<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111120/636cd0fe9c7e80680e08f889jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="768" height="480"/>It was my Dr Zhivago fantasy period, and I had this wild idea that it would be compelling to <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/so-far-so-good/wintering-in-mongolia/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">travel solitary by surface</a> all the way from Japan home to Britain – in winter.‘How I envy you that railway journey,’ wrote <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/a-postcard-from-jan-morris-1926-2020/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Jan Morris</a>, who fully appreciated the ‘special grace’ of travelling alone. Several days were spent transiting by train the massive expanse of the Soviet Union, and an uncertain seasonal ferry across the Sea of Japan to the east Siberian port of Nakhodka.We disembarked at Omsk, or was it Tomsk, and the teeth-aching cold was such that breath crystalised and tongues froze if anyone was unwise enough to open their mouth. The grey platforms, steaming wheels and stolid Soviet silhouettes were discouraging, and I quickly climbed back into the carriage.I remembered that time on the Orient Express when helplessly I watched the train with all my worldly belongings aboard chug out of the station – the stuff of nightmares – only to miraculously reappear after a few panicked devastating minutes. Character building stuff.I had no such alarms on <a href="https://www.trans-siberian-travel.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the Trans-Siberian</a>, just surviving the bitter sub-zero temperatures every time I ill-advisedly alighted at a halt, and navigating the food where an expansive menu always seemed to have everything ‘off’ and only thick soup ‘on’. This became routine in the prescribed Intourist world of Soviet tourism, and was rather alarming at first. I adapted fast.Frozen rivers became smooth wayfares for the winter trucks, and across a pristine snowfield from the relative comfort of my second class sleeper I witnessed a pack of wolves fleeing at the sound of our monstrous approach. The rich biodiversity of Lake Baikal was a disappointing expanse of frozen ice, fringed in skeletons of willow trees under a threatening sky. ‘The earth … spell-bound in a death-like winter trance,’ in the lone walker words of Kenneth Grahame.<a style="background-color: #ffffff; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" href="https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/nov/12/trans-siberian-railway-russia-100-centenary" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The train</a> windows were permanently edged with ice and outside the monochromatic views were truly bleak, but inside the atmosphere was cosy and encompassing. Large Russian ladies carried covered baskets of black bread and strong sausage with which I was plied.Without any common language it did not take long to realise that these robust figures were worried about my slender frame – at nearly six feet tall and nicknamed 'hatini' back at <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/back-to-Chitwan,1075" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Tiger Tops in Nepal</a>, I was unfamiliar with feeling dainty and delicate, never before nor since.It was the winter of 1974 and I was returning from Nepal — the long way round. Following a solitary trek to Jomsom and an interlude in Kathmandu as <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/the-hippie-era-in-kathmandu,837" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">an unsuccessful hippie</a>, I had been working in Chitwan for a few marvellous months until the monsoon floods drove us out of the national park.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111120/636cd1009c7e80680e08f88ajpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1443" height="910"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>A series of adventures had landed me in Tokyo, including a spell selling diamonds with a couple of canny cockneys in Malaysia and Singapore, hanging out with bankers in Hong Kong, and devouring the sophisticated design and elegant intricacy of Japan’s ancient cities.But my mind was occupied with schemes as to how to wangle my way back to Nepal and the <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Conservation-and-tourism-Chitwan-National-Park,2957" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">conservation tourism</a> work that had captivated me. It would take me less than a year. Looking back, we can see our lives hang by a thread on seemingly random decisions and the vagaries of fate that could not have been predicted.That 1974 me, dreaming of the Himalaya in another railway carriage heading home from Moscow and Leningrad through Poland to another ferry across the choppy English Channel, would have been astonished at what lay ahead.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111120/636cd1039c7e80680e08f88bjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2853" height="4032"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Fast forward to a couple of years ago, and the long afternoon shadows of the Indian Embassy Residence reached us across the gently sloping and perfectly mowed lawn — white stucco columns, spreading balconies and blatant colonial blustering of the two story house first constructed for the British and handed over shortly after Independence.I felt the distant presence of <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=3246#.X_FprdgzaUk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Brian Hodgson</a>, the first British resident to inhabit the bequeathed badlands of distant Lazimpat, depicted in this garden supposedly with his Moslem consort. The contemporary drawing has a picturesque primitive charm, that seemed strangely distant from the gathering of literary luminaries.The scent of roses mingled with that of my be-saried neighbours as we settled into the lushly padded chairs to enjoy a discourse on a small stage in front of the begonias. The subject was a book on mid-twentieth century life in the Kumaon hills by an esteemed Indian author swathed in cashmere and silk.‘I can’t cope with this nostalgia nonsense.’ The Indian ambassador’s face beneath his perfect turban was crumpled with nuance. ‘We have to move forward from the Raj, away from those battalions of white men, into the current reality. Romanticising the hill station life into a forgotten yesterday does none of us any favours.’ He fixes me with a steely glare. ‘Nor all that Raj rubbish about polo in the jungle.’ My <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/the-genesis-of-elephant-polo-in-chitwan/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">most recent column in Nepali Times</a>.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110111120/636cd1079c7e80680e08f88cjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="796" height="478"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>I have no trouble agreeing. Wrestling with nostalgia has been my fortnightly task in this space for the last three years. I prefer to think of my articles as recalling living history, as background context to today’s evolving environmental issues and tourism landscape.Without even a nod to nostalgia, there are many hardnosed lessons to be learned from the impressive track record in tourism and conservation of which Nepal should be proud.After 100 articles and three years, Lisa Choegyal is closing her So Far So Good fortnightly column. All her past pieces are available in the www.nepalitimes.com archives.

