<figure><img width="640" height="427" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016114/636d13c69c7e80680e0a993djpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Photos: AMITAV GHOSH</figcaption></figure>Born in Calcutta, and now a New York-based writer, Amitav Ghosh approaches the subject of the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/un-climate-report-declares-planetary-emergency/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">global environmental crisis</a> through two literary genres: fiction and non-fiction.  As a celebrated novelist, Ghosh is known for his meticulously researched works of fiction that take complex transnational historical events, and weave characters into them, so that readers get a close idea of what it was like to live through those times. The Calcutta Chromosome, for instance, is a tale woven around the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-mosquito-that-changed-nepals-history/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">malaria scourge</a> that has lessons for the current pandemic. In The Glass Palace, Ghosh takes us back to colonial Burma, Malaya and Bengal and the story of a family caught up in upheavals. His novel The Hungry Tide is about a young Indian scientist in the ecologically fragile mangroves of the Sundarban in the Ganges delta. Sea of Poppies is about fictional characters caught up in the very real Opium Wars. <img width="191" height="270" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016114/636d13c89c7e80680e0a993ejpeg.jpg" alt=""><img width="190" height="271" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016114/636d13ca9c7e80680e0a993fjpeg.jpg" alt=""><img width="191" height="269" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016114/636d13cb9c7e80680e0a9940jpeg.jpg" alt=""><img width="191" height="272" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016114/636d13cc9c7e80680e0a9941jpeg.jpg" alt="">While Ghosh specialises in historical novels that merge fact and fiction, he has also written powerful non-fiction books, including the ethnographic In an Antique Land. The slim Countdown is about regional radioactive fallout of a future India-Pakistan nuclear war, and The Great Derangement in 2016 looked at the reluctance of politicians, novelists, artists and movie-makers to grasp and respond to the climate emergency.        <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/book-reviews-new-year-2074,3654">Horror story for a climate calamity</a>, Kunda Dixit <img width="187" height="267" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016114/636d13cd9c7e80680e0a9942jpeg.jpg" alt=""><img width="192" height="268" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016114/636d13cf9c7e80680e0a9943jpeg.jpg" alt=""><img width="191" height="271" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016118/636d13d09c7e80680e0a9944jpeg.jpg" alt="">Ghosh’s pre-pandemic novel Gun Island could be seen as a response to the questions he himself raised in The Great Derangement about the paucity of novels dealing with climate change. In this fictional work, we are taken in typical Amitav fashion on the journey of a 50-something Bengali American, as he finds his view of reality shifting. Dinanath Datta, more commonly known by his American name Deen, is a dealer of rare books with a natural affinity for the ancient and poetic. While on an annual visit to his hometown of Kolkata, he is persuaded into taking a last minute boat escapade into the Sundarbans, the same mangrove archipelago that is the setting for the earlier novel The Hungry Tide. Deen heads to a riverbank with a shrine in honour of the protagonist of an old Bengali legend. Upon learning more about the details of this mysterious folk tale, Deen begins to recognise that this narrative may be based on a real life experience of an individual living during climatic changes of the ‘Little Ice Age’ 500 year ago, when a cold period swept the planet.Needless to say, there are many parallels to the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/climate-change-is-a-disaster-in-the-nepal-himalaya/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">climate crisis we are experiencing today</a>.  Deen, a secular realist, realises that the greatest barrier to humanity dealing with a global emergency is greed. He thinks (and obviously the author does, too, through his character) that the religious concept of demons is a metaphor for greed. ‘According to Hindu mythology, when demons take over is when the world ends,’ Ghosh writes on behalf of his character.Humans are inherently greedy and this nuanced take is the theological summary of the anthropocene. While demons have not actually taken over the earth, demonic ideation has. Later in the novel, Deen’s close confidant, Cinta, states that when she looks at this world ‘with the diagnostic tools of an Inquisitor, it becomes that the world of today presents all of the symptoms of demonic possession’. Cinta sums up our current climate crisis in a most particular, yet insightful fashion: ‘Everybody knows what must be done if the world is to continue to be a liveable place … and yet we are powerless, even the most powerful among us. We go about our daily business through habit, as though we were in the grip of forces that have overwhelmed our will; we see shocking and monstrous things happening all around us and we avert our eyes; we surrender ourselves willingly to whatever it is that has us in its power.’