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From Nalapani to Kalapani

Where Nepal’s banner once waved

<img width="1556" height="1092" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109191124/636bf1114b0ad905ca02f04ejpeg.jpg" alt=""/>For over two centuries now, Nepal’s real 'frontline workers’ have been its soldiers who fought and sacrificed their lives in foreign soil for countries other than their own. The tradition continues, and is upheld by the Gurkha reputation for courage and ability to survive any hardship that is promoted in literature and art. Till the Malla period, it was unheard of for Nepalis to fight in foreign armies. In fact, it was the other way around: Kathmandu’s kings 300 years ago used to recruit soldiers from Telangana in South India and Afghanistan.It was only during the Anglo-Nepal war (1814-1816) that Nepalis started fighting beyond the country’s borders. Balbhadra Kunwar, who famously thwarted the siege of Nalapani Fort, joined the army of the Sikh maharaja Ranjit Singh. Even before the Sugauli Treaty ended the war, the British were already recruiting Nepali soldiers for the ‘Nasiri Paltan’ to fight against defending fellow-Nepalis. This went on to become the first-ever Gurkha brigade. Then on, ‘Gurkha’ soldiers have been fighting in many wars in different parts of the world to this day.Gurkha valour has always been interwoven with pain and death. But we do not hear much of that because most Nepali soldiers in those days could not write, and there are few testimonies of what they went through. It is only recently that censored letters by Nepali soldiers archived in Europe have thrown light on the pain and suffering in the trench warfare of France and Belgium, and prisoner of war camps in Germany, during World War I.A diary written by a Gurkha sergeant during the battle of La Bassée in northern France in 1914, and retrieved from his body by a German officer, Lt Alexander Pfeifer, has recently come to light.Just within the first five days of the start of World War I in July 1914, more than 15,000 British soldiers had been killed. Reinforcements arrived from British India, and among them were about 20,000 Gurkhas. Six hundred Nepali men were killed on a single day on 30 October 1914 in La Bassée. <img width="1182" height="388" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109191124/636bf1144b0ad905ca02f04fjpeg.jpg" alt="">Many of the censored letters and diaries of Gurkha soldiers at the British Library and Museum give us an indication of their suffering in the battlefield. Because they did not fit the narrative of Gurkha ‘bravery’ and would have affected morale, the letters were censored and never received by their families in Nepal.These testimonies were a part of the dissertation of Nepali historian Pratyoush Onta, who painstakingly transcribed the letters in the 1990s. They describe the incredible courage, but also the pain, homesickness, and the insufferable wet cold of the trenches during the European winter.Selected excerpts:Worry about me.This war is fierce. Five of my friends from the Fourth Double Company have been killed. From the Second Company, one-third of the soldiers have lost their lives. The Gurkha Regiment has suffered a huge loss. And for those of us who are still alive, the chances of survival look slim. • • • On 19 May 1914 at five in the morning, our Fourth Double Company was attacked. We were 400 feet away from the German trench. We loaded our rifles with bullets, and stuck khukris in our mouths and went over the top.  Of all the wars that I have ever fought in, this is the most ferocious. Many from my company were killed, but we were able to capture the German trench. Because I was shot in my right elbow, I couldn’t move ahead with my company. By god’s grace the bullet didn’t pierce my bones. I am now in London and recovering. I will soon return to France and fight a good war with those Germans and kill them, because they aren’t human. They use poison gas to win a war. • • • You have been asking me about this place. This is like the fire and the frying pan. When I return home, we can talk about this. I will give you all the details, but I cannot promise you if that day will ever come. I could have written about the conditions here, but we are not allowed to share details. Many of our letters are opened and are censored. If we write anything against the orders given, the one who has written the letter will be punished severely. Dear brother, you must be going through a difficult time in your battlefield, but I understand. We are also suffering the same anguish. Brother, it rains a lot here and it is muddy. It is extremely cold, too. • • •I took part in an attack on a German trench in August. I was injured and had little sense of what was happening. I was taken prisoner by the Germans and sent off to their country. They cut my leg in the prisoners’ camp. I was then hospitalised for two months in Germany and later sent to Britain. They have now received orders to send me to India.