery conference"> <figcaption>800-year-old Bodhisattva Avalokiteswar.</figcaption> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250618170624_5884894a696f3bba6af228101ed26714433ae62d96dfea825a1dd48e99d4097f.png" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20250618170624_5884894a696f3bba6af228101ed26714433ae62d96dfea825a1dd48e99d4097f" data-rendition-name="original" width="1880" height="1166" loading="lazy" alt="heritage recovery conference"> </figure>  “Lost Arts of Nepal has been the biggest source for media and heritage activists. We must acknowledge them for their hard work in tracking down these items,” said Kunda Dixit, who hosted a panel on the role of media in combating illicit trafficking of artefacts.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250618140640_60e894c158867774cfc33ec09a76ebe2e022a9d273b5d157212f9eb6a61fbedf.jpg" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20250618140640_60e894c158867774cfc33ec09a76ebe2e022a9d273b5d157212f9eb6a61fbedf" data-rendition-name="original" width="3933" height="2664" loading="lazy" alt="cultural recovery conference"> <figcaption>Kunda Dixit during a panel on the role of media in combating illicit trafficking of artefacts. Photo: BIKAS RAUNIYAR</figcaption> </figure>  So far, 198 sacred objects have been returned to Nepal: 125 from the United States, 29 from China, 22 from the United Kingdom, 13 from India, 5 from Australia, and one each from Germany, Austria, Italy and a European collector. But there are 105 identified but not returned items in private collections, museums and auction houses in Sweden, the UK, France, Switzerland, the US, Austria, Australia, China, Singapore, Thailand and Belgium. And there are thousands of others which have vanished without trace. <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/stolen-cambodian-artifacts-american-museums-private-collections-60-minutes-transcript-2024-06-23/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab5j&amp;linkId=479097769&amp;fbclid=IwY2xjawK_NaJleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETF6MDVPZ1ZlV3NsQ3E4ak04AR7feaeuu4qaAq4mv3cpN4dGSEctsQr44vZjkkWkrKL57xQqo4Id0b_P1rLgog_aem_gS5R_PQyCvCgBLKGBHTrMw" target="_blank">Bradley L Gordon</a>, a lawyer with Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, was thrown out of The Met in New York last year during an inspection, when he also spotted scores of antiquities from Thailand and Nepal in storage.&nbsp; “Many of the art dealers selling a<a href="https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/30-looted-antiquities-returned-kingdom-cambodia" target="_blank">rtefacts from Cambodia</a> were also selling cultural objects from Nepal,” Gordon told the panel. Bruce Miller Antiquities of Sausalito in California with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/arts/douglas-latchford-antiquities-trafficker-daughter.html" target="_blank">Bangkok-based Douglas Latchford</a> have been named as those involved in selling stolen objects from Cambodia and Nepal to collectors and museums. The conference also heard case studies from Cambodia, India, Poland, Vietnam, Lebanon, Syria and Afghanistan with a special focus on existing laws and international frameworks for repatriation as well as new digital interventions such as augmented reality, photogrammetry and data-driven provenance. Plunder of heritage items from war zones like Syria and Afghanistan is rife, said Amr Al Azm of the Shawnee State University in the United States. “Antiquities do not suffer as much in the actual battles as they do from thieves while a conflict is going on,” he added. “They sell the stolen items through social media accounts, the platforms are the great magnifier in this international trade in stolen cultural items.”  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250618160624_0677d2519b35f092dc017116cfeaa575bb2667770674a6d1c5c83a01d5489043.jpg" data-media-id="editor_10" data-image-id="20250618160624_0677d2519b35f092dc017116cfeaa575bb2667770674a6d1c5c83a01d5489043" data-rendition-name="original" width="3904" height="2086" loading="lazy" alt="cultural recovery conference"> <figcaption>Heritage conservationist Alok Siddi Tuladhar discussing a pauba depicting a Tuladaan ceremony the reign of King Pratap Malla of Kathmandu. The 361-year-old wsas stolen from Kathmandu and is now in Paris. Photo: BIKAS RAUNIYAR</figcaption> </figure>  There are often differing views when it comes to the prosecution of heritage theft. Some believe in punishing the perpetrators with jail time and fines, while others have prioritised repatriation itself, getting the objects back to inspire pride in youth to continue their tradition, to educate the community about the culture and spread awareness about the illegal trade. “We can use repatriation activism to increase the perception of risk, to convince people to not enter into the business because they don’t want to end up in jail or publicly humiliated, to make people think about their reputation either positively or negatively,” said Erin L Thompson, art crime professor in New York during her keynote at the conference.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250618140644_e65569f232b78e1daba5f5c7399de5f492afb772fe6882efc3a2ae51c8e10daf.jpg" data-media-id="editor_11" data-image-id="20250618140644_e65569f232b78e1daba5f5c7399de5f492afb772fe6882efc3a2ae51c8e10daf" data-rendition-name="original" width="3543" height="2858" loading="lazy" alt="cultural recovery conference"> <figcaption>Art crime professor Erin Thompson during her keynote. Photo: BIKAS RAUNIYAR</figcaption> </figure>  She added: “Things are just starting to come back, we will find so many uses of repatriated objects in the years, decades, and generations to come. It’s taken hundreds of years of theft for these objects to leave their culture of origin, and I think it will take hundreds of years to bring them back. But we have the opportunity now to shape what those hundreds of years will look like.” <h2>BREAKING: Auction halted</h2>  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250618140636_e6242c602340291c7af430144e17860ed8f44811c6ea14ad2c47a19451537556.jpg" data-media-id="editor_12" data-image-id="20250618140636_e6242c602340291c7af430144e17860ed8f44811c6ea14ad2c47a19451537556" data-rendition-name="original" width="960" height="960" loading="lazy" alt="Matrika necklace"> <figcaption>Matrika necklace</figcaption> </figure>  On the evening of 17 June, participants at the Kathmandu conference discussing Nepal’s stolen heritage items found out that a 400-year-old gilt-copper Matrika necklace donated by Pratap Malla was being auctioned in Belgium. This was a moment of truth, the very thing the conference was trying to shed light on. One of the participants, Emiline C H Smith, a lecturer in criminology at the University of Glasgow heard about the auction while at the conference. The pre-bid for the necklace was €1,200, but it would have sold for many times more. She informed the Belgium art crime police squad after gathering more information on the necklace. She found out that the item was up for auction that very day, 17 June, and it would be livestreamed. The necklace from Nepal was at lot 328, and the auction order was already at 250. Time was of the essence. Smith stepped out of the conference hall in Patan to try to call the auction house in Brussels, couldn’t get through and sent them an email, commented on their website, and posted on Bluesky and Facebook. She also emailed the Dutch gallery mentioned in the provenance. During the live auction on www.invaluable.com, the lot came up for sale. But suddenly the auctioneer got a message from someone off-screen. He stated in Dutch: “This piece cannot be sold because there are problems with the origin. Withdrawn.” After the dramatic cancellation of sale, Smith found out that the former owner of the necklace was a Tibetologist who acquired it in 1995 from a collector in Groningen, who had purchased it in the 1970s from a gallery in Amsterdam. “The art market needs to know that there is no excuse to auction off invaluable and inalienable Nepali cultural objects like this stunning Pratap Malla necklace,” Smith told Nepali Times. “Nepali activists have worked tirelessly to raise awareness about the devastating consequences of the market demand for Nepal's irreplaceable cultural heritage, so auction houses, art dealers and buyers should know better by now. We can all hold them accountable for their role in the looting and destruction of Nepal's heritage.”