<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/panoramic-encyclopaedia-of-the-himalaya/">Panoramic encyclopaedia of the Himalaya</a>, Lisa Choegyal <figure><img width="267" height="400" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016118/636d13d19c7e80680e0a9945jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>This is a striking and eloquent explanation of a world held in the spell of a capitalist consumer culture that has numbed us to its consequences on nature and life. The phenomenon of greed has “possessed” us in that way. Gun Island is a bit of a slow burn, but once the action begins the pages turn easily. Ghosh weaves references to contemporary events and issues, while incorporating them into human history. He is able to illustrate the importance of maintaining a relationship with the unknown and mystical, as well as how that can actually strengthen one’s relationship with reality. The author leaves his reader wanting to show strength in stepping out of the demonic choke-hold of greed and extravagance that society is currently in, and stand up for Mother Earth. And to ram the point home, Amitav Ghosh then uses the pandemic lockdown to write a non-fiction corollary to his novel, The Nutmeg Curse, released last month.In it, Ghosh speaks as himself, and not through one of his characters, about the history of cruelty and plunder behind the ‘discovery’ of the New World and the European colonialism elsewhere in the world. By recalling gory details of extermination of nature and genocides of indigenous peoples, Ghosh reminds us that the planetary emergency we face today is just an extension of the holocaust that local peoples suffered in past centuries at the hands of the conquistadors. In fact, it presages the current crisis.The reader is shown how the ‘conjoined processes of violence, physical and intellectual, were all necessary for the emergence of a new economy based on extracting resources from a desacralized, inanimate Earth’. Ghosh is referring to the spiritual relationship that indigenous communities have always maintained with planet Earth. But modern industrialised societies look at the Mother Earth only through the lens of what she can offer us, paying no heed that we destroy nature at our own peril – as the Climate-Covid co-crises remind us.  <a style="font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/the-unsung-heroes-of-conservation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The unsung heroes of conservation</a>, Nepali TimesThe Nutmeg Curse first takes us to 1621, when the Dutch colonial military wipes out the entire population of the Banda Islands in present day Indonesia to control the trade in the invaluable native nutmeg tree. Nutmegs were one of the most desired items of luxury and wealth in Europe at the time, driving the spice trade. The value of this fruit drove the Dutch East India Company to compete with the British to control the islands, and to do so they had to exterminate the local inhabitants. As with the entire European colonial project in South and Southeast Asia, Africa and the Americas, anything that stood in the way of resource extraction (nature, non-white humans and non-human animals) were expendable.  The curse of the nutmeg for Ghosh is an allegory for the more modern resource curse of <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/decarbonisation-needs-to-begin-today/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">fossil fuels behind the current climate crisis</a>.  Replace nutmeg with petroleum, and you can see how colonialism laid the foundations for the present planetary emergency. Ghosh shows how the colonial process treated indigenous peoples as subhuman, and their knowledge of and sustainable co-existence with nature as ‘primitive’. The book gives us a long litany of horrors of European colonisation perpetrated on peoples around the world, systematically muting them, replacing forests with plantations, native cultures with slavery, and obliterating the natural world.In a way, this is an alternative history of the world that is diametrically different from the history text books in school that are dominated by politics, conquests and the resources that were mined to fuel industrial ‘civilisation’. Ghosh has a different take on history, and persuasively explains how our colonial past is inherently intertwined with the global climate emergency. The Nutmeg Curse also underlines the connectivity between our colonial history right down to the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/we-all-yearn-to-breathe-free/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Black Lives Matter movement</a> and the global pandemic. Ghosh tells us how he sat down to write the book during the pandemic lockdown in Brooklyn in 2020, as sirens blared outside and bodies had to be kept in refrigerated trucks because hospital morgues had filled up.