• • •This is your brother Bahadur Pun, sending you my greetings. If you have three or four rupees, please send it to me. Along with that, if possible, please send some food, something to drink and some clothes. Dhaniram Pun and I are now prisoners of war in Germany.• • •My mother often said, ‘Leave your job, son, and come back home. Work in your own country, or you will suffer’. I wish I had listened to her. Now when I think of it, my heart fills with regret. <figure><img width="1500" height="1001" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109191124/636bf1164b0ad905ca02f050jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption>सिपाहीको दु:ख, episode 1 of the tv magazine program Saglo Samaj</figcaption></figure>When the Germans realised that the British POWs spoke so many languages, they took this as an opportunity for linguistic research. They recorded the experiences of the Gurkha prisoners through their songs and folklore. Nepali researcher Alka Atreya Chudal at Vienna University has been given access to some of this material that includes early sound recordings of the Gurkha prisoners in Germany. Going through the archives at Berlin’s Humboldt Museum, Chudal found songs by Gurkha POW Jas Bahadur Rai that were recorded in 1915. Rai died seven months later, and his gravestone in a cemetery outside Berlin preserves the date: 3 January 1917. Although this was a model prison that the Germans used to show international inspectors, many Nepali prisoners succumbed to tuberculosis in winter.  “Jas Bahadur missed home, his songs and writings are a testimony to that, and more than 100 years later they have inspired me to do further research on the Gurkhas and their never-told tales of suffering,” Chudal says. <img width="1209" height="720" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109191124/636bf1194b0ad905ca02f051jpeg.jpg" alt="">There is a possibility that the writings and items belonging to Nepal’s soldiers recovered from Europe’s battlefields will finally be returned to their homeland. With them, we will learn about the other side of the Gurkha saga — the stories of yearning, pain beyond measure, of loves and lives lost.  Based on the first episode of Saglo Samaj, a tv magazine program produced by Himalmedia which is broadcast every Monday, at 8:30 pm on Dish Home Channel 130.

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Tales of courage and suffering

<img width="1556" height="1092" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181156/636bea339c7e80680e087905jpeg.jpg" alt=""/>For over two centuries now, Nepal’s real 'frontline workers’ have been its soldiers who fought and sacrificed their lives in foreign soil for countries other than their own. The tradition continues, and is upheld by the Gurkha reputation for courage and ability to survive any hardship that is promoted in literature and art. Till the Malla period, it was unheard of for Nepalis to fight in foreign armies. In fact, it was the other way around: Kathmandu’s kings 300 years ago used to recruit soldiers from Telangana in South India and Afghanistan.It was only during the Anglo-Nepal war (1814-1816) that Nepalis started fighting beyond the country’s borders. Balbhadra Kunwar, who famously thwarted the siege of Nalapani Fort, joined the army of the Sikh maharaja Ranjit Singh. Even before the Sugauli Treaty ended the war, the British were already recruiting Nepali soldiers for the ‘Nasiri Paltan’ to fight against defending fellow-Nepalis. This went on to become the first-ever Gurkha brigade. Then on, ‘Gurkha’ soldiers have been fighting in many wars in different parts of the world to this day.Gurkha valour has always been interwoven with pain and death. But we do not hear much of that because most Nepali soldiers in those days could not write, and there are few testimonies of what they went through. It is only recently that censored letters by Nepali soldiers archived in Europe have thrown light on the pain and suffering in the trench warfare of France and Belgium, and prisoner of war camps in Germany, during World War I.A diary written by a Gurkha sergeant during the battle of La Bassée in northern France in 1914, and retrieved from his body by a German officer, Lt Alexander Pfeifer, has recently come to light.Just within the first five days of the start of World War I in July 1914, more than 15,000 British soldiers had been killed. Reinforcements arrived from British India, and among them were about 20,000 Gurkhas. Six hundred Nepali men were killed on a single day on 30 October 1914 in La Bassée. <img width="1182" height="388" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181156/636bea369c7e80680e087906jpeg.jpg" alt="">Many of the censored letters and diaries of Gurkha soldiers