Repatriation for reconciliation

AI is like a tiger, will it eat us up or can we ride it? The Cassandras say that it will make humans obsolete, while the Polyannas say what’s wrong with that if it saves people from mundane work so they can devote time to more creative pursuits. Even if AI solves major problems, might it lead to mass unemployment or exacerbate wealth inequality? Will artificial intelligence help solve the crises that the planet faces, or will it make everything more dangerous? Some of these issues are addressed in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) annual Human Development Report for 2025. Titled A Matter of Choice: People and Possibilities in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, it reasons that rather than assuming AI will run wild and result in either utopian or dystopian outcomes, AI will reflect the values of those shaping it. Some may view this as overly optimistic or naive, especially given the seemingly exponential rate at which AI is gaining capabilities. Yet, there are no major cases, yet, of AI models going rogue, and they do tend to reflect the biases of their training data. UNDP’s choice of the word ‘choice’ in the title of its 2025 report acknowledges the reality that AI is no longer science fiction or under development, but a tangible presence. It is perhaps the most powerful and disruptive technology humanity has created, with consequences rivaling those of electricity, computers, or the internet. Some utopian online communities, such as ‘e/acc’ (effective acceleration), believe AI will solve humanity’s problems and enhance its future. They advocate for rapid advancements with minimal, if any, regulation.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025061606068_1139c7c719c17cf731a6fe99c51afccca36c2500bc3c33f865fef81a4ce33d73.png" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2025061606068_1139c7c719c17cf731a6fe99c51afccca36c2500bc3c33f865fef81a4ce33d73" data-rendition-name="original" width="1600" height="1118" loading="lazy" alt="Nepal needs to be more intelligent about AI NT"></figure>  The UNDP report addresses these concerns, emphasising that AI should augment human work rather than replace it, that it will not magically solve poverty or climate change, and that it must be accessible to marginalised groups to prevent further exclusion. It also raises concerns that there is only a small group controlling AI development, treating AI as a vital resource and a fundamental right. While Nepal may lack cutting-edge AI talent and hardware, the country’s potential to maximise hydropower generation could supply the vast energy required to train AI models. Teams in India and China might even consider building data centers here. At the policy level, the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology released an ambitious ‘Draft of National AI Policy 2081’ in February 2025 which covers extensive ground, it remains very much a draft -- a wish list rather than a concrete strategy. The only detailed section outlines the composition of a future regulatory body, mentions building ‘international-standard data centers’ and deploying ‘5G and beyond’, despite limited broadband access across the country, and leaves funding details to ‘regular budgets’ and ‘international donors.’ Nepal’s IT sector could be a key player. Global companies have long outsourced coding to Nepal, where skilled, English-speaking programmers work at competitive rates, even by South Asian standards. As AI improves at generating standardised, reusable ‘boilerplate’ code, junior coders may face job losses. However, the ability to quickly produce code could spark a boom in coding jobs, much like the loom initially displaced weavers but ultimately created more jobs and affordable clothing.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025061606068_4e6f7bde438c01a40ca2e9542af0c86c3a9c8879bfc45688a1df0325108c05ef.png" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="2025061606068_4e6f7bde438c01a40ca2e9542af0c86c3a9c8879bfc45688a1df0325108c05ef" data-rendition-name="original" width="1436" height="1534" loading="lazy" alt="Nepal needs to be more intelligent about AI NT"></figure>  The high demand and compensation for software engineers skilled in building AI tools could also encourage Nepal’s sizable IT workforce to pivot in that direction. The UNDP report notes that AI excels at bridging the gap between unskilled and skilled labour for general tasks. With Nepal’s low illiteracy rate, this could be a significant advantage. AI’s potential as a learning tool could also transform the often-criticized Nepali education system. Nepali companies are also taking strides in AI product development, beyond just providing coding services. FuseMachines, for instance, builds AI tools to extract data from documents and detect financial fraud, achieving such success that it went public on NASDAQ in 2024. WiseYak develops healthcare software that uses AI to analyze customer data for insights and diagnoses. Communities like the Nepal Applied Mathematics and Informatics Institute for Research (NAAMII) drive AI innovation through research, hackathons, conferences, workshops, and lectures. Their projects include AI-Assisted Smartphone Microscopy, AI-assisted VIA Screening for Cervical Cancer, and large language models akin to ChatGPT but in Nepali. Students can engage with AI through academic programs. Numerous institutions now offer AI courses at undergraduate and graduate levels. Madan Bhandari University of Science and Technology (UST) in Chitlang, for example, provides a Master’s of Applied Science in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. In June it announced two PhD spots in Digital Technology (Artificial Intelligence) and will offer AI studies to undergraduates starting in November. The Master’s program is designed as a ‘Master’s by Research,’ with over half of the 50 credit hours dedicated to a thesis project. Given AI’s rapidly evolving nature, there is no fixed syllabus; professors tailor the curriculum. “The university has a set of available projects, and we evaluate a student’s background and capabilities before assigning one,” says Rajiv Subba, Assistant Professor at the UST’s Digital Technology Program.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025061606068_bdf76f4694999bacd1635f57713d58a75229e58a0b478f6b57537b85c2102fb9.png" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="2025061606068_bdf76f4694999bacd1635f57713d58a75229e58a0b478f6b57537b85c2102fb9" data-rendition-name="original" width="1308" height="1684" loading="lazy" alt="Nepal needs to be more intelligent about AI NT"></figure>  While most current Master’s students have computer engineering backgrounds, this is not a prerequisite. Rupesh Aryal, a Master’s student in AI says: “One person in my cohort has a background in agriculture, while another studied medicine and is working on AI for digital imaging.” His thesis focuses on a Nepali large language model. Other projects include early forest fire detection, AI for drug discovery, and models to predict human-wildlife conflict. “We accept students from any science background, provided they have undergraduate-level statistics and programming experience,” says Subba. “We also encourage entrepreneurial skills and policy involvement, so our Master’s students take elective courses in these areas.” Subba believes funding research is critical for AI progress in Nepal, as a successful model can have widespread applications. “The government could allocate 50 lakhs in seed money for research to each university,” he suggests. “The biggest obstacles are funding, limited high-quality data for training models, and a shortage of faculty. Qualified candidates are scarce and often reluctant to work in Chitlang or Nepal.” Retaining students for Master’s programs is a first step toward building a local talent pool, with hopes that some will pursue PhDs and become faculty. “We still learn from world-class AI educators, even if they can’t be here physically,” says Aryal. A recent visitor was Professor Gerald Penn from the University of Toronto, an expert in natural language processing. “We have all the GPUs we need to train models, and students receive scholarships and stipends.” “Most of my peers are committed to staying in Nepal and contributing,” Aryal adds, “while some plan to pursue PhDs abroad and return.” Nepal’s best strategy for thriving in the AI era lies in developing talent through well-designed programs like the one at Madan Bhandari University. “The government’s AI policies currently prioritise control and regulation over fostering growth,” says Subba.