<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/alpine-style-in-the-himalaya/">Alpine style in the Himalaya</a>, Kunda DixitThe reader is able to understand that in order to even begin to fight against social and environmental <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/black-lives-matter-but-dalit-lives-dont/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">injustices</a>,  we must make changes in the way we live and govern ourselves. Ghosh writes, ‘much, if not most, of humanity today lives as colonialists once did -- viewing the Earth as though it were an inert entity that exists primarily to be exploited and profited from’. If we can somehow backtrack and learn to co-live with Gaia in the compassionate way that the native folks once did, then there will be hope. We must speak up and unlearn accepted practices, and the deeply-rooted greed and over-consumption that dominates our lives. The Nutmeg Curse is an eye-opener. Ghosh is not preaching to the converted here, he provides even skeptics and deniers with a holistic history of global capitalism and its model of perpetual growth that underpins the current climate crisis. Full of rich and meaningful history, these accounts of genocide and plunder illuminate the implications of Western colonialism in so many of our current sources of distress. Readers of the novel, Gun Island, and the non-fiction, The Nutmeg Curse, will have to decide for themselves which form of literature is more effective in communicating the urgency of the climate crisis.These two books should be read together, they reinforce one another, and the impact is greater than the sum of their parts.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/20-reviews-in-20-years/">20 Reviews in 20 Years</a>, Nepali TimesMarilyn Lubetkin is a first-year student at Pitzer College in California. As a Houston, Texas, native, Marilyn experienced first hand the impact of climate change when she lost her childhood home to the disastrous flooding induced by Hurricane Harvey in 2017. <img width="301" height="462" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016118/636d13d39c7e80680e0a9946jpeg.jpg" alt=""><img width="300" height="462" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111016118/636d13d59c7e80680e0a9947jpeg.jpg" alt="">Gun IslandJohn Murray PublishersPaperback, 320 pagesAvailable at Patan Book ShopThe Nutmeg's Curse: Parables of a Planet in Crisis John Murray PublishersPaperback, 352 pagesAvailable at Patan Book Shop

Kunda Dixit

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The climate crisis in fiction and non-fiction

In the black and white photograph, General Wangdu smiles broadly in front of the dusty cactus garden in Kathmandu’s Annapurna Hotel. With an ill-fitting jacket and shaggy hair he looks benign enough, but this was the last leader of the Tibetan freedom fighters who led the resistance against the Chinese from their remote mountain hideouts in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/comings-and-goings-in-mustang">Mustang</a>. Five months later, Wangdu was dead. Snapped in March 1974, I had only recently arrived in Nepal. How did I meet this legendary fighter? Possibly with his devoted camp follower, Lynne Klapecki, and probably in the Om Restaurant near Freak Street which was the preferred <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/hippie-trail-nostalgia-in-kathmandu">hippie hang-out</a>. Om Lobsang and his brother Yeshe were <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/page/earthquake-brings-back-memories-of-camps-for-tibetan-refugees">refugees from East Tibet </a>whose cafe offered a friendly welcome and<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/momo-loco"> the best momos</a> - they became my in-laws after I married their eldest brother Tenzin, but that was a decade later.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025052403054_4573b34282b0f5395c007243d6bef12c7ba76bfd520419e994cdcea048d795a1.