at the British Library and Museum give us an indication of their suffering in the battlefield. Because they did not fit the narrative of Gurkha ‘bravery’ and would have affected morale, the letters were censored and never received by their families in Nepal.These testimonies were a part of the dissertation of Nepali historian Pratyoush Onta, who painstakingly transcribed the letters in the 1990s. They describe the incredible courage, but also the pain, homesickness, and the insufferable wet cold of the trenches during the European winter.Selected excerpts:Worry about me.This war is fierce. Five of my friends from the Fourth Double Company have been killed. From the Second Company, one-third of the soldiers have lost their lives. The Gurkha Regiment has suffered a huge loss. And for those of us who are still alive, the chances of survival look slim. • • • On 19 May 1914 at five in the morning, our Fourth Double Company was attacked. We were 400 feet away from the German trench. We loaded our rifles with bullets, and stuck khukris in our mouths and went over the top.  Of all the wars that I have ever fought in, this is the most ferocious. Many from my company were killed, but we were able to capture the German trench. Because I was shot in my right elbow, I couldn’t move ahead with my company. By god’s grace the bullet didn’t pierce my bones. I am now in London and recovering. I will soon return to France and fight a good war with those Germans and kill them, because they aren’t human. They use poison gas to win a war. • • • You have been asking me about this place. This is like the fire and the frying pan. When I return home, we can talk about this. I will give you all the details, but I cannot promise you if that day will ever come. I could have written about the conditions here, but we are not allowed to share details. Many of our letters are opened and are censored. If we write anything against the orders given, the one who has written the letter will be punished severely. Dear brother, you must be going through a difficult time in your battlefield, but I understand. We are also suffering the same anguish. Brother, it rains a lot here and it is muddy. It is extremely cold, too. • • •I took part in an attack on a German trench in August. I was injured and had little sense of what was happening. I was taken prisoner by the Germans and sent off to their country. They cut my leg in the prisoners’ camp. I was then hospitalised for two months in Germany and later sent to Britain. They have now received orders to send me to India.• • •This is your brother Bahadur Pun, sending you my greetings. If you have three or four rupees, please send it to me. Along with that, if possible, please send some food, something to drink and some clothes. Dhaniram Pun and I are now prisoners of war in Germany.• • •My mother often said, ‘Leave your job, son, and come back home. Work in your own country, or you will suffer’. I wish I had listened to her. Now when I think of it, my heart fills with regret. <figure><img width="1500" height="1001" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181156/636bea389c7e80680e087907jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption>सिपाहीको दु:ख, episode 1 of the tv magazine program Saglo Samaj</figcaption></figure>When the Germans realised that the British POWs spoke so many languages, they took this as an opportunity for linguistic research. They recorded the experiences of the Gurkha prisoners through their songs and folklore. Nepali researcher Alka Atreya Chudal at Vienna University has been given access to some of this material that includes early sound recordings of the Gurkha prisoners in Germany. Going through the archives at Berlin’s Humboldt Museum, Chudal found songs by Gurkha POW Jas Bahadur Rai that were recorded in 1915. Rai died seven months later, and his gravestone in a cemetery outside Berlin preserves the date: 3 January 1917. Although this was a model prison that the Germans used to show international inspectors, many Nepali prisoners succumbed to tuberculosis in winter.  “Jas Bahadur missed home, his songs and writings are a testimony to that, and more than 100 years later they have inspired me to do further research on the Gurkhas and their never-told tales of suffering,” Chudal says. <img width="1209" height="720" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109181156/636bea3b9c7e80680e087908jpeg.jpg" alt="">There is a possibility that the writings and items belonging to Nepal’s soldiers recovered from Europe’s battlefields will finally be returned to their homeland. With them, we will learn about the other side of the Gurkha saga — the stories of yearning, pain beyond measure, of loves and lives lost.  Based on the first episode of Saglo Samaj, a tv magazine program produced by Himalmedia which is broadcast every Monday, at 8:30 pm on Dish Home Channel 130.