Lisa Choegyal

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The vagaries of fate

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110915110/636bb34f9c7e80680e07bb33jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1508" height="1076"/><figcaption>Boris Lissanevitch and Inger at Kathmandu airport in 1955 when the first tour groups started arriving in Nepal.</figcaption></figure>Not since the early 1950s have we had zero tourists arrive in Kathmandu Valley.The combination of hostile geography and cautious politics had effectively conspired to keep foreigners out of the kingdom of Nepal, sealed for centuries. When <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/erika-and-king-tribhuvan/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/erika-and-king-tribhuvan/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1599440236748000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHQFdH_e6LubJypBFTxWDrJu4C-lQ">King Tribhuvan</a> wrested power back from the reclusive Rana rulers in 1951, only an estimated total of 300 foreign officials, diplomats and royal guests had ever penetrated the malarial swamps of the Tarai or the snow-bound Himalayan barrier of the northern passes.The xenophobia of previous regimes considered it prudent to keep the doors closed to Westerners, especially with the changing fortunes of Tibet and China to the north, and a marauding East India Company followed by a power-hungry British Empire lurking along the southern boundary, which extended nearly twice the length of Nepal today.All trade routes into the Valley were well patrolled, and the British incumbents at their Lainchaur Residency (now the Indian Ambassador’s home) were tolerated to varying degrees, but remained under escort even around the Valley and seldom permitted beyond its rim except to their ridgetop cottage at Koulia, then Kakani.<a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=10754#.X1QpHS0w0Wo" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id%3D10754%23.X1QpHS0w0Wo&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1599440236749000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGso8FpUWgrP03HHkL5QMIf7nzj3Q">Boris Lissanevitch</a> changed all that when he opened Kathmandu’s first hotel and brought the first tourist group to Nepal in 1955. Having visited on a 10-day holiday in 1951 at the invitation of newly instated King Tribhuvan, Boris moved to Kathmandu with <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Obituary/Inger-Lissanevitch,886" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Obituary/Inger-Lissanevitch,886&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1599440236749000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHOih_vfDV6zlCnFWEFlF5yTFGhgw">Inger,</a> two small boys, Mischa and Alexander (their third son Nicholas was born later in Nepal), and a mother-in-law with a penchant for collecting stray animals and antiques.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110915114/636bb3539c7e80680e07bb34jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="399"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>‘After a few hours I fell madly in love with this country’ Boris declared in a contemporary interview. ‘This is where we wanted to live.’ Inger, his beautiful Danish Scottish wife, 23 years junior, agreed. They never left.An ebullient White Russian ballet dancer and big-game hunter born in Odessa of Ukraine, Boris was a larger than life character, born into a wealthy military Tsarist family amidst the hardships of the 1905 Russian revolution. A cadet heading for a career in the Tsar’s navy, instead Boris had to flee to France, escaping Bolshevik persecution.Boris’ exotic career included performing with Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes in Paris and dancing with Massine throughout Europe, South America and Asia. In 1936, finding himself stranded in India, he started the exclusive 300 Club in Calcutta, the first establishment to accept Indian members and to remain open 24 hours a day. Patronised by India’s princely elite, leading businessmen, world war pilots, diplomats and itinerant adventurers, Boris had the opportunity to meet and charm royalty and influential politicians from the region, especially Nepal.In addition to King Tribhuvan, his close friends and frequent guests during his ten years at the 300 Club included the Maharaja of Cooch Behar and exiled Nepali Rana militants, <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/inside-story-of-nepals-rana-dynasty/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/inside-story-of-nepals-rana-dynasty/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1599440236749000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFtOmOcnPI0RF2-UVycxv1Q-Yz4Lw">Mahavir and Subarna Shamsher</a>. Supposedly B P Koirala, Nepal’s democracy activist, and King Tribhuvan held secret negotiations in the men’s room. Not all the abundant stories about Boris’ exploits are true, but they are usually dramatic and always amusing – he was a collector of people and tall tales.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110915114/636bb3569c7e80680e07bb35jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="465"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110915114/636bb3589c7e80680e07bb36jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="361"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Boris set up a spirit distillery in Kathmandu, and with Prince Basundhara converted Bahadur Bhawan in Kantipath (now the Election Commission offices) into the Royal Hotel with 40 restored rooms. In its 1960s heyday, the Royal was considered amongst the most interesting hotels in the world, and its charismatic proprietor was a major attraction. The hotel’s Yak &amp; Yeti Bar was the heart of Kathmandu’s foreign community with Boris presiding, ever popular with a stream of mountaineers, envoys, explorers, spies, missionaries, aid workers, tiger hunters, yeti enthusiasts - and tourists.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110915114/636bb35b9c7e80680e07bb37jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="976"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>As <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=19173" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id%3D19173&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1599440236749000&amp;usg=AFQjCNElTlkNs5GH0EG2RpJCct1bR0ERtQ">Toni Hagen</a> remembered, the Royal Hotel was ‘an irresistible gathering point’, eating, drinking and storytelling would go on late into the night, until ‘Boris began to sing Russian folk songs in his deep voice or even perform Russian dances’.  Featuring his flamboyant brand of personal charisma, warm hospitality and fine Russian recipes, Boris was the first to bring ‘ordinary’ tourists to Nepal and is thus credited with being the ‘father of Nepal tourism’.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110915114/636bb35e9c7e80680e07bb38jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="772" height="1198"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110915114/636bb3609c7e80680e07bb39jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="772" height="1198"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Guests unable to pay the Royal room rate, pitched tents in the hotel’s spacious grounds, avoiding the bizarre vegetables that Boris introduced – he was the first to cultivate mushrooms, strawberries, artichokes, carrots and beetroots – and a roaming menagerie of stray animals. Lhasa Apso dogs, flying squirrels, leopard cats, and a mare that would come ‘clattering down the veranda to be fed lumps of sugar’, occasionally wandering into guest bedrooms leaving unwelcome offerings. A red panda named Pandaji, a gift from Ed Hillary, was said to be the most photographed animal in Nepal.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110915114/636bb3639c7e80680e07bb3ajpeg.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="416"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110915114/636bb3659c7e80680e07bb3bjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="373"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>In 1964 screen idol Jean Paul Belmondo, with a crew led by director Philippe de Broca stayed at the Royal for a few weeks to make Nepal’s first feature film, a boisterous comedy released as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogHg6UTl2pU" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DogHg6UTl2pU&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1599440236749000&amp;usg=AFQjCNE9qXIky7aCU5Fs0S8QUKPQZ0aPzA">Up to His Ears</a>. Boris played a small part. In a scene Belmondo asks: ‘How come you speak such good French?’ and he replies: ‘Because I am Russian!’ After filming in Kathmandu and Pokhara, the crew went to Hong Kong where Belmondo met Ursula Andress, leaving his wife in a much-publicised love affair.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogHg6UTl2pU&amp;feature=emb_logoBoris’ special entertainment skills were required by his royal connections to cater extravagant parties and banquets, not least Mahendra’s coronation ceremony in 1956 and the hunting camp for Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh’s state visit in 1961. Boris himself was fictionalised by the novelist <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=19768" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id%3D19768&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1599440236749000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEU3DAX5Jmm9QJseAcnkRUHyh7JXQ">Han Suyin in The Mountain is Young (1958</a>), and his eventful life is described in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tiger-Breakfast-Story-Boris-Kathmandu/dp/B0007DYWXQ" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Tiger-Breakfast-Story-Boris-Kathmandu/dp/B0007DYWXQ&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1599440236749000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFdV652wX5cZw0Ep_GMKgUHXYVLtQ">Tiger for Breakfast (1966) by Michel Peissel. </a>With Boris’ word-of-mouth and media networks paving the way, tourism flourished during the 1960s. Nepali entrepreneurs and royal family members were quick to grasp its potential, opening new hotels of their own. The hordes of hippies, mountaineers and world travellers began to arrive, but preferred to hang out in Basantapur. In 1969 the Royal Hotel was forced to close.By the time I came to Nepal in 1974, myths about the famous Royal’s chaotic hospitality were lost in the building’s abandoned arches, its dusty corridors echoing with the footsteps of former guests – Hollywood stars Vivien Leigh and Ingrid Bergman, Baron Thyssen from Switzerland, Jean Paul Guerlain seeking ingredients for his perfumes, and Queen Sophia of Spain on her honeymoon.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110915114/636bb3679c7e80680e07bb3cjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="945"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110915114/636bb36a9c7e80680e07bb3djpeg.jpg" alt="" width="350" height="336"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>My boss <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=15828#.X1QrTC0w0Wo" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id%3D15828%23.X1QrTC0w0Wo&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1599440236749000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFYAa3SrosbOCt-tzhahsQv5RyeoA">Jim Edwards</a> greatly admired Boris and helped him through many lean times as he struggled with a series of restaurants in Kathmandu, always strong on entertaining but light on commercial acumen. As I sat behind my blue painted desk in the <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/back-to-Chitwan,1075" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/back-to-Chitwan,1075&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1599440236749000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGGGuZfftokdwTRGHtMBHYnpw4T9w">Tiger Tops</a> office, Boris would shuffle past in a gaudy short-sleeved shirt with a cheery wave, on his way to beg another loan from the soft-hearted Jim.‘He was a terrible businessman, he didn’t think about money at all,’ bemoaned Inger. Boris himself said: ‘I always spent just about a little bit more than I made’. Disasters over the years included trout, pig and vegetable farming, peach wine, and the failed mahua flower liquor business, which landed him in prison for a couple of months for non-payment of royalties.Restaurants came and went, located in Dilli Bazar, Darbar Marg and his Yak &amp; Yeti Restaurant in Lal Durbar which had opened in 1970 (now the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/a-new-chimney/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/a-new-chimney/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1599440236749000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF7FvH0Nw4GKuw2_-zUoyX7d8pFFg">Chimney Restaurant</a> in the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/business/hotel-yak-yeti-celebrates-41st-year/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/business/hotel-yak-yeti-celebrates-41st-year/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1599440236749000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGwNJcmlNnTxmeLoKYiDQwyl9EINA">Yak &amp; Yeti Hotel</a>). I was first taken there for my birthday in 1974, and my future husband Tenzin and I had our first date, crammed on the narrow window seats around the circular brass fireplace. I was mesmerised by the sophisticated choice of flavoured vodkas - lemon, pepper, and something green and not very nice, dill perhaps. The elaborate 1970s menu featured not only Russian favourites such as borscht and stroganoff, but snipe pate, guinea fowl marechale, smoked becki fish and quail’s eggs provided by Jimmy Roberts.And who were Nepal’s first tourists? In 1955 Boris persuaded the reluctant King Mahendra, newly succeeded to the throne on the death of his father Tribhuvan, to invite the first tour group arranged with Thomas Cook &amp; Sons in Calcutta. Consisting of ‘mostly old ladies from a cruise ship’, the narrative goes that the King was so impressed by their genuine enthusiasm for his country, delighted by Kathmandu culture and hoovering up handicrafts in the Royal Hotel shop, that he was convinced by Boris to embrace tourism for his emerging nation, ordering officials to arrange two-week tourist visas.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110915114/636bb36b9c7e80680e07bb3ejpeg.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="413"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Since that day when Boris achieved this historic reversal and Nepal began to tentatively welcome visitors, tourism has become an essential core industry with consistent growth, climbing from none in 1951, to 6,000 arrivals in 1962 and 1.2 million last year – until coronavirus hit.