Nepal needs to be more intelligent about AI

That winter day in January 1664 marked an exceptional event in the reign of King Pratap Malla of Kathmandu. It was 15 Paush 784 of the Nepal Sambat and for the first time, a historical event was being immortalised on canvas for generations to come.&nbsp; The occasion was the grand Tuladaan ceremony of the King’s youngest son Chakrabartendra Malla from his wife Anantapriya, an Indian princess from Cooch Behar in present-day Assam.&nbsp; During the ritual, the prince was weighed against gold, silver, pearls, and other precious stones, which were then offered to Goddess Taleju Bhavani, the guardian deity of the Malla dynasty.&nbsp; The 170 x120cm painting captures the time of King Pratap Malla in all its splendour and is more than a personal tribute to his son: it is a significant visual historical document. It was evidently completed five years later in 1669, and could be considered a photographic record, with retrospective recreation of the event by the unknown artist. A Tuladaan ceremony is performed to purify one’s karma, quell impending bad luck, or as an act of charity and devotion. Chakrabartendra Malla was not well, and the ritual was performed in hopes of restoring his health. King Pratap Malla had arranged for each of his sons to take turns ruling Kathmandu so they got administrative experience. But Chakrabartendra died just two days after assuming power in 1670 (790 NS). This painting is considered the earliest known example in which the composition is dominated by an architectural landscape: the Taleju Temple. Given the stylistic features such as side-profile facial depictions and the rendering of human forms, it is believed that the Nepali artist was trained by a Rajput master.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250615040624_ddad3bc27a327e3f9926c8473287e4f14b53081296c295049009f327a4d97051.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20250615040624_ddad3bc27a327e3f9926c8473287e4f14b53081296c295049009f327a4d97051" data-rendition-name="original" width="3248" height="4395" loading="lazy" alt="Tuladaan NT"> </figure>  During that era, there were regular exchanges of artists between Northern India and Kathmandu Valley. The painting is also a melding of Nepali, Tibetan, Mughal, and Rajput art styles of the time. Pratap Malla could have been inspired by a painting of Mughal Emperor Jahangir’s Tuladaan ceremony for his son Khurram in 1607. The Mallas and Mughals shared cordial relations, which is reflected in the cultural influences seen in the art and attire of the period.&nbsp; The clothing of the Malla ruling class, in particular, features colourful tunics, turbans, and jewelry that display strong Rajput and Mughal stylistic elements. The musicians in the upper tier are also dressed in Indian-style clothing, while the ensemble on the lower steps wear local attire, notably without turbans. Their hairstyles also differ, with the lower group wearing their hair tied in a bun at the front. This national treasure is currently in storage at the Collège de France in Paris, and has never been publicly displayed. Nepal’s art scholars like Gautam Vajracharya, Pratap Aditya Pal and Anne Vergati have written about this iconic paubha in the past, but the only detailed study is from the perspective of music history by researcher Richard Widdess who had access to high resolution copies of the original.&nbsp; Widdess from the Department of Music at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London describes the paubha as the most significant and richly detailed documentation of music in Nepali art. He identifies distinct musical ensembles on the terraces of the temple, and remarkably most of them are actively used today. One of them reflects the Mughal naqqārakhāna model — a loud outdoor ensemble typically composed of kettledrums, trumpets, and cymbals, traditionally performed from the gateway of the emperor’s palace to announce his entrances and exits. The depiction of such an ensemble in the tulādāna painting is likely the earliest known representation of a complete naqqārakhāna in Nepal — considered the forerunner of the panche baja, the traditional Nepali ensemble. On the stepped pyramid base of the temple are two groups of musicians playing local instruments: dhimey, bhushya, and dha. They are unmistakably Newar musicians, wearing short skirts and short-sleeved tops, with bare heads and legs—clearly distinguished as local performers.&nbsp; Higher still on the temple pyramid are musicians of apparently higher status, positioned close to the king, and his courtiers, possibly professional court musicians from India, well-versed in rāga and tāla. A dāphā group is also clearly depicted, identifiable by their characteristic instruments.&nbsp; Dāphā bhajan is likely the oldest surviving tradition of Newar devotional singing, and this paubha is the oldest visual record of it. Pratap Malla himself is believed to have composed songs that continue to be performed by dāphā groups throughout Kathmandu till today.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025061211064_d67636730cdc0ec778c02494817aca0b99654f2950d0fae4b95499a61faf7ef3.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="2025061211064_d67636730cdc0ec778c02494817aca0b99654f2950d0fae4b95499a61faf7ef3" data-rendition-name="original" width="596" height="768" loading="lazy" alt="Priceless paubha in Paris NT"> </figure>  The artist’s thorough attention to musical detail may be attributed to King Pratap Malla’s own deep interest in music. His inscriptions on this painting and elsewhere proclaim his mastery of all branches of knowledge, including music. He is also known as the author of dance dramas and poems, penning his name as Kavindra (king of poets). Some noteworthy elements of new art techniques stand out: for example, the roof of the temple is filled with realistically rendered white doves, pigeons, and crows. This is a rare feature in paubha, where animals and birds are stylised, mythological forms. This remarkably talented unknown artist has managed to also render an orthographic projection: the front and side view of Nepal’s first architectural paubha. The Taleju Temple, with its staggering multi-tiered structure and numerous steps and platforms, is masterfully translated into layers within the painting. This represents a significant artistic achievement of the time, especially considering that dimensional perspectives had not started in deity-based paubha.&nbsp; The artist has also made a meticulous effort to capture architectural details such as the toran (ornamental arch) and temple struts with impressive precision. There are flickering lamps along the steps and some people carrying what appear to be oil pots.&nbsp; It is a full moon night and the dark sky is adorned with all the gods and goddesses, who are depicted as blessing the ceremony while seated on stylised thangka clouds. There is a lot happening in this painting, with people engaged in various activities. The artist has also rendered a forest backdrop behind the temple, complete with deer, trees, and flowers. Could there have once been a royal garden behind the Taleju Temple?&nbsp; More details and clarity can only be achieved if we are able to view the original or a high-resolution scanned version of the artwork. Many countries proudly display art depicting historical events in their national museums with great reverence. France, for example, has The Coronation of Emperor Napoleon and Empress Joséphine by Jacques-Louis David (1808–1822), along with numerous paintings of the Napoleonic Wars. Many were commissioned by Napoleon himself for future generations to remember.&nbsp; For Nepal, the equivalent is the Tuladaan paubha which is a visual record capturing a historic moment involving one of Kathmandu’s greatest kings, on the very day the event took place. Sadly, we await the day when this masterpiece is displayed, shared in high resolution for detailed study, or more rightfully — repatriated to its homeland, where it truly belongs. &nbsp; Shaguni Singh Sakya is the Director of the Museum of Nepali Arts (MoNA) at Kathmandu Guest House in Thamel. <h2>Gods homeward bound</h2> The Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign and Nepal’s Department of Archaeology are convening the first international conference on the Recovery of Cultural Heritage from 16-18 June in Patan. The conference will address urgent issues of theft, illicit trafficking, the campaign to repatriate looted cultural artifacts, and explore how the return of sacred antiquities contributes to justice, healing, and reconciliation for communities and nations affected by cultural loss. American art crime professor Erin L Thompson and Saubhagya Pradhananga of the Department of Archaeology will deliver the keynote. Meanwhile, author and Nepali Times publisher Kunda Dixit will lead a conversation on Illicit Trafficking: Public Opinion and Role of Media with Erin Thompson, Amr Al Azm, associate professor of Middle East History and Anthropology at Shawnee State University in Ohio, as well as Bradley J Gordon, a lawyer based in Phnom Penh. There will be sessions looking at repatriation perspectives from Cambodia, India, Vietnam, China and Poland, international frameworks for repatriation, emerging digital technologies in the repatriation of cultural heritage, cultural property agreements, museums as well as trends in the art market, and heritage diplomacy and the role of media.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025061211068_59cfccfa8f5d73bfe8b4c5811a7f53abc09ea04e8cb7c638933d62e5283efdf6.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="2025061211068_59cfccfa8f5d73bfe8b4c5811a7f53abc09ea04e8cb7c638933d62e5283efdf6" data-rendition-name="original" width="1080" height="1350" loading="lazy" alt="Heritage recovery NT"> </figure>  <h2> </h2> Some of the other highlights include James K. Reap, a professor in the Master of Historic Preservation Program at the University of Georgia who has a session on the US response to illicit trafficking. Art historian Lea Saint-Raymond is taking on “Gods at Auction: The Market for Himalayan Artefacts”, while lecturer of criminology at the University of Glasgow Emiline Smith is delving into transformative approaches to heritage ownership and repatriation. Helena Arose of Antiquities Coalition and Melina Antoniadis of NOSTOS Strategies that specialise on the return home of cultural heritage as well as Hao Liu of International Cultural Heritage Law at the School of Law at Shandong University are some of the others attending. The Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign was set up in 2020 to develop a coordinated movement to reclaim Nepal’s stolen gods and goddesses, with an aim to ensure that recovered items are returned to their original shrines, niches or sanctums. Ahead of the conference opening organisers have arranged for a film screening of Loot &amp; Return: 4 Documentaries at YalaMaya Kendra in Patan Dhoka between 14-15 June. Following the conference is a multimedia exhibition titled Absent Gods: Nepal’s Lost Heritage from 31 July to 4 August at Patan Museum.

Priceless paubha in Paris

Every year in the first month of the Tibetan calendar, devotees observe the ritual of Lo Monlam Chenmo within the holy month of Saga Dawa to mark the birth, enlightenment, and parinirvana of the Buddha. Lo Monlam Chenmo literally translates into the Great Prayer Festival of Mustang and earlier this month was observed for a week during which devotees chanted mantras over a million times for the long life and wellbeing of all sentient beings, for the continuation, survival and spread of Dharma, and for world peace.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250612090640_4d20d5af25d55ea83e6ee9784a53e689b683172433678fc9cdf1566f53a08013.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20250612090640_4d20d5af25d55ea83e6ee9784a53e689b683172433678fc9cdf1566f53a08013" data-rendition-name="original" width="2222" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="A million mantras in Mustang NT"></figure>  The annual prayer vigil drew 578 monks and nuns and hundreds of local people to the monastery town of Jharkot near Muktinath. The festival has been observed for over 600 years, but saw a decline in the second half of the 20th century when Monlam Chenmo was used to pray for the long life of the Dalai Lama. “Lo Monlam Chenmo was revived in Nepal seven years ago with much donation from the locals, many of whom have migrated overseas,” says Kunjon Thakuri of the Norbusum Foundation in Jharkot supporting traditional culture, local education, and the preservation of Mustangi heritage. “The festival will be held in Upper Mustang next year and again in Lower Mustang the year after, as the two regions take turns every other year.”  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250612090640_d71a82b0d6f523a482d329177d8c477ec41ead13b23fab9fa96d558a85a0b003.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20250612090640_d71a82b0d6f523a482d329177d8c477ec41ead13b23fab9fa96d558a85a0b003" data-rendition-name="original" width="2222" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="A million mantras in Mustang NT"></figure>  The festival is also celebrated in Tibet, parts of Nepal including Kathmandu, Ladakh and Sikkim in India as well as Bhutan. The Monlam Chenmo festival was first conducted for two weeks at the start of the new year in Tibet in 1409 by Lama Tsongkhapa to commemorate the miracles performed by Shakyamuni Buddha. The final day is the full moon which was on 11 June this week, is also called the Day of Miracles when several festivals and rituals are held.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250612090640_f46dd6637308bec26b0d9416defe9173d40b2580734b1a9b76421715d19a48bd.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20250612090640_f46dd6637308bec26b0d9416defe9173d40b2580734b1a9b76421715d19a48bd" data-rendition-name="original" width="2222" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="A million mantras in Mustang NT"></figure>   <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250612090640_c96c61cd0bd46b66f28eb1f436dcee2cd95a6b368b35c3ea1a44cb131e3e17bd.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20250612090640_c96c61cd0bd46b66f28eb1f436dcee2cd95a6b368b35c3ea1a44cb131e3e17bd" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1607" loading="lazy" alt="A million mantras in Mustang NT"></figure>  “The grande finale is considered an auspicious day for prayer and practice, and good deeds on this day are multiplied exponentially,” adds Thakuri. “As such, all major Buddhist shrines including Swayambhu and Boudhanath see prayers gather from midnight on the last day. Many attempt a 21 kora clockwise circumambulation of Swayambhu on the very day, a gruelling 30km on foot. Others do a 108 circumambulation of a sacred site during the month of Saga Dawa as a way of purifying one's karma and gaining spiritual merit.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250612090640_a8f518e680714a0a2f7227ffed1c321cfa4e424a150c09c1a9ed7ec90c2ef486.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20250612090640_a8f518e680714a0a2f7227ffed1c321cfa4e424a150c09c1a9ed7ec90c2ef486" data-rendition-name="original" width="1600" height="720" loading="lazy" alt="A million mantras in Mustang NT"></figure>  Throughout the festival, devotees can also choose to perform their own puja including श्राद्ध, a Hindu ritual to honour deceased ancestors. Jharkot’s proximity to Muktinath also means that the festival is observed by Hindus and Buddhists alike. Devotees also abstain from killing and harming living creatures as well as practice vegetarianism for the whole month of Saga Dawa, in line with the Buddhist principle of non-violence (अहिंसा). People can also choose to make donations (दान) including drinks and food to participating monks and monasteries in acts of compassion.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250612090640_db8325c332b9f794fa84748bbfac0b59a5061f042ab6eac592f74ae6074b9835.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20250612090640_db8325c332b9f794fa84748bbfac0b59a5061f042ab6eac592f74ae6074b9835" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="2217" loading="lazy" alt="A million mantras in Mustang NT"></figure>  In many ways, the festival bears similarities to another month-long celebration observed by Newar Buddhists, primarily in Kathmandu. Gunla, which translates into the month of merits, is the tenth month in the Nepal Sambat calendar which typically falls during the monsoon. Gunla is a time for spiritual reflection on the Dharma by reciting the scriptures, fasting, playing devotional music, going on pilgrimages and attaining the five moral precepts known as the (पञ्चशील) -- abstaining from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and taking intoxicants.