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="2025052403054_4573b34282b0f5395c007243d6bef12c7ba76bfd520419e994cdcea048d795a1" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1583" loading="lazy" alt="The last days of the Khampa NT"> <figcaption>Photo: LISA CHOEGYAL</figcaption> </figure>  Wangdu’s English was enthusiastically rudimentary, but even riding around town with him on the back of an aging <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/kathmandu-s-new-motorbike-museum">motorbike</a>, he was a commanding presence. Always flanked by armed outriders, impressive scars marked his forearms and a pistol hung from the cord around his neck. A charismatic guerrilla leader, Wangdu was celebrated by his followers for his tough commitment and respected for his measured pragmatism. He seemed so young to have shouldered such a responsibility of command, leading hundreds of hardened <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/50-years-after-the%20raid-into-Tibet,1012#google_vignette">Khampa combatants </a>through what had been a particularly <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/heavy-snowfall-over-nepal-himalaya">brutal winter in Mustang</a>, the last bastion to hold out against the Chinese invasion of their Tibetan homeland.&nbsp; The freedom fighters of Tibet, known as the Chushi-Gangdruk, had emerged to resist the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/territorialism">Chinese takeover</a> of Tibet during the 1950s. Estimated to be 80,000-strong at the time of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/what-or-who-after-the-dalai-lama">the Dalai Lama</a>’s final escape to India in 1959, the sheer number of Chinese deployed into Tibet eventually forced the Chushi-Gangdruk to retreat to Mustang, From this high Himalayan stronghold, they continued cross-border raids on the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) throughout the 1960s.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025052403054_8a4a935ba25ae79dc3a63bb5c14626927020e5ec098093c45ccb9a5982e009fd.jpg" data-media-id="editor_10" data-image-id="2025052403054_8a4a935ba25ae79dc3a63bb5c14626927020e5ec098093c45ccb9a5982e009fd" data-rendition-name="original" width="1114" height="676" loading="lazy" alt="The last days of the Khampa NT"> <figcaption>Guerrillas known as the Chushi-Gangdruk emerged to resist the Chinese annexation of Tibet during the 1950s. Photo courtesy: MIKEL DUNHAM</figcaption> </figure>  Their Kathmandu base was a small discreet lodge in a back lane near Rani Pokhari. Sipping sweet tea from a blue mug with a chipped lid, I sat bemused in a corner of the Mustang Hotel room whilst Wangdu and his cohorts received a battered brown suitcase from their CIA connection, a tousle-haired American in a leather jacket. Heaved onto the dingy bedspread that covered the thin mattress, it was clicked open to reveal piles of neatly stacked dollar bills.&nbsp; I cannot think why Wangdu allowed me to witness this handover but I was clearly no threat, a newly arrived world traveller with no understanding of the stakes nor any Nepali or <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/tibetan-music-in-nepals-sacred-valley">Tibetan language</a>. Despite armed guards in the corridor,Wangdu radiated confidence and bravado, and there was a practiced familiarity to the tense transaction. This deadly dance for many years had been funded by the Americans, tolerated by <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-kingdom-within-a-republic">Mustang’s residents</a>, and permitted by King Mahendra and the Nepali authorities who it suited to turn a blind eye.&nbsp; But Mahendra died in 1972, and times were changing. Richard Nixon’s ping-pong diplomacy thawed the cold war and signalled a fresh entente with China. Nepal’s yet-to-be-crowned <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/if-birendra-was-alive-nepal-could-still-be-a-monarchy">King Birendra </a>was under pressure to curb the irritating incursions against the PLA launched from the Nepali territory of Mustang. Keen to appease his northern neighbour, on several occasions the King summoned Wangdu for peace talks but, despite increasingly overwhelming odds, Wangdu refused to surrender.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025052403054_a8efd5cfb92cd997bd7cb74296a936fef46e2f7428f9cd642b03f1ac4ea11ecb.jpg" data-media-id="editor_14" data-image-id="2025052403054_a8efd5cfb92cd997bd7cb74296a936fef46e2f7428f9cd642b03f1ac4ea11ecb" data-rendition-name="original" width="1055" height="885" loading="lazy" alt="The last days of the Khampa NT"> <figcaption>General Wangdu flanked by two Tibetan resistance fighters in Mustang in the 1970s. Photo courtesy: MIKEL DUNHAM</figcaption> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025052403054_75969125a745847a2ef82b6fe8b9106c0b21a116d85b8efdf5d2ee89a347bb31.jpg" data-media-id="editor_15" data-image-id="2025052403054_75969125a745847a2ef82b6fe8b9106c0b21a116d85b8efdf5d2ee89a347bb31" data-rendition-name="original" width="1044" height="792" loading="lazy" alt="The last days of the Khampa NT"> <figcaption>King Birendra with General Wangdu (right in dark glasses) taken in 1974 possibly