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Nepal’s tourism now has to re-start from zero

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101120/636b718a9c7e80680e0600d8jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="733" height="506"/><figcaption>At Jim Edwards surprise 50th birthday celebration at the British Ambassador's Kakani bungalow are Col Jimmy Roberts, Elizabeth Hawley, Uttara Crees and Lute Jerstad. Photo: Lisa Choegyal</figcaption></figure>As an egotistic control freak, <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=15828" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jim Edwards</a> did not like surprises. It was with bad grace that he grudgingly permitted me to arrange his 50th birthday celebration, but it drove him mad that he was not in charge of the details and kept in the dark about the lunch party location: the British Ambassador’s bungalow at Kakani.An added problem was that Jim went to great lengths to avoid any birthday, like most people who consider themselves immortal. Late one evening, warming his hands around the <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/bardiya-beginnings-Lisa-Choegyal,1085" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bardia</a> campfire, I overheard him declare: “I’m never going to die! I simply can’t imagine a world without me.” In his element, Jim was hosting friends at Karnali, the steep riverbank carved by last monsoon was marked by a rough fence of fallen branches.He was deadly serious. Jim’s entire focus and massive talent was for life and living, and he had no pretension or spiritual aptitude to ponder the next world. Insisting on always being the centre of attention, life was never dull in his orbit. Jim created an infectious vortex of energy and manipulated a whirl of complex relationships.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101120/636b718c9c7e80680e0600d9jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="992" height="662"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101120/636b718f9c7e80680e0600dajpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1032" height="763"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>That morning, 24 November 1985, the advance guard had been sent ahead to prepare lunch in the needle-carpeted grounds of the ambassador’s historic home, nestled amidst the pines high on a ridge north of Kathmandu with an expansive view across waves of hills to the white peaks. Jim had insisted on overseeing the guest list, and the rented bus was loaded up with family, friends, and my <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/fire-in-the-afternoon-tiger-tops,846" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tiger Tops</a> and Mountain Travel colleagues.It was my task to bring Jim in his red range rover, an early extravagance and one of the first models off the Solihull assembly line, muttering and grumbling all the way up the tortuous switchbacks. By Balaju, past the reclining Vishnu in his water garden, and traversing beneath the trees of Nagarjun’s royal forest, Jim had already guessed our destination. The narrow road climbed past heaps of huge radish (mula) for which the land was renowned, today superseded by strawberries and trout. Turning right before the main road drops away to the Trisuli, we reached the Tamang village of Kakani at a refreshing altitude of 6,660 feet (2,030m), and entered the hallowed ground and clipped lawn of the British bungalow. With cheering guests waiting to surprise him, it took all Jim’s self-control to revert to his normal affability.The lunch conspiracy could not have been concocted without the collusion of the ambassador, Anthony Hurrell. Kakani was gifted to the British envoy in the nineteenth century as a country retreat by the reclusive and xenophobic <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/the-rana-reign-a-recap-of-history,3751" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ruling Ranas</a>. In the exclusive purview of successive ambassadors, its use and worth over the years has waxed and waned at their personal whim.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101120/636b71919c7e80680e0600dbjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1089"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101120/636b71949c7e80680e0600dcjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="464"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101120/636b71979c7e80680e0600ddjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="463"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>John Denson, British Ambassador 1977 to 1983, was an enthusiastic user and published much of what we know of its history. He wrote in 1984: “The sense of isolation and claustrophobia, since the Resident was confined within the Kathmandu Valley, was great and led to a request for somewhere in Nepal where he could breathe. The Maharajah (Prime Minister) agreed that a tract of land could be granted near Kakani, where our present bungalow still stands. … At one time there was a miniature golf course, and the Resident moved there for a part of the year.” As Desmond Doig noted, the fairways straddled the ridge and “must have been hell on caddies.”During their tenure 2006 to 2010, Dr Andrew Hall and his wife Kathy cherished the old bungalow, despite its discomforts, and used it regularly to impress visiting ministers and fellow diplomats. The grounds and woodland were alive with birds and butterflies, marigolds and scarlet poinsettias against a piercing blue sky. “I loved that place - Dudley Spain first took me there for a picnic in 1969, and later we spent as much time up there as we could manage: wreathed in clouds with only leeches for company in summer, stunning views but terribly cold - even with a huge log fire - in winter.”<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101120/636b719a9c7e80680e0600dejpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="377"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101120/636b719e9c7e80680e0600dfjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="360"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101120/636b71a19c7e80680e0600e0jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2048" height="1536"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>The second British Resident, <a href="https://www.google.com/url?client=internal-element-cse&amp;cx=011870630917993763279:opm7uqsat-4&amp;q=http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php%3Fid%3D3246&amp;sa=U&amp;ved=2ahUKEwiBu-r8gKbnAhXA8HMBHSpaBxYQFjAAegQIABAC&amp;usg=AOvVaw1I3FmzX0hV6AjhL3_irJtk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Brian Houghton Hodgson</a>, living in Kathmandu from 1820 to 1843 in various roles, was first provided with a cottage at Koulia, a spot about five kilometres along the ridge north west of Kakani. There are also sketchy references in 1863 to a country house in Bhaktapur “for the use of the Residency”, but no details. When the Koulia “log cabin” was razed by lightning, it was replaced by the Kakani bungalow sometime in the mid to late 1800s - the date unknown.Lost films and forgotten diaries show the cumbersome process of reaching the Kakani outpost in those days, by horse, sedan chair and porter support. In the words of the East India Company Resident Henry Lawrence in 1845, "A lovelier spot on earth the heart of man could scarce desire," although his wife Honoria Lawrence also complained about the leeches. In corsets and stays, yesterday’s memsahibs must have been an intrepid lot.Runners were the only means of communication, later supplemented by a heliograph. This WWI device was used for signalling morse code by means of a movable mirror reflecting beams of sunlight, with direct line of sight to the residence in Lainchaur, now occupied by the Indian embassy. “I suspect that its main purpose in those heroic days was to demand extra supplies of gin!” wrote John Denson.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101120/636b71a49c7e80680e0600e1jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1125"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Other than Jim’s birthday, I have been invited over the decades for various ambassadorial “picnics”, more often elaborate sit-downs served by teams of Embassy staff, but I only once spent a night, echoing with vanished footsteps. We photographed the bungalow for <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/the-making-of-kathmandu-valley-style/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kathmandu Valley Style</a> and <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/the-lyrical-life-of-Desmond-Doig,1052" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Desmond Doig</a> painted it in My Kind of Kathmandu. The Gurkhas have built a modern cottage next door, a park commemorates mountaineers killed in Nepal, and along the ridge Thai’s memorial garden overlooks the 1992 crash site, a sombre reminder of past disasters.In <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/blogs/kundadixit/2015/05/27/a-month-that-felt-like-a-year/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2015 the earthquakes</a> destroyed the old bungalow at Kakani, and British safety regulations forced its dismemberment. The next chapter of its long history awaits to be written.