A million mantras in Mustang

The Supreme Court order last week to press criminal investigation against former House Speaker Agni Sapkota for his alleged involvement in abduction and murder of Arjun Bahadur Lama in 2005 has opened the door to investigate other war crimes. Lama was 45 years old in 2005 and a UML member when he was abducted by Maoists. His body was exhumed two months later. A National Human Rights Commission report implicated Maoist leaders including Sapkota who commanded the guerrilla unit in Kavre. Lama’s wife, Purnimaya, filed a complaint at the Kavre District Police Office in 2007, but police refused to register it, stating that it should be forwarded to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). She then filed a writ at the Supreme Court, which in 2008 ordered the police to register the complaint. The case was under police investigation and an arrest warrant issued, only for the Cabinet led in 2012 by Maoist Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai to shelve the complaint and the Supreme Court’s order. But last week’s ruling led by Chief Justice Prakash Man Singh Raut overturned that decision, allowing &nbsp;the investigation to proceed. In all this time, Sapkota has served as Minister of Information and Communication in 2011 and Minister of Forest and Soil Conservation in 2015. Despite being accused of murder, Sapkota was nominated as Speaker of the House of Representatives in 2020. "My husband never brought harm upon anyone, why did they committed such a heinous crime against him?" said Purnimaya Lama at an event this week. "I will wait my entire life for his murderer to be punished to the full extent of the law." The Comprehensive Peace Accord between the Maoists and the government in 2006, envisaged the formation of a TRC and a Commission of Investigation of Enforced Disappeared Persons (CIEDP). When finally set up in 2015, both commissions were headed by political appointees, and there were no investigations or prosecutions. Last month, after prolonged discussions, the three main political parties selected former high court judge Mahesh Thapa as the TRC chair and former chief secretary Lila Devi Gadtaula to head the CIEDP. The two appointments and &nbsp;membership have been criticised by survivors and their families. They said there was no consultation, and the selection was arbitrary, untrustworthy, and disrespectful. “Transparency was lacking during the appointment of the officials at the commissions and the officials appointed are not competent in transitional justice issues,” says Suman Adhikari, Founder Chairperson of Conflict Victims Common Platform. The CPA marked the beginning of Nepal’s transitional justice process and formally brought an end to decades long Maoist insurgency. TRC and CIEDP were set up to ensure justice for the victims of the conflict. But the two commissions were formed nine years after the ceasefire because the two former enemies had by then become the state and did not want war crimes to be raked up. The 2015 earthquake became the pretext for delaying the appointment of the first group of commissioners, and Covid pandemic became the second. The inability of the three main political parties to agree on appointments meant the commissions stayed vacant for years. Both the commissions have also had their mandates extended since 2017. There are over 60,000 complaints registered at both commissions, of which 63,000 wartime excesses were at the TRC and 3,300 cases of disappearances at the CIEDP. But not a single case was investigated, and the perpetrators brought to justice. International human rights agencies have repeatedly called for amendments in the acts of the commissions, which have been endorsed but lack implementation.&nbsp; Says Ram Bhandari of the National Network of the Victims of Serious Human Rights Violations: “The implementation of the acts is in limbo. A major concern is that political leaders have tried to take the process ahead single-handedly.”  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025061212060_11e8b9f431e1cf23e4199128d2c037a5ed8edb09448c99b5f3c3f425ed9712d6.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2025061212060_11e8b9f431e1cf23e4199128d2c037a5ed8edb09448c99b5f3c3f425ed9712d6" data-rendition-name="original" width="1250" height="856" loading="lazy" alt="Remembering not to forget war crimes NT"> <figcaption>Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala and Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal shake hands after signing the Comprehensive Peace Accord in 2006. Photo: SAGAR SHRESTHA / NEPALI TIMES ARCHIVE</figcaption> </figure>  Just as the Maoists and the &nbsp;parties they fought against are now in Parliament and are a part of Nepal’s democratic system, families of victims whose kin were killed by both sides have now also united in their call for justice for war crimes.&nbsp; For example, Suman Adhikari’s father Mukti Adhikari, who was a teacher in a village school in Lamjung, was executed by Maoist guerrillas in 2002. Ram Bhandari’s father who was also a teacher was disappeared by the Army in 2001 from Besisahar. The Supreme Court in 2020 upheld that there cannot be amnesties for serious crimes like torture and enforced disappearances as per international law. Nearly 1,400 people were disappeared by both sides during the 10-year conflict, and 322 cases of war rape and of sexual violence have been registered in both commissions. “Cases of sexual violence must be registered three months post the issuance of the notice, not from the date of incident,” states Geeta Rasaili of the Conflict Victims National Women Network. “Such cases must be treated with utmost sensitivity, ensuring the victims’ protection of identity. This can be done only by capable and experienced personnel.” Much like everything else, transitional justice in Nepal is political. Successive governments since 2006 have been made up of former rebels who committed war crimes and Nepali Congress (NC) ministers who were in power during the insurgency, and this has undermined the process. “The key decision makers in the government from both sides are the same people who were involved in human rights violations during the conflict,” says Ram Bhandari. “The peace process has therefore become perpetrator centric, rather than victim centric.” Suman Adhikari echoes this view: “Instead of being answerable and responsible towards the victims in the justice process, the leaders have instead been looking to protect their own interests. Our voices and representation have largely been ignored, the leaders have been continuously trying to delay, dilute and deny the process.” After 2006, the peace process was steered by the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) which supervised camps to disarm and demobilise the guerrillas. Initially, there was strong financial support and political pressure from Western countries and rights groups for Nepal’s transitional justice process.&nbsp; But with America backsliding on democracy and human rights and Europe increasingly distracted by the Ukraine-Russia war, the West has lost much of its moral high ground.&nbsp; This has coincided with the rise of emerging global powers, China and India, in Nepal’s neighbourhood who have never been big on human rights and freedom of expression. At its current pace, it may take decades to resolve all the 67,000 cases registered in both the commissions — which suits the NC and Maoists fine since time is on their side. However, the lethargy in sanctioning reparations and investigations will further erode public trust, and risk a future resurgence of violence fuelled by vengeance. Rights activists recommended that rather than compiling and making bulky reports of cases, they should be sent to the attorney general in batches with periodic reports. But there is little political will to even do this.&nbsp; Says transitional justice expert Rajendra Senchurey: “The process of investigations, truth-seeking and archiving must be expedited. Reparations also must be fast tracked alongside.” &nbsp;&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250612110656_6462e7168ada9450dd629a5063fcb45686e91b1884bb62f3ff2cf4f6c088037f.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20250612110656_6462e7168ada9450dd629a5063fcb45686e91b1884bb62f3ff2cf4f6c088037f" data-rendition-name="original" width="988" height="443" loading="lazy" alt="Remembering not to forget war crimes NT"> </figure>