Violations of Nepal’s airspace during WWII

In 2025, Nepal’s Ministry of Tourism <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-everest-industry" target="_blank">added six new 8,000m peaks </a>to those listed on its website. These are subsidiary summits of <a href="https://explorersweb.com/kangchenjungas-challenging-confusing-subpeaks/" target="_blank">Kangchenjunga</a> and <a href="https://explorersweb.com/through-the-unknown-to-the-impossible-lhotse-middle/" target="_blank">Lhotse</a>, which some view as insufficiently independent to be called separate peaks. In 2024, the international mountaineering federation (UIAA) responded to a request by the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA) and the government to officially recognise these peaks. While recognising that ‘there is no one definition of a “mountain” or a “peak” or a “top” or “point” in topographic terms’, and encouraging further debate the UIAA’s opinion was that the 8,000m peaks should continue to the ‘Classic 14’, first completed by Reinhold Messner in 1986. The degree of prominence and isolation of <a href="https://www.climbing.com/news/new-8000-meter-mountains-nepal/?scope=initial" target="_blank">the six new peaks </a>varies, with Yalung Kang having the strongest claim to being a separate peak with a prominence of 135m, but they are all separate enough to be included on some peak-bagging lists. The UIAA’s own list of 4,000m summits in the European Alps includes Punta Giordani with a prominence of only 6m. Whatever the case for the six peaks being geographically separate mountains, they represent significant climbing challenges. They are not minor tops that can simply be ‘bagged’ on route to a main summit. In the case of <a href="https://explorersweb.com/through-the-unknown-to-the-impossible-lhotse-middle/" target="_blank">Lhotse Middle and Lhotse Shar</a>, no one has ever managed to traverse between them and Lhotse itself.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260107080144_881321a6e46818beb7bbd4fe6f21589d89d19bf77ae8218474d373ef7ab0c431.png" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20260107080144_881321a6e46818beb7bbd4fe6f21589d89d19bf77ae8218474d373ef7ab0c431" data-rendition-name="original" width="2888" height="1590" loading="lazy" alt="New 8,000ers"><figcaption>Nepal’s 8 existing 8,000ers: Chomolungma 8,848.86, Kangchenjunga 8,586, Lhotse 8,516, Makalu 8,485, Manaslu 8,163, Dhaulagiri 8,167, Annapurna 8,091, Cho Oyu 8,201. Photo: GOOGLE EARTH PRO</figcaption></figure>   <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260107080144_27bf905c1a559c46819dc96ca33d22c27fc301d415fc034f26b8acd105c12da7.png" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20260107080144_27bf905c1a559c46819dc96ca33d22c27fc301d415fc034f26b8acd105c12da7" data-rendition-name="original" width="1750" height="976" loading="lazy" alt="New 8,000ers"><figcaption>Nepal has listed six additional 8,000ers: Yalung Kang (8,505, Yalung Kang West 8,077, Kanchenjunga Central (8,473, Kanchenjunga South 8,476, Lhotse Middle 8,410, and Lhotse Shar 8,400. Photo: KUNDA DIXIT</figcaption></figure>  Several fine routes have already been climbed on these mountains, such as Slovenians Andrej Štremfelj and Marko Prezelj’s alpine style ascent of the South-West Ridge of Kangchenjunga South. The six peaks have not yet achieved universal acceptance, but it is possible that climbing an expanded list of 20 eight-thousanders could become a new mountaineering challenge, just as the 14 classic peaks are today. It is therefore interesting to analyse who is currently closest to achieving this goal, using data from The Himalayan Database and other Internet research. The first conclusion of my analysis is that these six additional peaks have received far less attention than the classic 14 eight-thousanders. One of them, Yalung Kang West, has never been climbed or even attempted: probably because it is a subsidiary peak of <a href="https://explorersweb.com/kangchenjungas-challenging-confusing-subpeaks/" target="_blank">Yalung Kang</a> which is itself a subsidiary peak. The other five peaks have seen a total of 138 ascents. Just 101 people have ever climbed one or more of the additional peaks, which compares with 354 