No lovelier spot than Kakani

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108151124/636a66c29c7e80680e0599a1jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="4368" height="2912"/><figcaption>A wintery morning elephant safari viewing rhinos amidst the morning mists of Chitwan grasslands 25 December 2006</figcaption></figure>Although it is no longer the case, for years Nepal was one of the few countries in the world that did not recognise 25 December as a religious holiday. The winter festival with ancient pre-Christian Yule solstice origins that celebrates the birth of Christ was simply forgotten amidst Nepal’s panoply of colourful festivals and jatra.The official calendar of the world’s only Hindu kingdom may have overlooked the most important Christian religious celebration, but at <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/back-to-Chitwan,1075">Tiger Tops in Chitwan</a> and <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/bardiya-beginnings-Lisa-Choegyal,1085">Bardiya</a> we enthusiastically marked the event, if only as an excuse to have a good party. Family and friends from Kathmandu and all over the world were invited by our boss <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=15828#.XfbgYC17EWp">Jim Edwards</a> to promote Nepal tourism, to consolidate relationships, to garner support, to repay favours or just to have fun in the jungle lodges and camps.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108151124/636a66c59c7e80680e0599a2jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="431"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>With bookings habitually weak during the cold winter months, Jim’s legendary Christmas and New Year parties of the 1970s and 1980s were an innovative way to fill the empty lodge rooms. Invited guests brought seasonal cheer and enjoyed chilly dawn safaris and leisurely afternoon boat rides. Morning mist wreathed the forest trees, hung over the dying brown grasslands and clung to the low-lying sandy riverbeds until burned away, often as late as midday, by the weak December sun.Quilt jackets, down vests and cashmere shawls were stripped off for a few brief hours, basking in the afternoon warmth before the damp of evening sent everyone in the direction of the bar, festively clad in sequined sweaters, inappropriate ties and navy blazers. The carol singing may have been a bit ragged and tuneless, but the hot rum drinks helped. Tiger Tops Specials, formerly known as Root’s Ruin after wildlife filmmaker Alan Root, were expertly mixed with lemon, honey, cinnamon and nutmeg behind the stone-built bar, decorated with shelves of bottles glinting in the lamplight and a gallery of framed visiting celebrity images.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108151124/636a66c89c7e80680e0599a3jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2112" height="2816"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>By necessity, the festivities had to be adapted to Nepali conditions. The turkeys found in the bazaar in those days more closely resembled vultures with suspiciously hooked beaks and dark flesh. They were soon replaced by a specially-reared pig, roasted for hours over a pit of coals, and accompanied by apples and sag instead of the customary cranberry and brussels sprouts.Christmas trees were decked with handcrafted ornaments, crackers were dispensed with as a frivolous luxury, and mistletoe and ivy were substituted by jungle creepers and poinsettias from Kathmandu. Resources were raided to produce a semblance of Christmas pudding blue-flamed with local brandy, delicious mince pies and elaborately iced cake, not the elephant dung variety popular with the boys’ birthdays. Champagne, contributed by duty-free guests, brought a rare sparkle to the winter jungle.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108151124/636a66cb9c7e80680e0599a4jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="778" height="513"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Jim was a recklessly generous host, appreciating the benefits of barter and nurturing his networks, mingling convivial groups of diverse guests, often with unexpected results. Nepali, British and Indian aristocrats rubbed shoulders with ambassadors, writers, scientists and conservationists. Gurkha officers came tasselled in gold, and some years we danced on the front lawn to brass strains of the uniformed police band. Two veteran soldiers who had not seen each other since a World War II battlefield were reunited around the copper-roofed fireplace in Chitwan. Winston Churchill, the parliamentary grandson of Sir Winston, came with his children and adopted Nepali daughter, and hotelier Biki Oberoi brought his entire family, including wife and favourite mistress, to Jim’s palpable delight.Anton Mosimann, the dapper Swiss chef whose most famous restaurant was in a Chelsea church, arrived from London. Disdaining the festivities, he asked me to show him around the staff kitchen behind the elephant camp so that he could sample real indigenous Nepali food at source.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108151124/636a66cd9c7e80680e0599a5jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="461"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Ayesha Jaipur was a regular favourite. More correctly known as Her Highness the Rajmata Gayatri Devi of Jaipur, she washed her own undies and served Indian whiskey instead of Scotch if she thought no one would notice. Famed in her heyday as the most beautiful and possibly one of the richest women in the world, she was also one of the funniest, and I loved her. One year she fixed me with her deep brown eyes, coyly adjusted her hair and rearranged her chiffon sari to reveal an elegant shoulder.“I hear you have built the best house in Nepal and I’d like to bring my grandson to stay. Would Christmas in Kathmandu suit you?”It was a royal command not to be denied, so plans were adjusted. Much to the consternation of her grand Rana relatives, who fussed that only they should have the honour of hosting her, Ayesha stuck to her plans. The morning flight was delayed and Christmas lunch on hold while the Edwards and Choegyal families dallied in the winter sunshine beneath the blazing orange khorsani phul until finally the Rajmata swept up our driveway.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108151124/636a66d09c7e80680e0599a6jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="692" height="850"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>It felt rather like entertaining the queen, but after all, that is what she was. On her bedside table in our spare room she carefully placed the silver framed photo of her late husband, the last ruler of Jaipur. Third and last wife of the flamboyant Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II, Ayesha and he were world celebrities until he died after a polo accident at Cirencester in 1970, and Mrs Gandhi put pressure on the former Indian princely families whose titles were supposed to have evaporated with Independence. Especially targeted were individuals such as Ayesha, who was born a Cooch Behar princess and had many powerful friends and an enthusiastic political following. She was much appreciated for her charitable works amongst the Rajasthan poor. Ayesha survived political persecution and prison, emerging more glamorous and admired than ever.She was just one of the memorable cast of characters who crowded the Tiger Tops bar, <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/one-day-of-life-in-the-jungle-chitwan,1005">thronged to the jungle lodges</a> in response to the coveted invitation, clinked glasses in Christmas salute, and still jostle to be remembered as ghosts of Christmas past.