in Mustang after one of their few attempts at negotiation. Photo courtesy: RAJRNDRA KUNWAR</figcaption> </figure>  While I naively rode pillion around Kathmandu in the spring sunshine, Wangdu was in the midst of what turned out to be his final round of negotiations with the Nepal government. Refusing to cease hostilities with the Chinese, Wangdu must have suspected the cost of his decision, making his cheerful smile in the photograph all the more poignant and brave. It was only much later that I appreciated the significance of the moment. Wangdu had been sent to replace the first resistance leader in Mustang, Baba Gen Yeshe, a much derided corrupt character who stole money meant for his troops and exploited fleeing refugees by seizing their treasures. Baba Gen Yeshe never forgave Wangdu,and sought revenge in May 1974 by betraying him and his commanders to the Nepal authorities. Renewed Chinese incursions from the north, active PLA collusion with the Nepali forces under the new King, and treachery from within the Chushi-Gangdrukranks combined to seal their fate.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025052403054_e0987a7c90d76431b0d7d5e6115ebfe3dbda7ab939e5941e079c18d722e884c0.jpg" data-media-id="editor_16" data-image-id="2025052403054_e0987a7c90d76431b0d7d5e6115ebfe3dbda7ab939e5941e079c18d722e884c0" data-rendition-name="original" width="1400" height="769" loading="lazy" alt="The last days of the Khampa NT"> <figcaption>British television journalists George Patterson and Adrian Cowell embedded themselves with Khampa guerrillas and accompanied them from Tsum Valley on a cross border raid on a Chinese Army convoy in 1964. Photo: ESSAYS ON NEPAL / SAM COWAN</figcaption> </figure>  Mikel Dunham, renowned author of Buddha’s Warriors, writes: ‘It is possible that Wangdu was waiting for some cue from the Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India. It is equally possible – during that last, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/the-human-cost-of-nepal-s-yarsa-gold-rush?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR31-Cqw8oyIwMPzf_35e4Skr0ululJvLf3_vDkzHn-AYG2h8uPw2rqqErg_aem_tGVn5coY1-jA7fze_xqhew">desolate winter </a>– that he made the decision to go out in glory rather than admit defeat. Over the last fifteen years, Wangdu had experienced Tibet’s organized resistance being squeezed and shoved around by every conceivable outside force.&nbsp; First they had been pushed out of their own country by the PLA; then they had been refused sanction while on <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/borderlines/nepal-india-trans-boundary-bonds?fbclid=IwAR0PpJ5zUEbwdug3g_U3ar6FUugngRY0S8Tl2v_7wqzrsHmXWcXsKjvL4t4">Indian soil</a>; then they were abandoned by the Americans because, apparently, Nixon wanted to make friends with Wangdu’s mortal enemies, the communists; then they had been betrayed by the vampiric Baba Gen Yeshe – a Tibetan and, even worse, a fellow Khampa; and now, finally Wangdu’s army was being evicted by the Nepalis. One thing was certain: Wangdu was a warrior. To imagine Wangdu simply giving up and settling down in the pacific squalor of a <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/elderly-left-in-bhutan-refugee-camp">refugee camp </a>was unthinkable.’  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025052403054_8fc1ffef4ae751628b90ae781b66e11e51e4fdde2787207c9042efbee345ce49.jpg" data-media-id="editor_20" data-image-id="2025052403054_8fc1ffef4ae751628b90ae781b66e11e51e4fdde2787207c9042efbee345ce49" data-rendition-name="original" width="500" height="746" loading="lazy" alt="The last days of the Khampa NT"> <figcaption>The much derided Baba Gen Yeshe, the first Tibetan resistance leader in Mustang, who betrayed Wangdu for personal gain. Photo courtesy: MIKEL DUNHAM</figcaption> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025052403054_b1d833cdb00d3ac4416b844d8730475cd88c238caaaf8da69889a584eea229a3.jpg" data-media-id="editor_21" data-image-id="2025052403054_b1d833cdb00d3ac4416b844d8730475cd88c238caaaf8da69889a584eea229a3" data-rendition-name="original" width="500" height="656" loading="lazy" alt="The last days of the Khampa NT"> <figcaption>Aditya SJB Rana of the Royal Nepal Army whose team ambushed Wangdu and his cohorts at the top of Tinker Pass in Darchula, West Nepal. Photo courtesy: GAUTAM SJB RANA</figcaption> </figure>  By August 1974 the game was up. Wangdu and six of his exhausted party were killed on their horses by <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=7270">the Royal Nepal Army</a> on the brink of escape. The officer in charge, Aditya SJB Rana, cleverly predicted their route into India after they failed to silence a police radio in Yari. A carefully laid ambush trapped them near the summit of the Tinker Pass in Darchula,at 5,000 meters the highest military operation of its time. Wangdu’s body was helicoptered to Kathmandu, and a big show made of the royal Nepal victory.&nbsp; The Tibetan armed insurgency against China had reached its end.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250524030520_3ff9c6fc85a65bc9a2c3afe9736d9f5f9413de752e790a5d9dca0981ea94f9b4.jpg" data-media-id="editor_23" data-image-id="20250524030520_3ff9c6fc85a65bc9a2c3afe9736d9f5f9413de752e790a5d9dca0981ea94f9b4" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="The last days of the Khampa NT"> </figure>