people who climbed Everest on a single day: 23 May 2019. Russian Evgeni Vinogradski is unique in having climbed five of the six new peaks. He has also climbed six of the classic 8,000ers, giving him a total of 11 out of the 20 peaks on the expanded list. Vinogradski is now 80 and is unlikely to increase this total. Several other former Soviet climbers have climbed three of the new peaks, having participated in the 1989 traverse of the four main summits of Kangchenjunga. This includes two legends of Soviet climbing: Kazakh Anatoli Boukreev and Ukrainian Sergey Bershov, each of whom has climbed 13 out of the 20 peaks on the extended list. Boukreev died attempting Annapurna in 1997. Bershov, one of the only men to have ever climbed Lhotse South Face, is now 78 and, although he was in good form when I met him in Chamonix last summer, he is unlikely to further extend his tally. The addition of the new peaks does not take any of these climbers beyond the total of 14 peaks achieved by the 76 climbers who have completed the classic ‘Himalayan Crown’. Of those who have climbed all 14 classic eight-thousanders, only one, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/um-hong-gil-s-project-impossible" target="_blank">Korean Um Hong-Gil</a>, has climbed any of the six additional peaks.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260107080144_5651fc6445f5e5fd838f28e1eac1da45da136b309a4a00db1e4aafa7d4836251.png" data-media-id="editor_9" data-image-id="20260107080144_5651fc6445f5e5fd838f28e1eac1da45da136b309a4a00db1e4aafa7d4836251" data-rendition-name="original" width="2142" height="1310" loading="lazy" alt="New 8,000ers"><figcaption>Only one mountaineer, Korean Um Hong-Gil, has climbed any of the six additional peaks.</figcaption></figure>  Um climbed both Lhotse Shar and Yalung Kang, giving him a total of 16 summits. He required four attempts to climb Lhotse Shar, including one attempt in which he turned back just 100m from the summit following the deaths of two teammates. He finally succeeded in 2007 via a route up the Lhotse South Face. If a race to climb all 20 eight-thousanders were to begin, Um is currently in the lead. <a href="https://www.himalayandatabase.com/" target="_blank">The Himalayan Database</a> also lists two additional mountains in Nepal not included among the peaks announced by the Ministry of Tourism: Annapurna Central and Annapurna East. If these are included, bringing the total to 22 peaks, a few additional climbers deserve mention. Poles Piotr Pustelnik and the great Jerzy Kukuczka have both climbed all 14 classic eight-thousanders as well as Annapurna East, giving them 15 out of 22. Swiss climber Erhard Loretan climbed all 14 as well, and both Annapurna subsidiary summits, giving him a total of 16 out of 22 peaks. Annapurna East has a greater prominence than some of the 6 new peaks proposed by Nepal, but Broad Peak Central in the Karakoram has the greatest prominence of any subsidiary 8000m summit. Kukuczka has also climbed Broad Peak Central, so if the list is extended to 23 peaks, he has 16, equal with Loretan and Um. Then, there is a case for Shishapangma Central in China, which further complicates the task of coming up with a definite extended list. At the moment, these subsidiary summits are not attracting a lot of attention: of the 138 summit climbs on them, only 12 occurred in the last 25 years and none since 2011. Most climbers like to have some wide recognition of a target before investing time and money in trying to achieve it, and this may make it hard to build interest. But as completing the classic 8,000m peaks starts to become a rather frequent occurrence, some may be attracted to the longer list. If this new challenge catches on, as the Ministry of Tourism presumably hopes, how long will it be before someone passes Um Hong-Gil’s total and how long before someone climbs all 20 or 22 or 23 summits? <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/dispelling-myths-about-climbing" target="_blank">Edward Morgan</a> is a British author and climber based in Switzerland. His first book, Lhotse South Face - The Wall of Legends, has been published in several languages and his second book, Chasing Mallory's Dream is due out in the UK this year.