Ghosts of Christmas past

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108101136/636a236b9c7e80680e0417e7jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="828" height="521"/><figcaption>Lisa Choegyal with John Edwards at Tiger Tops Tented Camp in Chitwan 1974</figcaption></figure>The skinny brown-haired Englishman with tattooed arms, soft eyes and an engaging smile strode towards me down the <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/back-to-Chitwan,1075" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chitwan</a> forest trail, a small white dog trotting at his heels. Sweat and dust matted the hairs on a pair of chopstick-thin legs, topped by baggy green shorts.John Edwards always seemed to be in a hurry, unless he was propping up the stone bar at the end of the day with a Khukri rum and coke in hand. There was little choice of brand in 1970s Nepal.“We are deep in the national park and one day a leopard will get Toyo,” he used to say, and sure enough it did. His strutting pet peacock, Henrietta, went the same way.The unsung hero of the early years of <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/fire-in-the-afternoon-tiger-tops,846" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tiger Tops</a>, John R Edwards (JRE as we called him in inter-office memos, although Raymond was a well kept secret) was a master at selecting camp sites deep within the jungle or on the Park perimeter.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108101136/636a236e9c7e80680e0417e8jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="900" height="769"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>His building background enabled him to construct golghar, decks, blinds, shelters, bridges, landings and tent platforms from wood, bamboo, grass and river stone blending seamlessly into the landscape. He taught by example, developing teams of talented locals and establishing what became widely celebrated as the Tiger Tops style. Rather than expand the main treetop Jungle Lodge in Chitwan, the eco-philosophy was to restrict impact with small satellite camps around the Park. It was JRE who made it happen.Rescued from a self-confessed drifting life as an occasional builder and seaman, John was summoned from the UK to Nepal by his big brother AV <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=15828#.XE1Al1UzaUk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jim Edwards</a> soon after he and <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/Tigerman-tiger,930" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chuck McDougal</a> had acquired the management of Tiger Tops in 1972.John’s practical hands-on construction talents were deployed at the grass roots level, his love of adventure blossoming in the wild places of the Nepal Tarai throughout Jim’s conservation tourism ventures. John became an invaluable operations manager, Jim’s trusted lieutenant and right hand man. He recced river trips, jungle treks and fishing opportunities, quietly working his magic, stamping his gentle humour on <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Conservation-and-tourism-Chitwan-National-Park,2957" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tiger Tops</a> lodges, camps and wildlife activities.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108101136/636a23709c7e80680e0417e9jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="803" height="934"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Fresh from UK and sensitive to his humble background, it took John time to assimilate into jungle life. When I first arrived in Chitwan, he could be found leading a group of tourists armed like a sahib on shikhar with a shotgun that only we knew was for show. After a late night session at the Lodge bar, he survived a close encounter with George the resident rhino, who was not as tame as he looked.Our amusement was not appreciated when John led a group of guests, creeping silently through the night to the hide where tigers were viewed on their kill. Only tonight it was a false alarm, no tiger in sight and the buffalo bait very much alive and mooing.One evening he left a little old American lady behind in the grass blind – we were only alerted by her plaintive “coo-ees” which were in danger of attracting a curious tigress. Escorting the Nepal<a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/son-of-the-famous,945" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> </a>royal family on one of their many visits, he broke all taboos by grabbing the untouchable Queen to lift her over a flooded ditch.John savoured the vicarious glamour of riding elephants and hanging out in the haitisar but needing four elephants at six o’clock for a morning guest safari he never lived it down when six elephants appeared at four o’clock. However when the kitchen caught fire, John was on the thatched roof attempting to douse the engulfing flames while I, tallest of all, thrust up the buckets of water passed down the line from the Reu River throughout that dramatic night.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108101136/636a23739c7e80680e0417eajpeg.jpg" alt="" width="380" height="358"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>John developed a rare empathy with the Tarai locals, spoke their language and passed on his building craft. He honoured their woodland spirits, appreciated their local wisdom, sympathised with their traditions, and was respected in return. One night he bravely attempted to sleep in an alleged dakini-haunted room at the Lodge, only to be violently disturbed by its female spectre. Often his forehead would be smeared with rice and colour, relics of a shikari puja, blood sacrifices deep in the forest. And he never lost his passion for a good fish curry.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108101136/636a23749c7e80680e0417ebjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="525" height="734"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>John’s British humour and could always be relied on for an irreverent story, dreadful joke or witty one-liner – my favourite was the Rolls Can'ardly, a car that “rolls down the hills but can hardly get up them.” At his 1980 wedding to Oreno, a spear wielding Naga lady swathed in red, white and black hand weave in a dusty bungalow garden now long built over, my inadequate Nepali vocabulary resulted in the bemused houseboys bringing cooked rice with which to shower the happy couple. Their first child was named Justin, “born just in time” John would grin, soon followed by a mellow cherished daughter, Ann.Eclipsed by his dominant elder brother, it was inevitable that the acolyte role would eventually pall. “John needs a bigger vision - I’ve given him India,” Jim told us with typical bravura, although it seemed more like banishment from his beloved Nepal jungles.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108101136/636a23769c7e80680e0417ecjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="685" height="900"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Whatever the irony, John was despatched to run Mountain Travel India, and left Nepal in 1990. The complexities of Jim’s Indian operations with their uneasy partnerships and labyrinthine bureaucracy would have presented a difficult task for anyone. John’s strengths were hands-on and in the field, not a basement office in New Delhi, but he stuck it out for a decade before settling back in London with his long-term partner Deborah.During his time in India, John not only managed camps in Ladakh, Kashmir, Himachal, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka, but found fulfilment in pioneering trips into remote parts of India’s undiscovered North East. In Oreno’s family territory of Nagaland his local knowledge came in handy -- the tribes were reputed to be headhunters.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108101136/636a23789c7e80680e0417edjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1535" height="2048"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Travelling with rhino specialist, Andrew Laurie, to check out Kaziranga in Assam, he managed to get them both thrown into Dhubri jail. Hitchhiking on the back of a lorry, John had insisted on snapping a ‘No Photography’ sign outside a military installation on the West Bengal border. That evening they persuaded their jailers to escort them to a restaurant, two rickshaws, them in one and two armed guards in another.  Released the next day by the District Magistrate, they were entertained to tea on his lawn and regaled with stories about his father’s time at Cambridge.The poor truck driver was not so lucky, stuck in Dhubri without a permit to carry his grain, having been diverted to take them to prison. Leaving town next morning by taxi on the orders of the District Magistrate, they saw their stranded driver. “We gave him some rupees, can’t remember how much, but we kept adding notes until he started smiling.”John R Edwards: born 22 September 1946 died 18 January 2019

John R Edwards, 72

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171144/636936969c7e80680e03fdebjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2814" height="1808"/><figcaption>The Interns: Visit to Tiger Tops by then-U.S First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, flanked by guest relations Arati Rai and Sam Vincent.</figcaption></figure>Somewhere along the way at Tiger Tops Jungle Lodge, it was decided that we needed a gentle female hand to look after guests, to reassure them in the remote jungle setting, and to balance the macho effect of the wildlife naturalists who swaggered through tiger and rhino country.The result was a succession of guest relations girls (gals), most of whom did not last more than a couple of seasons -- such was the intensity of the task and isolation of life within Nepal’s Tarai national parks.When I first <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/back-to-Chitwan,1075" target="_blank" rel="noopener">worked in Chitwan in 1974</a>, we all did everything. I could be found in my khaki shirt not only on airport duty and briefing the guests on arrival, but also escorting barefoot visits to the tiger blinds, explaining the careful husbandry of the elephant camp, or pointing out crocodiles and birds whilst floating down the Narayani river in local wood boats with only the dip of a paddle or the call of an osprey to spoil the silence.Most thrilling was driving guests in the battered green Land Rovers on afternoon excursions across the rickety bridges, through shallow streams and along the rough tracks carved each year out of the encroaching <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/its-a-jungle-out-there/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">jungle</a>. I could change one of the heavy tread tyres in less than eight minutes, and had to do so on more than one occasion -- usually on some distant stretch of rutted road, never quite sure what creature might emerge out of the forest and grassland.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171144/6369369a9c7e80680e03fdecjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2092" height="2716"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Early evening tigers would use the same roads to patrol their territory and spray-mark trees, leaving pungent cat-scent hanging in the air, and impossibly large pug marks imprinted in the dust.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/recreating-tiger-tops-in-the-tropics/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Recreating tiger tops in the tropics</a>, Lisa ChoegyalAfter I moved to the Kathmandu office, the boundaries became less blurred and the guest relations job description tightened to exclude driving – prompted by one enthusiastic dark-haired American gal colliding head on around a jungle corner with the only other vehicle for miles.<a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/business/City-safari-in-rickshaw,2784" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Safaris</a>, drives, boat trips and walks were deemed the masculine domain of operations staff, naturalists and nature guides. Guest relations’ focus was entirely on the <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/guest-editorial/leave-no-one-behind-gender-roles,858" target="_blank" rel="noopener">feminine</a> duties of housekeeping and the kitchen, planning menus, assigning tree-top rooms, arranging tents, and ensuring guests felt at home – more systematic perhaps, but not nearly so much fun.I suffered the ultimate feminist indignity when, during a glossy London magazine fashion shoot that I had arranged in 1977 with top models and a celebrity photographer, and me posing at the wheel of an open safari jeep, a moustache was later photo-shopped onto my upper lip. If not women’s liberation, we did achieve 10 valuable pages of publicity for <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Conservation-and-tourism-Chitwan-National-Park,2957" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chitwan’s wildlife tourism</a>.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171144/6369369d9c7e80680e03fdedjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="880" height="638"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Our guest relations girls were mainly recruited from friends of friends, meaning we had a bias of Western gals (and the occasional guy) from the wide-open spaces of North America, and the more specialised British habitat of Sloane Square, the Pony Club and titled country house parties. Double-barrelled surnames proliferated, and at one point we had a Lavinia, a Philippa, a Venetia and a Samantha in close succession.In those conservative times, few Nepali or Indian girls were permitted by their families to work in the mostly male atmosphere of the <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/More-trouble-in-Chitwan-National-Park,2956" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lodges</a> and camps, although we did find a few individuals who gained traction as attitudes relaxed. By definition, they were mavericks, pushing the boundaries; Asha moved on to Disney in the US, Pramoda still campaigns for animal rights, Christabel from Darjeeling now lives in Melbourne, and Gauree has risen to international lodge manager status in her own right.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/pilgrimage-to-copenhagen/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pilgrimage to Copenhagen</a>, Lisa ChoegyalOver the decades, Tiger Tops gals came and went, and many are still in touch. Those that did not succumb to suburbia discovered their destiny – many still work in hospitality and conservation. Some fell foul of the system (or the boss’ kids) and had to leave in a hurry. A few left their heart in the jungle and there were several Tiger Tops marriages.One English blond had to be rescued from an enamoured royal prince who was found installed in a Soaltee suite – that was tricky to explain to her mother in Surrey. Many took an interest in the food. A lovely lady from Tasmania would greet guests with “Have a nice cup of tea!” and an older lady returned regularly to teach new European recipes. Nodding patiently, the eyes of the Nepali cooks would glaze over with years of conflicting instructions.Such was the allure of adventure in the jungle that Tiger Tops developed a clever category of young kids whose parents actually paid for them to work with us. Un-catchily named the Youth Trainee Programme, YTPs would spend a month or two traipsing around, shadowing guides, and ostensibly helping out in Chitwan and Bardia, often in their gap year between school and university (yes, gap yah!).Other than a few casualties -- usually related to love, drink or homesickness -- an ‘amazing’ time was had by all. One chap overdid the <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/elephants-born-free,3302" target="_blank" rel="noopener">elephant</a> camp ganja, one misjudged the Khukri rum, and another got no further than the Thamel throngs before being nursed back to Oxfordshire, but they were the exception.Most of our guest relations’ gals and the transitory gap yah kids claim that the experience in Nepal changed their lives, and I have no doubt that it did.