The Last Days of the Khampa

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

Starting 17 September Turkish Airlines will fly daily to Seville, one of Spain’s major tourist draws. This is Turkish’s sixth destination in Spain after Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Malaga, and Bilbao. Seville is in the Andalusia region on Spain’s south coast with a rich Moor history. There are approximately 30,000 Nepalis living in Spain.&nbsp;

Turkish to Seville

The newly-formed Himalayan Art Council is set to launch Nepal’s National Art Protection Platform that seeks to preserve <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/the-history-of-heritage">Nepal’s unique cultural heritage </a>using<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/artificial-censorship"> AI-powered tools</a>. The Council seeks to safeguard <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/nepali-art-going-places">Nepali art works</a> from neglect, theft and counterfeiting as well as preserve existing artwork and celebrate living masters by giving them a cultural space to continue the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/sacred-survival">sacred art traditions</a>. "We are introducing a new digital platform designed to preserve, verify and elevate <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/nepals-new-generation-of-alternative-artists">Nepal’s art for generations to come,</a>” says a statement from the Council, adding that the digital platform will use AI told for authentication and blockchain to keep track of works of art. Artists can now be protected by <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/ayo-ai?fbclid=IwAR1uwmTVq4gUB70ljfRezjzukD9ArWXPuMnUikopeQ8PoiZMjicToPSwhKE&amp;=1">AI tools</a> that detect forgeries, identify their work even when unsigned, and ensure they receive proper recognition and credit. The archives will be searchable with translated inscription and interactive guides. Says curator Meena Lama: “AI and blockchains are tools that give us the power to detect fakes and identify unsigned paintings and track every piece. With these tools we can restore trust, secure authorship and give artists the dignity they deserve.”  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250514170544_2ab58f6313c0458f75114a692b0016bd9efb3b59d5f8f07f0da72e1e37b82f53.jpg" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20250514170544_2ab58f6313c0458f75114a692b0016bd9efb3b59d5f8f07f0da72e1e37b82f53" data-rendition-name="original" width="1300" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Artwork at the Traditional Art Exhibition at Patan Museum."> <figcaption>Artwork at the Traditional Art Exhibition at Patan Museum.</figcaption> </figure>  The Council is also holding an exhibition of Nepali cultural masterpieces with 50 historical <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Buzz-the-art,671">thangka and paubha </a>by past masters and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/between-the-sacred-and-everyday">contemporary works by current artists</a>. This curated collection is a living tribute to <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/when-yaks-go-so-does-culture">Himalayan culture</a> with economic depictions of deities, mandala and sacred narratives. The exhibition at <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/a-portal-into-patan-s-past-and-present">Patan Museum</a> also provides an opportunity to meet painters and custodians of art and culture. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/golden-deities">Golden deities</a>, Sewa Bhattarai ‘The exhibition is only the first step in a long journey to ensure that Nepali art is no just seen but fully understood, <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/Narratives-of-Faith-and-Memory-Remembering-the-Lost-Sculptures-of-Kathmandu-exhibition,987">protected and remembered</a>,’ the Council says. Artist Kailash K Shrestha of Artudio has spent decades promoting thankha and paubha traditions because of their beauty and devotional meaning. But he also says artists are underpaid, exploited and ignored. He adds, “AI and blockchain are not just buzzwords, they are powerful tools that can protect Nepal’s artists from fraud, verify authenticity and build a permanent record of provenance.” Traditional Art Exhibition Till 17 May Patan Museum

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