Remembering not to forget war crimes

Thousands of Nepali students dreaming of an American education have been forced to look elsewhere as the Trump administration’s visa restrictions make their future uncertain.
The US was long considered a top destination for higher studies, making Nepal the 10th biggest country of origin for international students in America.&nbsp;
However, that number has seen a significant decline with the total for Nepali students now at 16,482. Some 8,000 Nepali students obtained no-objection certificates to study in the US from the Ministry of Education in the past year.&nbsp;
India, Australia, Canada, South Korea, United Kingdom and Japan are the other popular destinations for Nepali students. There are no clear numbers for Nepalis going to India, but a slight decline was noted this year after the deaths of two female students.
The US State Department has issued a circular to its embassies not to issue new visas to applicants until further notice. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the directive stated that the department planned to expand the screening of applicants' social media.&nbsp;
While new applicants are barred including those applying for visitor visas, students with scheduled interviews are allowed to proceed.
“Many of our students are affected by the new restrictions, but those who had applied for student visas earlier have got interview dates,” one Kathmandu-based college counsellor told us.
Meanwhile, even foreign students with spotless records already in the US have not been spared, as visa scrutiny intensifies under the new policy. In a move that underscores the growing sense of insecurity, many US colleges advised international students to carry their passports and documents at all times, even when traveling locally.
“Me and my friends did not go home this summer because we were not sure we would be allowed back, so we just went to Niagara Falls,” said a Nepali undergrad in Ohio, who like many interviewed for this report did not want her name used for fear of repercussion.
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Nepali students have adopted a cautious stance, with many choosing not to return home during summer vacation due to fear of visa revocations as well as travel bans. Meanwhile, over 7,000 Nepalis with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) will have to come back to Nepal by 5 August or face deportation. Thirty-seven were flown back to Kathmandu on Omni Air last week.
“The US is one of the most sought-after destinations for higher education, and the ban will definitely impact bright students,” says Narottam Aryal of the King’s College in Kathmandu.
Indeed, Nepali undergraduates admitted into Ivy League colleges for the 2025 academic year have been asked to look for alternatives. The entire Fulbright Foreign Scholarships Board resigned on Wednesday citing interference from the Trump administration on the selection of this year’s cohort. Some Nepali students already on Fulbright scholarships have noted disruptions, delays and even cancellation of stipends.&nbsp;
The student visa restrictions were initially just for foreign students admitted to Harvard University, but it was later extended to all Chinese students and now to all students. Universities like Columbia which actively recruit foreign students, face sharp enrolment declines, threatening their financial stability and diversity.
An Indian female PhD candidate at Columbia University had her visa revoked by the US State Department, and said she was targeted on the basis of her social media posts on Israeli military attacks in Gaza. Social media vetting of political activism has raised concerns about privacy and freedom of expression in a country where such rights were a given.
Many students have been informed via email that their visas have been revoked for getting speeding or parking tickets, but even others with no criminal record have been affected. The fear of deportation looms large amongst international students, including those from Nepal.&nbsp;
For most Nepalis who migrate to the US for education, the journey is a high-stakes investment. They come largely from middle-class families, often rely on a patchwork of scholarships, work-study programs, loans, or even the sale of family assets to afford fees.
Most Nepali students pursue STEM subjects which offer extended Optional Practical Training (OPT) periods that help fund their education. But with the US backsliding on education and humanitarian matters, countries like the UK and Canada are becoming more attractive despite their own recent stricter controls on student visas.&nbsp;
The UK universities saw a 63% rise in Nepali students’ admissions in 2024. Japan is another popular destination with 64,816 Nepali students enrolled as of 2024.
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Already, China, Hong Kong and Malaysia are poised to benefit from the increased scrutiny of US student visas. Several Hong Kong universities are offering unconditional admission to affected students, while Malaysian institutions are targeting previously US-bound Asian students. China and India have 330,000 and 280,000 students respectively in America, but the numbers for China have seen a sharp drop in the past year.
Elsewhere, branch campuses of American institutions such as NYU in Abu Dhabi, Georgetown in Dubai and Northwestern in Doha are getting more admission applications, and universities in the Gulf region are expanding infrastructure to accommodate those who would otherwise have gone to the US.&nbsp;
Even educational institutions in Nepal are hopeful that the US visa restrictions can be an opportunity to at least keep Nepali undergrads in Nepal, and also attract foreign students from the region.&nbsp;
“Many students might choose to complete their undergraduate degree here in Nepal and then move abroad for their Master’s degree later,” says Aryal of King’s College. “There was a need for quality higher education in Nepal anyway in terms of innovation and opportunities, so this could be the time to reduce our dependence on other countries.”
Nepal’s strategic position between India and China makes it sensitive to US policy shifts. India, a key ally, is also under US scrutiny for potential student travel restrictions. Chinese universities are already offering more scholarships to Nepali talent to capitalise on the US retreat.
American universities have challenged student visa restrictions in the courts. A federal court in Boston revoked the blanket ban on Harvard, and the State Department has ordered the resumption of processing student and exchange visitor visas.&nbsp;
Some are still hoping that President Trump will backtrack on the student visa restrictions, just like he has done with many of his more drastic executive orders.
Even so, the visa see-saw and longer-term uncertainties about living in the United States and its education system means students across the world are making alternative plans.
Says Aryal: “Policies of foreign countries change according to their needs, so excessive dependence was never a good idea. We should work to create different opportunities and choices of higher education within Nepal, so students are retained.” &nbsp;

America no longer prime destination for Nepali students

On World Press Freedom Day on 3 May, Reporters without Borders issued a map of the world with the status of press freedom in each country. Most Asian countries had restrictions on the media, and Nepal was a beige island in a vast expanse of red. Nepal’s record of democracy and press freedom may now be in jeopardy because of a recent slew of decisions by the courts and law enforcement to intimidate journalists reporting on corruption. The Kathmandu District court on Wednesday issued an arrest warrant against journalist Dil Bhushan Pathak on cybercrime charges, three weeks after he posted an explainer video on his Tough Talk YouTube channel on Jaiveer Singh Deuba’s alleged investment in Kathmandu’s Hilton Hotel, and business dealings overseas. Jaiveer Singh Deuba is the son of Nepali Congress (NC) chair Sher Bahadur Deuba and Foreign minister Arzu Deuba. Pathak based his content on news previously published on various online platforms. On the same day, the Kathmandu District Court also issued an temporary order to remove news published on Nepal Khabar and Bizmandu about the Securities and Exchange Board of Nepal (SEBON), whose Chair Santosh Narayan Shrestha had filed a complaint. The court even directed the sites not to report on the subject anymore.&nbsp; The moves reignited fierce debate about politicians, bureaucrats and businesses becoming increasingly intolerant of media exposés of wrongdoing, and trying to squelch constitutionally guaranteed protection of freedom of expression. As of press time on Thursday, Pathak had switched off his phone and was avoiding arrest. Last year, police arrested a person for sharing a video of people chanting slogans against Prime Minister K P Oli and Sher Bahadur Deuba during a festival in Kathmandu. Another Nepali was arrested for posting a photo of Oli and calling him corrupt. Both were taken into custody under cybercrime charges.&nbsp; “Whenever someone raises questions about a public figure in Nepal, there is a tendency to file a cybercrime case without any investigation,” notes former Supreme Court Justice Balram KC. “this is reminiscent of the Panchayat era.” &nbsp; Interestingly, the warrant against Pathak was issued under the Electronic Transactions Act following a complaint filed at the Cyber Bureau. That Act was legislated to regulate online transactions and money laundering. The government has been resorting to that law to intimidate and jail journalists. &nbsp; “The Act is being misused by political leadership and those who wield power to target those who question, criticise and attempt to hold them accountable,” says CIJ-N editor Kiran Nepal. “This is blaming the messenger, and completely wrong.”  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250612060644_ca0b1b4817494f640808ee6ddbb4703b1f1402363c07c83489f59145d8d310ae.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20250612060644_ca0b1b4817494f640808ee6ddbb4703b1f1402363c07c83489f59145d8d310ae" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1001" loading="lazy" alt="No freedom after expression NT"> <figcaption>World Press Freedom Index 2025. Map: REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS</figcaption> </figure>  There is growing public anger against the three main political parties that have been in power since 2006 for not addressing problems like unemployment, social welfare, shoddy infrastructure. Lack of accountability and corruption lie at the root of those problems, and when journalists investigate them they are targeted. Prominent journalists like Pathak are singled out to set an example, and intimidate others.&nbsp; Article 19 of the Constitution guarantees the media’s rights to publish and broadcast news without restriction. This has protected the mainstream press somewhat, but it is mostly online media that have felt official wrath. The legacy media also posts content online, and some have also had contempt of court and defamation cases filed against them. &nbsp; “In Nepal, the medium through which news and views are expressed have become more of a target than content,” says attorney and cyber law expert Baburam Aryal. “A crime is a crime no matter where it is committed, why should it be all right to print the same news in a newspaper but not online?” Taranath Dahal, former president of the Federation of Nepali Journalists and founder of Freedom Forum, says that the court can order the removal of news only if it causes serious harm to someone's life and reputation.&nbsp; He adds: “It sets a dangerous precedent if a person who holds public office orders the removal of news content instead of factually refuting the allegations reported in said news.”&nbsp; To be sure, both legacy and online media in Nepal have problems. Click baits and views-chasing for revenue on YouTube have allowed disinformation and hate speech to proliferate. Algorithms reinforce and further radicalise entrenched beliefs, amplifying toxic trolling and fanning populism. Experts have called for regulation that does not undermine the citizen’s right to know. &nbsp; Just this week, journalists were arrested in Rautahat on corruption charges after colluding with local authorities to falsify documents of a local government bidding notice. Any complaint against Dil Bhusan Pathak should have gone to the Press Council, which is legally mandated to respond to complaints regarding media content, including on digital platforms. But powerful political and businesses prefer to file cases directly in court, and invoke the Electronic Transaction Act because it allows the journalist to be held in custody during investigation. “This practice has led to not just the violation of press freedom, but also of civil liberties,” says attorney Santosh Sigdel. “The attempt to limit digital spaces and restrictions on the right to gather peacefully in public spaces, is an attack on our democratic values and norms.” --- Thirty-four editors of mainstream media led by Centre for Investigative Journalism Nepal have issued a press note condemning the arrest warrant of journalist Dil Bhushan Pathak for his explainer video on Jaiveer Singh Deuba’s alleged investment in Kathmandu’s Hilton Hotel, and business dealings overseas. Pathak was book for cybercrime charges under the Electronic Transactions Act which was kegislated to regulate online transactions and money laundering. Editors also denounced Kathmandu District Court’s temporary order to remove news published on Nepal Khabar and Bizmandu about the Securities and Exchange Board of Nepal (SEBON) following chair Santosh Narayan Shrestha’s complaint. The court even directed the sites not to report on the subject anymore.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025061505060_861c4d51f9eb490e4dab7495d7c83d86347c89483a69936145e64daf37da5501.png" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="2025061505060_861c4d51f9eb490e4dab7495d7c83d86347c89483a69936145e64daf37da5501" data-rendition-name="original" width="936" height="1204" loading="lazy" alt="CIJ press note 1"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025061505060_2467ac25a8db8e27a046b1d109425c96e9013169b53a5df072b9e1a6b743ddd7.png" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="2025061505060_2467ac25a8db8e27a046b1d109425c96e9013169b53a5df072b9e1a6b743ddd7" data-rendition-name="original" width="932" height="1206" loading="lazy" alt="CIJ press note 2"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025061505060_2454565881de8b34133ba84a957827ef88ac1393d49df01e46302ae2b78a2a92.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="2025061505060_2454565881de8b34133ba84a957827ef88ac1393d49df01e46302ae2b78a2a92" data-rendition-name="original" width="3000" height="1510" loading="lazy" alt="CIJ press note 3"> <figcaption>Photo: MANISH PAUDEL/CIJ</figcaption> </figure>  &nbsp;