Gap yah gals in the jungle

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171120/636930749c7e80680e03c0fbjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1640" height="1062"/><figcaption>The canopy walkway at Borneo Rainforest Lodge in Danum Valley.</figcaption></figure>I never met any during <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/hanging-out-with-the-headhunters/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">my time in Sarawak</a>, but the Penan people were one of Asia’s last true nomadic hunter-gatherer groups, championed by anthropological and human rights activists against being settled by modern Malaysia during the early 1990s.Sheltering from the rainforest downpours and damp under plaited leafs and twig canopies, they were skilled weavers making rattan mats and baskets. Hunting with blowpipes, and eating plants and small animals, the Penans were noted for practicing molong which means never taking more than necessary. They survived in the ever-shrinking patches of rainforest that had evaded the devastating decades of logging that made British Borneo, later Malaysian Borneo, wealthy.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/bat-caves-and-edible-bird-nests/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bat caves and edible bird nests</a>, Lisa ChoegyalIronically it was a Malaysian logger who first invited me to Borneo in 1991. Rudy Tangit Kinajil was one of the ‘big boys’, head of Sabah State forestry and a stalwart of Malaysia’s timber industry but remarkable in that he came from a local tribe, the Kadazan-Dusun, and had risen through the ranks. Rudy wanted help create a natural history lodge, and had decided that it should be modelled on the wildlife conservation concepts pioneered by <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/fire-in-the-afternoon-tiger-tops,846" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tiger Tops Nepal</a>, but adapted to his tropical Borneo environment.Sunk in the deep leather seats of Rudy’s vast silver BMW, we drove the private gravel logging roads into the back blocks of Sabah through a green tunnel of towering trees as he showed me the realities of his world. Where the trees had been felled, there were great glaring gaps of open light.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/hanging-out-with-the-headhunters/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hanging out with the headhunters</a>, Lisa Choegyal <figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171120/636930779c7e80680e03c0fcjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="643"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>I was horrified by the destruction of biblical proportions, the Armageddon of devastation left by the loggers and their massive machinery. The loamy ruined soil was rutted naked to the sky, erupted roots exposed and discarded branches left to rot on the beleaguered battlefield. Rudy surveyed the wreckage and waste with his rueful smile.Borneo logging concessions are valuable, government organised and highly controlled by the State but the inevitable result is forest loss, not only for the indigenous people who depended on it, but for the 10,000 species of plants, nearly 300 species of birds, and a medley of animals ranging from the tiny pygmy squirrel, the iconic orangutan and 12 other primates, and herds of elephant. Amongst the unique flora are some 3,000 types of trees, 2,000 orchids, pitcher plants and the foul-smelling Rafflesia, named for Sir Stamford Raffles, the world’s largest flower with a diameter of one metre. The huge trunks of the dipterocarps are reduced to plywood in the sawmills that Rudy showed me by the coast, then loaded directly onto ocean-going cargo ships to feed the world’s  need for building materials.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171120/6369307a9c7e80680e03c0fdjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="522" height="800"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Rudy was trying to do his best. He hired Clive Marsh as the Sabah Foundation (Yayasan Sabah) eco-warrior and social conscience, a gangly enthusiastic British biologist from Cambridge University. Together they pioneered the early practice of carbon trading, the innovative idea of exchanging environmental impacts across the globe. For the first time improved and less-damaging forestry techniques in Borneo were offset against power company effects in North America.Under Rudy’s watch, 43,800 hectares had been set aside as the Danum Valley Conservation Area, an island of untouched and unlogged tropical rainforest, protected for its undisturbed biodiversity and complete with a research facility managed by scientists from the UK’s Royal Society.The Field Centre and its pristine setting was attracting so much attention from curious visitors that Rudy and Clive felt a separate tourist lodge would allow the scientific work to continue in peace. Clive was despatched to Nepal to visit the famous Tiger Tops and seek our assistance in planning the new lodge. A suitable riverside site had been selected nearby, and designs commissioned featuring forest materials, river stones, Dusan-style chalets, and an airy main building with spacious verandas set on columns of belian, Borneo's famous iron wood.Rudy insisted the buildings be set well back in case of flooding – he never forgot the childhood trauma when his village was washed away in a flash flood. Otherwise, Clive and I were given a free hand with the market positioning, wildlife operations and nature-based activities. Malaysian staff were sent to train in <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/back-to-Chitwan,1075" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chitwan</a>, Nepali naturalists visited to run courses and perfect the programs, I prepared a marketing strategy, and Borneo Rainforest Lodge opened in 1994.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171120/6369307c9c7e80680e03c0fejpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="412"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>For the uninitiated, the matted undergrowth and dense vegetation makes it hard to see much in tropical rainforests except the occasional dung beetle, butterfly flash, strange snail or huge centipede, but sound effects are a cacophony of bird calls and a melodic screech of insects that span every note on the scale. Clive designed thick cotton ‘leech socks’ to protect guests on guided rainforest hikes. From the suspension bridge near Danum Valley Field Centre a flying squirrel glided every evening on his parachute-winged legs, accompanied by a symphony of six o’clock crickets.Wildlife viewing from the network of nature trails and canopy walkways that Clive built at <a href="http://www.borneonaturetours.com/www/brl_default.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Borneo Rainforest Lodge</a> was more rewarding, and especially when the jungle became habituated to the increasing flow of visitors. Borneo rarities include the Sumatran rhinoceros and Bulwer's pheasant, and Danum is still one of the best places to spot the highly endangered orangutan, the beguiling ‘person of the forest’, living in the wild.