New 8,000ers may restart peak-grabbing race

One of the few Newa towns situated outside Kathmandu Valley, Panauti still evokes the feeling of a place frozen in time.&nbsp; Largely untouched by haphazard urbanisation, this town 32km east of Kathmandu used to be a kingdom revered for the sacred confluence of the Punyamati and Rosi rivers.&nbsp; The Bramhayani temple is the site of a 12 yearly Makar Mela which is attended by devotees from as far away as India.&nbsp; Panauti’s crumbling monuments were restored in the 1990s by the French government. Temples, resting places, traditional homes were rebuilt and locals trained to revive their craft. Panauti and France marked 50 years of cooperation in September.&nbsp; However, the priceless murals on the temple walls are fading and need urgent restitution. Now, these crumbling wall paintings are meticulously documented in the Wall Paintings of Panauti and Their Context.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260106090116_31f6acf06ef879037fec8274b85153eab4468566abf71616490679bf8468b85d.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20260106090116_31f6acf06ef879037fec8274b85153eab4468566abf71616490679bf8468b85d" data-rendition-name="original" width="1596" height="1074" loading="lazy" alt="Panauti murals"> </figure>  In his foreword, French researcher Gérard Toffin writes about some of the earliest wall paintings from the Malla period in Kathmandu, including a 17th century mural depicting the procession of Rato Machhindranath which has since been restored.&nbsp; Several other pieces still exist but in a pitiful state, defaced by scratches. ‘They were painted on a plaster coating made of soil, husks, or limestone, which were applied to the bricks making up the walls,’ Toffin notes.&nbsp; The book delves into the cult of Asta Matrika among Newa of all castes and classes, the first of which is Bramhayani. These all-pervading deities are linked to Shaktism which focuses on the importance of the female principle and together, combine the forces of life, sex and fertility with that of death and eros. The deities are painted on the wall, carved on the stone or moulded into metallic statues.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260106090120_836efd2b0a569d8ec0fb2c6651a29b8f2dd8f8f75b72e27bb86b0bfc0ad8461f.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20260106090120_836efd2b0a569d8ec0fb2c6651a29b8f2dd8f8f75b72e27bb86b0bfc0ad8461f" data-rendition-name="original" width="1074" height="1434" loading="lazy" alt="Panauti murals"> </figure>  Riddhi Baba Pradhan, former director general of the Department of Archaeology who oversaw the restoration of Panauti 30 years ago, writes that a colourful wall painting depicting Buddha's past life at the Chabahil Chaitya built or restored during the reign of Lichhavi king Vrisdev in the 3rd century might be the earliest mural in Nepal. As for Panauti, a fragment from a 400-year-old scroll which illustrates a scene of Triveni Ghat with Dalinchok Hill in the background is likely the oldest. But that relic is currently at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in the United States.&nbsp; Pradhan recalls first encountering wall paintings inside Bramhayani temple which were deteriorated by smoke, leaky roof, dust, vermilion, sprinkles of animal blood and lack of maintenance. The team led by chemist Bhimvar Singh Thapa treated the wall paintings and some of the details were recovered including the paintings of Astamatrika and Asta Bhairav on the east, west and southern walls.&nbsp; PAINTINGS ARE NOT VISIBLE The murals were painted during the reign of the last Malla King of Bhaktapur Ranjit Malla and Queen Viswalaxmi Devi 300 years ago. But 40 years after the restoration, Pradhan notes that the murals are again in poor condition: ‘The paintings are not visible, the plaster is severely damaged and the surface has peeled off … electrical wires hang haphazardly inside the temple.’ The second lot of murals at Ghat Sattal are thought to have been commissioned during the late Malla period or the beginning of the Shah dynasty. Exterior walls depict incarnations of Lord Vishnu as well as Sesh Narayan, Ganesh, a scene of Samundra Manthan, of angels Maya, Moha, Ganga. Their attributes, dresses, ornaments, facial expressions, body postures are all skilfully represented but in a deteriorated condition.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260106090116_88d06703ae23a271905d81f35056d41df92cbbc4b9966fac3f34821659e585a8.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20260106090116_88d06703ae23a271905d81f35056d41df92cbbc4b9966fac3f34821659e585a8" data-rendition-name="original" width="588" height="862" loading="lazy" alt="Panauti murals "> </figure>  The wall paintings of Bramhayani Dyochhen are 90% degraded even though they were restored and repaired 40 years ago by the Panauti Integrated Project. Compared to other artefacts, wall paintings are more delicate to external factors, and if not preserved an important part of Nepal’s heritage will be lost.&nbsp; Furthermore, most of the wall paintings in Nepal are temperas, and not frescos. Tempera is painted with water-soluble mineral or vegetable pigments fixed with glue on the cow dung clay plaster on the brick walls. While Nepal’s focus has been on the repatriation of stolen artefacts from abroad, religious and cultural objects within the country like the Panauti murals need urgent attention.&nbsp; This slim publication by Panauti Municipality is an important call to begin the work before it is too late.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260101120124_d0efa1e57b2710a206beb37c7e934ac34e694afc278985934eac2fc52124a92c.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20260101120124_d0efa1e57b2710a206beb37c7e934ac34e694afc278985934eac2fc52124a92c" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Wall Paintings of Panauti"> </figure>

Saving Panauti's murals

The American military action in Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicholas Maduro may redefine Nepal’s geopolitics as it juggles between three world powers, India, China and the United States.&nbsp;
Nepal’s interim government is busy preparing for elections on 5 March, and it was late issuing a statement on the American intervention in Venezuela, but the country may have to re-evaluate how it deals with its immediate neighbours and the global power.