No freedom after expression

On 21 March, the Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) signed an agreement to launch the Sustainable Tourism Project (STP), a &nbsp;$5 million endeavour that aims &nbsp;to improve <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/a-new-architecture-for-nepals-tourism">Nepal’s tourism infrastructure</a>, workforce, and destinations to generate employment and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/life-and-livelihood-in-remote-nepal">livelihood opportunities for local communities</a>. The project, with set metrics to achieve its goal by 2028, aligns with <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/how-will-nepal-develop-in-the-next-decade">Nepal’s Sustainable Development Goals</a>, which emphasises commitments to environmentally <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/missing-out-on-nepal-s-tourism-potential">sustainable and inclusive tourism</a> efforts. Sustainability-related buzzwords are pervasive in the STP’s broadly outlined goals, which in its broad terms are agreeable, but until clear regulations, standards, and methodologies are incorporated in the project, applause must be withheld. Improving <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/peak-tourism-in-2023-9ukoi8iz">the tourist experience</a>, expanding local opportunities, bolstering <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/poor-cash-rich-nepal">Nepal’s economy</a>, and being <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/seams-sustainable">environmentally responsible </a>can be achieved simultaneously through strategic initiatives. The STP promises to deliver upon all of these goals. The question is: how do we balance the growth of the tourism sector while committing to sustainability and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/culture-cannot-be-an-afterthought">cultural preservation</a>? The skepticism of the efficacy and implementation of the STP comes from longstanding observations of the often environmentally harmful construction and building industry in Nepal. As it stands, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-train-project-struggles-to-stay-on-track">under-regulated and budget-conscious construction projects</a> have mushroomed both in Kathmandu and across rural Nepal— glass and concrete blocks sprawl next to the few remaining traditional homes in the valley, while tin-based enclosures have replaced mud and thatch-roof as well as traditional stone houses in the mountains. And while <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/home-away-from-home-in-nepal">hotels and guesthouses</a> proliferate, they are incongruent with the number of tourists who visit Nepal, and often remain under-occupied.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250610110624_2371c0aec43fde0ea705285ce3b46b77d09f2493ea790f01f0b42940fe60ff11.jpg" data-media-id="editor_10" data-image-id="20250610110624_2371c0aec43fde0ea705285ce3b46b77d09f2493ea790f01f0b42940fe60ff11" data-rendition-name="original" width="1216" height="544" loading="lazy" alt="Greening Nepal’s tourism"> <figcaption>Bad waste management in the Himalayas, out of sight of tourists (left). Photo: ALTON BYERS Stalling on the road for hours to Makalu National Park due to poor muddy road conditions is a regular occurrence (right). Photo: HANNA WELLS</figcaption> </figure>  The STP recognises that Nepal’s greatest resource is its <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/the-healing-power-of-nature">natural beauty</a>. But it is ironic that the very reason why tourists flock to Nepal has been marred by shoddy infrastructure that aims to make it accessible to tourists. A significant number of hotels in Kathmandu and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-tarai-s-shrinking-forests">the Tarai </a>are built with synthetic materials that perpetuate a vicious cycle of industrial, mass-manufactured goods which contribute to the global climate crisis. The industrial concrete sector has a strong socio-political and economic influence in Nepal, and <a href="https://nepalbuildcon.com.np/" target="_blank">tradeshows</a> market foreign-made construction materials that are detrimental to the natural environment.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250609110632_3627251b22f99a5a265585a6ba786a26a6b1cbaa66c10677af32a35327895802.png" data-media-id="editor_14" data-image-id="20250609110632_3627251b22f99a5a265585a6ba786a26a6b1cbaa66c10677af32a35327895802" data-rendition-name="original" width="550" height="550" loading="lazy" alt="Greening Nepal’s tourism NT"> <figcaption>Bhat-Bhateni superstore in Kathmandu. Photo: GOOGLE MAPS IMAGES</figcaption> </figure>  Tourism infrastructure not only plays a large role in defining a tourist’s experience and defining Nepal’s identity to the world, but also contributes to rising emissions. Buildings account for <a href="https://worldgbc.org/climate-action/embodied-carbon/" target="_blank">39% of global carbon emissions</a>, 8% of this is due to cement production. <a href="https://www.wri.org/insights/interactive-chart-shows-changes-worlds-top-10-emitters" target="_blank">Nepal is far from the largest emitter of greenhouse gasses</a> responsible for the climate crisis. Yet the reality of the country’s &nbsp;geographic location puts it at disproportionate risk of suffering the consequences of rising global temperatures and has more immediate impacts on everyday human experiences— the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/a-pre-monsoon-deja-vu">threat of glacial lake outburst </a>floods looms over mountain communities, while unpredictable rainfall lead to intense flooding that ravage villages and urban neighbourhoods every year. As it stands, the project’s focus on infrastructure presents an opportunity to align the preservation of cultural heritage and the natural environment with its tourism goals. Achieving national infrastructure goals and meeting tourism demands must align with rigorous and ambitious sustainability objectives. For instance, traditional mud houses in Nepal embody a <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/tourism-that-treads-lightly-on-the-land">balance between sustainability and cultural heritage</a>, as their design and construction are rooted in indigenous knowledge and constructed by hand from local resources. This wealth of building expertise is lost to modern construction practices, but there is some growing awareness that new construction must consider a community’s cultural identity and traditional context. More recently built <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/business/a-thamel-within-thamel">luxury hotels </a>display an understanding of a tourist’s desire to experience traditional culture, and thus have integrated indigenous aesthetics into their design. Dwarika’s Hotel in Kathmandu integrates Newari woodwork, and Tiger Tops in Chitwan and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/shrinking-tourism-s-ecological-footprint">Bardia eco-tourism commitments </a>are reflected in the resort’s use of local materials such as thatch and bamboo.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250609110632_df1f46638e5e23fdbf88899a3f90ac0bc759d43ddea4d874b95d5c4d69232e90.jpg" data-media-id="editor_21" data-image-id="20250609110632_df1f46638e5e23fdbf88899a3f90ac0bc759d43ddea4d874b95d5c4d69232e90" data-rendition-name="original" width="1237" height="900" loading="lazy" alt="Greening Nepal’s tourism NT"> <figcaption>Dwarika’s Hotel incorporating Newari woodwork into the outer facades of the hotel. Photo: BOOKING.COM</figcaption> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250609110632_01b08685dc4e6fc826233ceb25dd1358b0622c37fbf39a90bdd6e7c0173f4f88.jpg" data-media-id="editor_22" data-image-id="20250609110632_01b08685dc4e6fc826233ceb25dd1358b0622c37fbf39a90bdd6e7c0173f4f88" data-rendition-name="original" width="640" height="480" loading="lazy" alt="Greening Nepal’s tourism NT"> <figcaption>Tiger Tops Chitwan embracing wattle-and-daub wall building and thatch roofing in guest rooms. Photo: WILD FRONTIERS TRAVEL</figcaption> </figure>  Still, sustainability cannot be positioned as an end product, but rather a continuous process and practice. Reaching our STP goals thus must be process-based, inclusive of local communities, and culturally responsive. If done correctly, the project can rely on the built environment to achieve its carbon-neutral goals by ensuring tourism goes hand-in-hand with longevity of local communities, and the promotion and preservation of indigenous culture. Combined, these efforts create an example for the world of a tourism sector that bolsters not only the Nepali economy, but its people and the environment. But challenges persist. The wide-spread implementation of sustainable construction in Nepal faces significant hurdles despite efforts by institutions to promote regional materials and traditional methods. Small-scale organisations such as <a href="https://buildingbureau.org/" target="_blank">Building Bureau</a> are facing an uphill battle in promoting the use of regional material and integrating traditional building methods into contemporary construction practices. Individual clients interested in sustainable building may turn to an architect or contractor, like Building Bureau, to enhance the comfort and appeal of their space, but such innovative approaches are a fraction of buildings being churned out at unprecedented rates across Nepal’s cities. One project currently under construction is Tiger Track in Bardia, an eco-tourism lodge built in partnership with <a href="https://www.sustainablefuturenepal.com/" target="_blank">Sustainable Future Nepal.</a> Utilising rammed earth, recycled stone, and reclaimed wood, the lodge combines traditional Tharu architecture and building processes with modern technology to offer tourists an experience on par with global standards and to provide visitors a more culturally connected experience.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250609110632_64684e15af389bb494b9c4757d608fceb1f733d544a2cd60419d83d4f4ffd191.jpg" data-media-id="editor_25" data-image-id="20250609110632_64684e15af389bb494b9c4757d608fceb1f733d544a2cd60419d83d4f4ffd191" data-rendition-name="original" width="1600" height="1199" loading="lazy" alt="Greening Nepal’s tourism NT"> <figcaption>The Tiger Track lodge under construction, with a view of four guest rooms. The rammed-earth walls are finished with linseed oil, which hardens and protects the earth while remaining vapor permeable. It is all-natural and comes from flax, a “rabi crop” grown over the winter in the temperate hill regions.</figcaption> </figure>  The lodge has been designed and constructed in close collaboration with the client and surrounding community. Building materials were carefully selected based on seasonal and local availability and feasibility, and in consultation with residents. Tiger Track will also employ local experts like Hemanta Acharya— who leads the local community-based anti-poaching unit— to manage the lodge and ensure conservation-based educational programming. Additionally, the project’s construction has provided employment for dozens of members of the community and equipped them with knowledge on building practices that can be applied to other projects in the area. <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/weaving-dreams-for-women">Local entrepreneurs</a> and hoteliers have also been inspired by the lodge’s innovative approach during showcases and presentations.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250609110632_f75fa786655848d93a8b3911f5b136e97c56e3af9eda19672af2114fc5c7edff.jpg" data-media-id="editor_27" data-image-id="20250609110632_f75fa786655848d93a8b3911f5b136e97c56e3af9eda19672af2114fc5c7edff" data-rendition-name="original" width="1600" height="1200" loading="lazy" alt="Greening Nepal’s tourism NT"> <figcaption>Hemanta Acharya teaches a class visiting from Taiwan about eco-tourism and the community-based anti-poaching unit efforts, and the importance of sustainable building practices.</figcaption> </figure>  Tourism is among Nepal’s burgeoning economic sectors, and the STP initiative is a promising step in the growth of this industry. However, as Nepal continues to invest in the infrastructure and systems surrounding tourism, it must look to existing <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/economic-benefits-of-saving-the-ecology">sustainable practices </a>with Nepal’s tourism sectors and do more to incorporate environmentally responsible methods for the plan’s successful implementation. We must keep careful watch on the STP as it develops process plans, and demand that it adopt a truly innovative approach towards the implementation of its multi-pronged goals. The initiative’s success will depend on the implementation of clear regulations and standards that promote <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/foundations-for-sustainable-buildings-in-nepal">sustainable building practices</a>. And by involving <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-unsung-heroes-of-conservation">local communities </a>and embracing culturally responsive methods, the project can create lasting benefits for Nepal's tourism, economy and environment. The road to sustainability is a continuous journey, and with a committed and innovative approach, &nbsp;the STP is an opportunity for Nepal to lead in eco-tourism and set a precedent for <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/what-sustainable-tourism-means-in-practice">sustainable tourism development</a> worldwide.