Recreating Tiger Tops in the tropics

<figure><img width="1452" height="925" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107141112/636904549c7e80680e037d18jpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Tiger Tops during the Coapman era c 1965 showing only four top rooms in the simal bungalow, and staff dressed in military-style uniforms.</figcaption></figure>Mette Rolff’s Nordic blond hair was pulled back neat against the nape of her neck as she gazed across the Copenhagen skyline from her apartment window. “I loved the <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/one-day-of-life-in-the-jungle-chitwan,1005" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chitwan jungle</a>, but it was a trying time.” She smiled evasively, but the understatement did not hide the pain behind her eyes. “But life has moved on, let’s not dwell on those days.” Turning to me she crossed her delicate ankles and once again blocked the conversation, shying away from sharing any indiscretions with her young visitor.I was visiting Denmark ostensibly to promote Nepal, but was hoping to glean from Mette more about her time in <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/back-to-Chitwan,1075" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chitwan</a> during the early 1960s, married to John Coapman, the Indian-born son of American missionaries who had first built <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Conservation-and-tourism-Chitwan-National-Park,2957" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tiger Tops</a> Hotel, as it was then called. Never having met him, I had a shadowy image of a big blustery man with a rifle slung across his shoulders, a sort of South Asian Hemingway figure without the charm or the writing.How did this stylish slender old lady, dressed in soft tweed and pastel cashmere against the summer evening chill, come to spend several years in a remote rhinoceros sanctuary and Rana hunting reserve in southern Nepal? I wasn’t getting very far. Graciously hospitable in her modest cosy home, and helpful with travel agents and media contacts, in lilting Danish cadence Mette made it clear that her colourful private life was off limits. <figure><img width="250" height="191" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107141112/636904579c7e80680e037d19jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>There were many gaps in the story but it seemed pretty glamorous to me, a wide-eyed twenty-something, curious about the eccentric cast of expatriate characters that composed Nepal’s tourism history. Rumour and innuendo featured a dramatic and clandestine escape from an abusive and jealous husband. The narrative went that Mette had to sneak off to Kathmandu airport and freedom carrying only a small handbag so as not to raise the choleric Coapman’s turbulent suspicions – with a casual wave that she was “off shopping”, trembling she walked away from her entire Nepal life.<a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Obituary/Inger-Lissanevitch,886" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Inger Lisanevitch</a>, <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/join-us-on-land-boris,869" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Boris</a>’s Danish wife, provided illicit support and <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/blogs/kundadixit/2018/01/26/from-liz-hawley-in-kathmandu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Elizabeth Hawley</a> was a lifelong admirer. She was running Tiger Tops’ Kathmandu office for Coapman. “There were so few people around it was easy for me to help him out-- he was a ‘difficult’ man”. Elizabeth’s fingers made the quotation marks. “Mette was wonderful, the poor thing.” Elizabeth had no time for the CIA conspiracies that clung to Coapman, nor his boast that King Mahendra had died in his arms whilst on shikar in Chitwan. <figure><img width="808" height="958" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107141112/636904589c7e80680e037d1ajpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>It is hard to imagine what life must have been like for Mette, alone and allegedly confined to the staff bungalow whilst her bullying husband constructed the Africa-inspired conical roof of the main lodge and the first four treetop bedrooms in a spreading silk cotton tree.Two Dallas oil millionaires with a penchant for big game hunting, Toddy Lee Wynne Jr. and Herbert W. Klein, had found the Chitwan site whilst out shooting tiger with their ‘white hunter’ guide John Coapman, and contracted him to make it happen.Smooth river stones were collected for the floor, and wood, bamboo and grass were cut from the forest for walls and thatched roofs. Set in a clearing overlooking the Reu River near the Rapti confluence, from her locked room on a fine day the Himalayan peaks shimmered on the horizon but at night the dense jungle din must have been daunting. <figure><img width="283" height="210" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107141112/6369045b9c7e80680e037d1bjpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>How John and Mette came to be married in the first place is a missing chapter of the tale, but by November 1965 they received the first Tiger Tops guests, five Americans, who landed on the grass airstrip of Meghauli in a chartered Royal Nepal Airlines DC-3. Early photos show military-style uniforms, with guns, kukris and lances carried by shikari guides and elephant drivers to ward off the perceived threat from fierce wild creatures.The story switches to a cold evening in a New York brown stone at the 1971 annual dinner of the Explorers Club in East 70th Street, and a chance meeting between the Texan owners and AV <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=15828#.W4UORc4zaUk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jim Edwards</a>, a former banker and Pan Am salesman with the gift of the gab and a fledgling hunting company in Nepal. Tired of their errant and unreliable manager Coapman’s colonial fantasies, fuzzy truths and a business reeling with debt, Jim persuaded the two Texans that he and his business partner <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/Tigerman-tiger,930" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chuck McDougal</a> were perfectly placed to take over the ailing management and realise their dream of creating Nepal’s pioneer wildlife tourism venture, in return for part ownership. The deal was done.Jim’s selective memory and talent for exaggeration has probably embellished accounts of the Tiger Tops Nepal takeover, but after that conversation in New York, John Coapman was fired, leaving death threats and unpaid bills in his wake. Mette had long gone. <figure><img width="663" height="946" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107141112/6369045c9c7e80680e037d1cjpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Jim liked to say that the new management took off “with a roar”. With no communication system to alert the Chitwan staff, Jim, Chuck and <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/remembering-Elizabeth-Hawley,1112" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Elizabeth Hawley</a> arrived in February 1972 unannounced and on foot, walking miles along jungle tracks, wading rivers, and carrying a case full of cash to salvage the situation. There is no doubt they found a sorry spectacle of starving elephants, unpaid salaries, broken vehicles and crumbling buildings. Jim claimed that food was so short on that first visit that they had to share a tiger’s kill.John Coapman never again reappeared in Nepal and so was unable to defend his dubious legacy that faded into uncertain legend, even as Tiger Tops prospered. But we all stayed in touch with the much-loved Mette and her elegant but precarious life in Europe. She did not return either, but there were intriguing whispers about a generous English Duke and other Danish dalliances. But I never dared to ask.

Pilgrimage to Copenhagen

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110714118/6369036c9c7e80680e037cc1jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1022"/><figcaption>Chuck McDougal's first pressure plate photography traps in which the tiger triggered its own picture</figcaption></figure>Encountering a tiger in the wild is a privilege not to be taken lightly, and an experience never forgotten. Words cannot do justice to this most magnificent of all creatures, but many have tried to capture the instincts triggered by its terrible beauty, the reality of our inherent human frailty when confronted with nature’s most evolved predator.Our consciousness is fully awakened by ‘Tiger tiger, burning bright’. Hairs rise, breath stills, time stops and the heart skips a beat as the sun striped shadows dissolve into the largest of the world’s cats, the sheer wonder of several hundred kilos of elegant muscle and striped intensity.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/how-many-tigers-in-nepal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">How many tigers in Nepal?</a>, Kunda DixitFirst arriving at Tiger Tops in the Chitwan National Park, I was told: “You can live your entire life in the jungle without ever seeing a tiger.” The king of the jungle is essentially nocturnal, solitary and adept at avoiding people and encounters, its lone survival depending on self-sufficiency.For our guests, <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/Tigerman-tiger,930" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chuck McDougal</a> and his naturalists shortened the odds by reading the signals, identifying tracks and interpreting alarm calls – barking deer, grunting monkeys and coughing chital. Jungle excursions and elephant safaris took place early morning and late afternoon to maximise the probability.In the bad old days, a young male buffalo was tethered in the same spot every night, watched over by a shikari who ran back on swept paths to summon us from the lodge bar or dinner table. Barefoot, breathlessly silent and peering through the small windows of the grass machan, a tiger could be discerned crouched over its kill, bones crunching, illuminated by a rudimentary searchlight powered by an old car battery.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110714118/6369036f9c7e80680e037cc2jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="990" height="1500"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Despite such contrivances, <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/More-trouble-in-Chitwan-National-Park,2956" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tiger sightings in the wild</a> are never certain. Even after we stopped baiting and depended on our naturalists skill, every year only one quarter of all Tiger Tops guests were fortunate enough to catch a precious glimpse of the planet’s largest cat.And for me, every time was a moment of magic and quiet respect that such splendour coexists on this earth.Originally protected as a sanctuary for Nepal’s Greater One-horned Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis), the fame of Chitwan was soon usurped by the tiger’s elusive glamour, the undisputed star of the show. Even the Latin name resonates with awe and mystery: Panthera tigris.Chitwan’s rich habitat, watered by the Raptiand Narayani rivers with alluvial grasslands, mixed riverine forest and the sal-covered Chure Hills, had long been set aside by ruling Ranas as prime hunting country, reserved as a refuge to impress a favoured few royals, viceroys and maharajahs. The Shah kings were required to prove their bravery with bagged tigers and perform obscure religious rites that included climbing inside the carcass of a slaughtered rhino.During Queen Elizabeth’s visit in 1961, for which Meghauli airstrip was carved out of the jungle, <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/join-us-on-land-boris,869" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Boris Lisanevitch</a> catered an elaborate royal camp and 327 elephants were rallied for the game drive, Prince Philip famously refused to shoot. Yesterday’s hunters were evolving into today’s conservationists, and cameras were replacing guns.Throughout its range, Asia’s apex predator had become critically endangered due to a combination of loss of habitat, depletion of prey species, human conflict, poaching and hunting. South Asian tigers drastically dwindled to less than 2,000 from an estimated population of 40,000 at the turn of the century, plummeting to less than 3,500 from 100,000 worldwide.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110714118/636903729c7e80680e037cc3jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000">In response, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 1973 launched Project Tiger throughout India, and the same year Chitwan’s 360-square-miles of undisturbed biodiversity were gazetted as Nepal’s first national park. Designated a natural World Heritage Site in 1984, and linked with adjacent reserves into the huge tiger conservation landscape of Chitwan-Parsa-Valmiki in 1998, Royal Chitwan National Park rapidly became renown as one of the best wildlife viewing experiences in Asia, especially for the increasingly rare Royal Bengal tiger.At <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/Nation-quality-control-in-tourism,471" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tiger Tops</a>, a treetop lodge deep in tiger country since 1964, we were inevitably entwined and engrossed with its protection. An ideal base for wildlife research and filming, Chuck pioneered camera trapping, and helped the Smithsonian Institute’s radio tracking and long-term tiger monitoring.The government often asked help with logistics, and Jim Edwards’s former hunting skills came in handy when Hemanta Mishra and the warden requested assistance with tranquilising a man-eater – after three attacks anaberrant tiger, usually old or injured, would be sentenced to life in Kathmandu Zoo. As the elephants fanned out through the hot dry grass, mahouts shouted to drive the aging tigress towards the waiting dart-gun and I clung nervously to the ropes of my elephant’s gaddi behind a tense driver – we knew she had terrorised villagers from across the river straying into the jungle to collect grass and firewood.Nepal can be proud of its well-protected parks and successful conservation record, the envy of other tiger range countries with recovery of Nepal’s tigers well ahead of target. Nepali scientists have trained neighbours in scientific counting methods, we contributed sustainable tourism recommendations agreed by all tiger range countries (in Thimphu 2011), and naturalist guides have created conservation awareness with park visitors and celebrities.Actor Bob Hoskins got too close for comfort during a tiger documentary in Bardia, and <a href="https://www.leonardodicaprio.org/protecting-wild-tigers-in-nepal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Leonardo DiCaprio’s passion for tiger conservation</a> was first ignited at Tiger Tops Karnali, resulting in millions of dollars of WWF support.In the 2010 St Petersburg Declaration, 13 countries endorsed <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=16820#.W2_ejWaB1TY" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Global Tiger Recovery Plan</a> to double the number of tigers worldwide by 2022, the next Chinese Year of the Tiger. Nepal committed to expand its tiger population from 121 to about 250. By 2013 we had already achieved 63% of this goal with 198 tigers resident mainly in <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/habitat-destrcution-of-tiger-in-Tarai,3423" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chitwan</a>, but also Bardia, Shuklaphanta, Parsa and Banke protected areas.No one should live in a world without wild tigers. We <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/how-many-tigers-in-nepal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">await the results of the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation 2018 census</a>, but Nepal’s tigers remain a powerful tourism icon and a potent symbol of Nepal’s conservation success.The spelling of  Zbigniew Brzezinski in the caption has been corrected.