“How does Nepal avoid being the next Ukraine or Venezuela? Small countries shouldn’t go around irritating big neighbours. And when big neighbours really get upset, they usually put up a moral fig leaf justifying their miltary action,” says energy economist Dipak Gyawali. “What we see with Venezuela today is bereft of such moral content, essentially banditry which in today’s day and age is unacceptable. Neither the rising new powers nor much of the Global South will take this lying down.”
International relations experts have said that there is now a new world order in which rules-based diplomacy has been thrown out of the window, and the world has been carved into America leading the western hemisphere, Russia is allowed to do what it wants in Ukraine and Europe, and China’s sphere of influence is now the Indo-Pacific.
Foreign affairs expert Nischal Pandey says there is a lesson for smaller nations like Nepal: “We have to be aware of the sensitivities of the major powers in the vicinity.”
There is also a lesson for smaller resource-rich countries not to give an excuse for intervention with poor governance and political instability due to inequity. In Venezuela’s case it was throttling democracy and not using its immense oil-wealth to uplift its people.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration’s abduction of a sitting president of a foreign government regardless of the dictatorial nature of his regime and Venezuela’s volatile internal politics, is illegal and breaches the international order that has been in place since after World War II and its devastation on humanity.
While Trump’s intervention in Venezuela, and threats against Colombia, Cuba and Greenland have brought international condemnation, here in Nepal it has not been taken as seriously as it should.
Says Amish Mulmi, author of the book All Roads Lead North: Nepal's Turn to China: “Some of the reaction on social media has been that of glee over the fall of a dictatorial Communist government on the other side of the world. However, the government statement about fully respecting the principles of sovereignty and the Charter of the United Nations is a strong statement that makes clear Nepal's position on the matter.”
“The abduction of Maduro is a clear sign of Trump's America ensuring its sphere of influence through might and a warning to toe the line,” Mulmi adds. “It also infringes on the sanctity of borders and the preservation of sovereignty. Trump's actions reek strongly of a bygone era of imperialistic control and resource capture.”
Venezuela has 17% of the world’s reserves of crude oil, even though refining this heavy tar-like oil will be costly, and is possible in only a few places including Texas.
“This has to do with a larger political economy of oil, the unravelling of pax Americana and the post-World war II order. This is USA’s heavy-handed response to remain on the top as well as to partly solve its debt of $39 trillion,” explains Gyawali. “But this is not going to help: China is far ahead, Russia has recovered from its 1990s low point, and manufacturing capital has moved away from America. So controlling only financial capital - and using military power so brazenly - is not going to work.”
The might also be specific lessons for Nepal as a smaller country with vast water resources. While water, unlike oil, is renewable, India’s interest in Nepal’s hydro resources cannot be ignored. Ironically, America’s capture of Venezuelan oil reserves could exacerbate climate breakdown and the melting of Himalayan glaciers, which will put Nepal’s water resources in jeopardy in the coming decades.
The only way to deal with this for Nepal and downstream India will be to build reservoirs on rivers to store monsoon precipitation, and that makes water a strategic commodity for the future.&nbsp;
“If we continue in the current mode of hydropower-biased water resources development ignoring irrigation, flood control, navigation, fisheries, tourism and other benefits, India will get the free benefit of regulated water while we pay the upstream environmental and social costs. History will blame our elected leaders for having undersold our resources,” adds Gyawali, who served as water resource minister in the early 2000s.
As for a larger geopolitical lesson: “We in Nepal are fortunate in having not one threatening hegemon but two superpowers India and China: they don’t agree with each other, but do agree on a peaceful Nepal for their own security. However, our current political leaders are irritating both the neighbours, unlike since the centuries past when our rulers looked solely after Nepal’s core interests and our neighbours knew that.”
American intervention in Venezuela also calls for strengthening of our institutions and diplomatic outreach. Nepal has been a non-aligned state, and for all its history has tried to follow a policy of equidistance between India and China. The difference with Venezuela is that Nepal has to deal with two giant neighbours, and not just one.
Says Mulmi: “It is no more only about balancing great power relations but also about benefiting from them. But that will be increasingly difficult as international law and the principles of sovereignty are encroached upon.”

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