Greening Nepal’s tourism

Top news

Every year there is much anticipation ahead of the annual budget. But chronic underspending aided by corruption and cronyism is not new and was no different 20 years ago. But with the Maoist insurgency in its final years, businesses were down, remittance was not as big, and military spending had tripled. <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=414">Excerpts </a>from the<a href="https://d1i1jdw69xsqx0.cloudfront.net/digitalhimalaya/collections/journals/nepalitimes/pdf/Nepali_Times_251.pdf"> issue #251 10 – 16 June 2005:</a>
Even at the best of times, balancing the Nepali budget is a thankless and exasperating job. But budget-making in the midst of an unprecedented national crisis is an even bigger challenge.
There isn't much that number-crunchers can do when everything adds up to minus. Revenue from trade has plummeted because trade is down, export receipts have crashed, tourism is at an all-time low and even remittances are sluggish. On the other hand there are huge new demands on expenditure from the military.
The finance wallas are tantalised by the prospect of expanding the tax-base. This may sound good in theory but with the economy withering, shops shutting, industries closing, there just isn't enough wealth being created to be taxed. Even Maoist extortionists have realised this.
Traditionally, shortfalls in revenue are met through internal borrowing but inflation now rules that out. It leaves only one option: beg.
But February First has put a freeze on many grants and even multilateral budgetary support has been suspended because of the slow pace of reforms. With current expenditures spiraling out of control, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the national exchequer is in very deep crisis. The Home Ministry this week issued a public tender notice in the state media for weapons from international suppliers. Where is the money going to come from? Development.
Less development spending means fewer jobs which in turn will fuel the insurgency. If winning hearts and minds is a part of the counterinsurgency strategy, axing development is going to alienate the people even more.
Singha Darbar faces an impossible task: finding an economic solution for a political problem. If aid is to be resumed, February First needs to be rolled back. To reduce security expenses, there has to be a genuine attempt to mainstream the Maoists. To increase economic activity, political contestation has to be amicably resolved. These are challenges worthy of a statesman.
For archived material of Nepali Times of the past 20 years, site search: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/">nepalitimes.com</a>

Budget then, budget now

Fenerbahçe Beko won the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague finals in Abu Dhabi, held 23-25 May, defeating Monaco 81-70 in the final. Olympiacos, who defeated Panathinaikos 97-93, finished the series in third place. The Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the final match, Nigel Hayes-Davis from Fenerbahçe Beko, received a prize of 1,000,000 Miles&amp;Smiles from Turkish Airlines’ Chief Commercial Officer Ahmet Olmuştur. The carrier has been the title sponsor of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague, a top tier tournament, since 2010.

Turkish Basketball

While Nepal was hosting the Sagarmatha Sambaad international climate conference in Kathmandu this month, on Mt Everest it was pretty much business as usual.&nbsp; The signs of climate breakdown are all there: a river now runs through Base Camp in summer, the Khumbu Icefall is more unstable, and there are more &nbsp;frequent avalanches. When expeditions arrived in March, the mountains were bare: it had not snowed since September, but then blizzards dumped unseasonal snow in May. And despite climate worries, such is the pull of Himalayan mountaineering that the Everest Industry showed no signs of slowdown. More than 600 international climbers and their Nepali guides had made it to the summit of the world’s highest mountain. At one point there were an estimated 2,000 people in the tent city on the Khumbu Glacier. All the ropes and ladders on the Icefall came down on Thursday, marking the official end of the spring climbing season, and just in time to avoid a monsoon cyclone approaching from the Bay of Bengal. It has been an action-packed season. One factor could be that Everest fees will go up from September: each foreign climber needs to pay a $15,000 royalty, up from the present $11,000. The cost for a Nepali climber on the South Col route will also go up: from Rs75,000 to Rs150,000.&nbsp; The fee to climb Everest in autumn is $7,500 (up from $5,500), but most climbers still prefer spring. Winter permit fee (December-February) is only $3,750 per person and the mountain is now also open for monsoon (June-August) climbs, when the fee is ever lower at $2,750. The revised rule also makes it mandatory for every two climbers on an 8,000m peak to hire one Nepali mountain guide.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025053004050_67f856fe52714e4bdcf21ae7d45c6f18c82117b9d0a5f73ed1efa04c96de1046.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2025053004050_67f856fe52714e4bdcf21ae7d45c6f18c82117b9d0a5f73ed1efa04c96de1046" data-rendition-name="original" width="931" height="732" loading="lazy" alt="The Everest Industry graph 1"> </figure>  In addition, climbers also have to pay for porters and guides, equipment, Base Camp costs, Ice Fall and fixed rope team fees, so climbing Everest does not come cheap. But such is the draw of climbing the world’s highest peak that some say the increased fees will not diminish the crowds next year. The government has tried to spread expeditions out to other seasons and other 8,000ers, but with not much success. Earlier this year, Nepal unilaterally increased the number of 8,000m peaks to 14 by adding six more sub-summits to broaden the choice for climbers. Added were: Yalung Kang (8,505m), Yalung Kang West (8,077m) &nbsp;Kangchenjunga Central (8,473m), Kangchenjunga South (8,476m), Lhotse Middle (8,410m) and Lhotse Shar (8,400m).&nbsp; The announcement could go against the accepted topographic criteria that a stand alone peak has to be at least 300m higher than an adjoining prominence, and at more than 3km isolation from it. The UIAA (Union Internationale des Associations d'Alpinisme) still recognises only 14 mountains as eight-thousanders, and only eight of those are in Nepal, or on the border with China. Nepal’s revised mountaineering regulations also increased the insurance coverage of high-altitude workers to protect porters and high altitude guides who usually take more risks on the mountains. Rescue teams and clean-up campaigners to collect trash and remove bodies of dead climbers up to Camp IV of Mt Everest do not need permits.&nbsp; The Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee is now using drones to fly down trash in 20kg sacks. Each climber is also required to bring down at least 6kg of waste and not just their own, but this rule is erratically enforced. With five fatalities on Everest and Lhotse, Spring 2025 had a historically low death toll. Another five climbers died on Annapurna, Kangchenjunga and Makalu.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025053004050_38681de22f0fefb6faa12b01755566d09c5064d0ff84e12ccc7b5d68ea9ba38a.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="2025053004050_38681de22f0fefb6faa12b01755566d09c5064d0ff84e12ccc7b5d68ea9ba38a" data-rendition-name="original" width="665" height="740" loading="lazy" alt="The Everest industry graph 2"> </figure>  Journalist Ben Ayers who ran the Everest Live social media channel from Everest Base Camp with daily updates credited the low death rate to dramatic rescues of climbers from the ‘Death Zone’ by their Nepali guides and longline helievacs — the visuals all uploaded on YouTube.&nbsp; “Ironically, this perception of safety is bringing more and more inexperienced climbers to the mountain, and they need more rescues,” Ayers said in one of his dispatches.&nbsp; American expedition chronicler and summiteer Alan Arnette suspects there is a lot of under-reporting given that the jet stream and storms were lashing Everest even till late in the season. He told us: “I heard a lot about frostbite and rescues that were not made public. It’s become practically impossible to cover the details on Everest. All the teams report nice news, and they don’t talk about bad stuff to avoid hurting businesses.” Although trash on Nepal’s mountains makes headlines, what does not receive as much attention is the climate impact of so many expeditions. The Sagarmatha Sambaad conference sidestepped this issue, which is ironic given that the impact of climate breakdown is most evident on Himalayan peaks and their glaciers.&nbsp; <h2>Need for Speed</h2> The big stories this year have been about speed-running from their home cities to the top of Everest. Ukrainian entrepreneur Andrew Ushakov flew out of JFK on 15 May at 10:15AM Nepal time, and was on the summit 3 days, 23 hours, and 7 minutes later on 19 May at 9:22AM.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250601080640_1c5cc6fc991307861768f07037ed9d30930fb20f35dbb57dc31c9a92a9e1a885.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20250601080640_1c5cc6fc991307861768f07037ed9d30930fb20f35dbb57dc31c9a92a9e1a885" data-rendition-name="original" width="1440" height="1800" loading="lazy" alt="The Everest Industry"> <figcaption>Andrew Ushakov at the summt. Photo: ELITE EXPED</figcaption> </figure>  “I could never find the time for the traditional 40-50 days of acclimatisation,” Ushakov explained matter-of-factly. His ‘Everest Sea-to-Summit’ climb was possible because he spent 400 hours in hypoxic sleep tents over the past four years in New York. However, Ushakov did use ropes already fixed, hired four Nepali guides, helicoptered to Base Camp, and used much more oxygen than an average climber. And after the climb, Ushakov was arrested at Kathmandu airport for being in possession of $20,000 of undeclared cash and spent a night in jail and fined $60,000.&nbsp; The other speedsters were Garth Miller, Alastair Cairns, Anthony Stazicker, and Kev Godlington, all former British Army commandos. They left London and summited five days later on 21 May, and flew right back. They also used hypoxic tents to simulate the thin air high on Everest.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250601080644_90c8dd5cc07b4b43f2989b1dc0c0650ab80f10ebb06680c25a6909c519957bd8.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20250601080644_90c8dd5cc07b4b43f2989b1dc0c0650ab80f10ebb06680c25a6909c519957bd8" data-rendition-name="original" width="810" height="668" loading="lazy" alt="The Everest Industry "> <figcaption>All four members of the Furtenbach team at the summit. Photo: Sandro Gromen-Hayes</figcaption> </figure>  But more controversial was their use of xenon gas therapy in a German hospital to ramp up the production of oxygen-carrying haemoglobins in their blood. Xenon is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency for being performance enhancing in sports. Expedition leader Lukas Furtenbach said this rule does not apply to mountaineering, as it is not a regulated sport like swimming. Nepal has no rules about xenon, but the Department of Tourism said it was launching an ‘investigation’ to decide on future policy since it is difficult to ban xenon, but allow oxygen. The controversy has also divided the mountaineering community, with some climbers saying they just want to maximise their chances of survival. Spending less time on the mountain could make climbing safer by reducing avalanche risk. It would also mean less trash on the mountains, but it would reduce the income of Nepal’s expedition industry. It is also unclear how much of the success was due to xenon therapy and whether the ex-special forces were already in good physical shape.&nbsp; The need for speed hides the fact that climbing in the Himalaya is dangerous business, and climbers cannot sprint to the top just by huffing xenon. But ultra-fast climbs could be charged more, and the revenue generated can be used to establish state-of-the-art rescue operations, and increase pay and insurance for guides. Two other speed chasers this season were Swiss-Ecuadorian Karl Egloff and American Tyler Andrews, both on Everest without oxygen. Andrews choppered to Base Camp to catch a weather window, but turned back from 8,500m due to high winds. Heavy snow and wind also forced Egloff to descend from 7,000m. Slow and steady climbers like Anja Blacha from Germany did make it to the summit without oxygen, while Kami Rita Sherpa broke his own record with his 31st Everest summit as he led a 26-strong Indian Army group. There were 468 permits issued for foreign climbers from 48 expeditions to Everest this spring. Nepal’s other eight-thousanders together had only 17 expeditions. Nepal has more than 1,000 peaks above 6,000m, and has opened only 476 of them for climbing.&nbsp;

The Everest Industry

While Nepal marked <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/mt-everest-pvt-ltd">Mt Everest</a> Day on 29 May, on the other side of the planet in the US state of Colorado dozens of Nepalis who have climbed the world’s highest peak multiple times were busy working as chefs and Uber drivers. Among them is Nima Doma Sherpa, who climbed Mt Everest in 2019 after her husband Tshering Wangchu was among 16 crushed by an avalanche on <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/on-thin-ice-in-the-khumbu">the Khumbu Icefall</a> five years earlier. A large serac broke off the West Shoulder of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-everest-industry">Mt Everest </a>and fell directly on a group of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/more-porters-sick-on-everest-trail">porters and guides</a> making their way up the Icefall at 5,800m. Their bodies were flown by helicopter to Khumjung where Tshering Wangchu was born. He was excited about climbing Mt Everest for the first time.&nbsp; In Khumjung, Nima Doma felt like her own life had also ended. This was the kind of news Sherpa wives, mothers and sisters dreaded every <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/peak-climbing-season-2025-s4abrxny">mountaineering season</a>. She stayed home for more than two years grieving, but ultimately gathered up all her emotional strength to take care of her 6-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter. Nima had grown up in Khumjung hearing <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/stories-of-nepal-s-summiteers">tales of adventure on the mountains </a>from their father, Ang Chubi Sherpa who had climbed Everest in 1993. He used to bring her and her sisters and brother European chocolates after every expedition, and used to tell them that the chocolate bars grew on the mountains. “It was only after we got older did we realise that he told us that chocolates grew in the mountains so we would not worry about him putting himself in harm's way,” Nima Doma recalled with a faraway look at her home in Boulder this week. Nima went to the school that <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/commemorating-edmund-hillary-in-nepal,4145">Edmund Hillary</a> opened in Khumjung till Grade 8, and then dropped out to help in the kitchen and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/when-yaks-go-so-does-culture">tend yaks</a>. She was married off to Tshering Wangchu, who was also a high altitude guide. When Tshering went on expeditions, Nima also started working as a porter from Namche to Base Camp. It was perhaps her father’s tales of mountains of chocolates that had always attracted her to <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/knowing-our-mountains-43v4iyvo">the peaks</a>. After her husband was killed ten years ago this month, being a widow with children was not easy for Nima Doma. But she was not alone: there were at least 200 single mothers in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/khumbu-since-1950-jaww4qn0">the Khumbu</a>, and 20 of them just in Khumjung whose husbands had been killed in <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/tragic-start-to-himalayan-spring-nepal,3695">mountaineering accidents</a>. Some were not even 20 years old, and had children growing up without fathers. But there were also women in the 50s whose husbands had been killed in the 1980s. Nima found sponsors for her children’s education, and moved to Kathmandu. In the capital, Sherpa widows used to meet to help each other. Some of them had joined the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA) training for rock and ice climbing. “I decided that it was no use sitting home and crying anymore, after meeting other single mothers I felt less alone,” remembers Nima, who joined the Juniper Foundation and enrolled in an NMA training camp in Manang. There she climbed Chulu East (6,584m) and met Furadiki Sherpa, whose rope-fixing husband had also been <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/on-mt-everest-s-70th-records-and-fatalities">killed on Everest</a> in 2013. They set themselves the goal of climbing Everest one day, and started a fund-raising drive.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250530090544_621be0724b9182c8e3594b2c562a71ec32ac01d985a71d0cf31646de9d51e15a.png" data-media-id="editor_12" data-image-id="20250530090544_621be0724b9182c8e3594b2c562a71ec32ac01d985a71d0cf31646de9d51e15a" data-rendition-name="original" width="2678" height="1274" loading="lazy" alt="Everest summiteers find new life in the US"> </figure>  “We decided we had to overcome society’s stigma of <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/widows-personal-happiness-comes-last-in-face-of-social-financial-hardships,1855">widowhood</a> and prove that <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/remembering-junko-tabei">women could also climb mountains</a>,” Nima said, adding that she was inspired by Nepal’s first woman Everest summiteer Pasang Lhamu Sherpa, who died during her descent in 1993. Nima Doma and Furdiki climbed the technically-difficult Ama Dablam (6,812m) and then arrived at Everest Base Camp in April 2019 as part of their Two Widows Expedition with the motto, ‘So Can We’. While climbing up the Icefall Nima passed the spot where her husband had been killed. It was a jumble of constantly-shifting ice blocks bigger than houses. She closed her eyes and said a prayer. “I remember thinking, this is so difficult and dangerous. This is what my husband had to do to support our family,” Nima Doma said. “I was determined to fulfil my husband’s dream of climbing Chomolungma, and to prove to ourselves that we two women could do it.” It was 23 May 2019 when <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/world/two-sherpa-widows-scale-everest-and-smash-stigma-idUSKCN1SU0MV/" target="_blank">Nima and Furdiki stepped on the summit</a> and looked over into Tibet, and down at Tengboche Monastery to the south.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250530090544_6b822582b5d88ba5e972db084f184690b40653c6efd9901b2dd082ffba2a263b.png" data-media-id="editor_16" data-image-id="20250530090544_6b822582b5d88ba5e972db084f184690b40653c6efd9901b2dd082ffba2a263b" data-rendition-name="original" width="2700" height="1522" loading="lazy" alt="Everest summiteers find new life in the US"> </figure>  Nima Doma hugged Furdiki, took off her mask and wept. But for the first time in five years, it was not from grief but relief — relief for being free of all the sadness and sacrifices and for fulfilling her husband’s dream. They had found <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/life-after-death">life after death</a>. “I felt this immense joy to be on top of the world, it was indescribable,” Nima Doma said, “I have wept only twice in my life. Once when my husband died, and once there on top of Everest.” The tears had frozen on Nima Doma’s cheeks, as she and Furdiki headed back down the mountain.

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