Sun striped shadows

<h5>Through their enthusiastic lenses, nature film-makers introduced Nepal to a global audience</h5> <img width="640" height="489" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110710118/6368cb009c7e80680e02f349jpeg.jpg" alt=""/>Götz Dieter Plage (above) drove into our lives in one of those iconic early Range Rovers, a red one if I remember right, bristling with all the latest gadgets. His arrival in Nepal heralded a decade-long partnership with our Tiger Tops team and UK’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2001/jan/30/broadcasting1">Survival Anglia</a> television, making a series of wildlife documentaries throughout South Asia.With lush brown hair and a brow wrinkled with seriousness, Dieter was an earnest German wildlife cameraman, much respected by his peers. Based in Chitwan in a synergistic deal brokered by <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=15828#.Wt1GGhuFO71">Jim Edwards</a>, Dieter experimented with the latest 1970s technology for innovative filmmaking in the wild –night scopes, image intensifiers, motor drives, steady cams, and even a single-engine aircraft.Fresh from filming in Africa, he regaled us with hair-raising stories about close encounters with endangered animals, charging gorillas and marauding hippos. Around the circular river-stone fireplace of a Lodge evening, he laughed loudly at his own jokes before retiring early to tinker with his equipment. In 1977 this pedantic loner surprised us by turning up with a wife (Mary from Norwich always known as “Sweetie Pie”) who faithfully followed Dieter’s peripatetic and obsessive shooting schedule with doe-eyed devotion. <figure><img width="640" height="409" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110710118/6368cb039c7e80680e02f34ajpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure> The facilities at <a href="http://www.tigertops.com/">Tiger Tops</a> were the perfect base for Survival’s team which typically took over two years to complete their carefully crafted one-hour documentaries.Dieter’s long-term camera assistants came in different shapes and sizes, becoming an integral part of our Chitwan routine – a short stocky one was a special friend of mine and a tall bearded one married my sister.All displayed an infectious commitment to the natural world and went to great lengths to capture rare and authentic footage, sitting for days in canvas hides, hours on elephant back, or perched all night on a tree branch.www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIbAY44PN_oThrough their enthusiastic lenses, the secret splendours of the forest and wilderness were exquisitely revealed to a television audience of millions. Conservation concerns were a recurrent theme - tigers and rhinos in Chitwan, leopards in <a href="http://www.dudhwanationalpark.in/about-dudhwa-park.php">Dudhwa</a> and elephants in Sri Lanka.Mike Price was a balding and bouncy Brit, diminutive and dedicated. Night after night he sat in the camouflaged machan set high on the ridge beside a tiger-likely trail, waiting with his camera ready. Each morning he would return for breakfast, weary and despondent - until the day when he appeared, still gasping and hopping with excitement. It was May, and his bare legs were caked in sweat and dust, the heavy camera case slung across his khaki shoulders.When he had calmed down enough for us to understand him, Mike described the thrill of a tiger appearing silently out of the grass on the path below him - “stripes that moved” in the dawn light. At last, patience rewarded. It was a young male, and with the camera running he realised with some alarm that the purring sound was making it curious – the striped ears flickered with interest as it advanced up the bank. Mike had to remove the camera from the tripod as the tiger came closer and closer, until its face was peering through the slit window of the hide, separated only by a flimsy wall of canvas. <figure><img width="640" height="439" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110710118/6368cb059c7e80680e02f34bjpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Even though primeval instinctual terror made his heart race, Mike had the presence of mind to keep the camera going, his hands shaking. “I was deafened by my own heartbeats,” he said later. In a career of close shaves in the jungle, this unsteady sequence became the centrepiece of Tiger Tiger, one of the first films to document the behaviour of these noble and elusive nocturnal cats.As Mike recounted the story to us from the safety of the Tiger Tops breakfast table, luckily for him the young tiger decided discretion was the better part of curiosity, and moved on.In return for logistic support and movies to share with our guests and staff, the partnership with Survival Anglia gave Nepal conservation credibility and accessed global groups such as the Audubon Society, Frankfurt Zoo and Zoological Society of London.David Attenborough came, the BBC Natural History Unit and National Geographic. The integrity and international standing of Nepal’s wildlife conservation programme was secured.  <figure><img width="640" height="409" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110710118/6368cb089c7e80680e02f34cjpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>The Smithsonian Institution’s long-term tiger monitoring project used Chuck McDougal and Tiger Tops’ trackers to pioneer camera trapping and radio collaring techniques, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands brought members of his 1001 Club of WWF donors as the guests of then-Prince Gyanendra, and Sir Peter Scott “launched” the first gharial back into the Narayani River, reared by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation to reinstate this threatened fish-eating crocodile. The first batch of gharial eggs was hatched in my bedroom, the white translucent orbs packed into a warm wet sandbox, before the crocodile breeding centre was set up at Kasara park headquarters.In a poignant footnote, exactly 25 years ago this month Dieter Plage was killed in a horrific accident, plunging 50m through the canopy of a remote Sumatran rainforest. Hovering above the trees, he was suspended below a small airship in an adapted camera platform when his safety harness failed -- a victim of his own inventive commitment to share the glories of Asia’s natural world.Read Also: <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/son-of-the-famous,945">Sons of the famous</a>, Lisa Choegyal<a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Charles-McDougal-passes-away-at-86,3034">Charles McDougal</a>, Lisa Choegyal<a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/So-far-so-good/bardiya-beginnings-Lisa-Choegyal,1085">Bardiya beginnings</a> ,Lisa Choegyal

Survival survivors

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

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

Digital protection for Nepal’s art

<a href="https://www.instagram.com/prabalgurung/" target="_blank">Prabal Gurung</a> left Nepal for New York in 1999 to escape years of bullying, sexism and homophobia, and to pursue his dream of becoming a fashion designer. He <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqN0VaoAI5w" target="_blank">realised his dream</a>, but did not escape discrimination and racism in the new world. Propelled by passion for fashion, Gurung overcame everything America threw at him. He has attained <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/prabal-gurung-recalls-his-first-met-gala-when-zoe-saldana-was-at-his-side?srsltid=AfmBOooy-H0oGgxMit864FnW_Pmw8mUnV8rYrh-co-f6OyYK6m2ip5hP" target="_blank">fame and recognition</a> for his haute couture dress designs while remaining true to his Nepali roots, and is even more resolute in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSmNauyzACk" target="_blank">fighting prejudice</a> in all its forms. Prabal Gurung’s newly-released memoir <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Audible-Walk-Like-Girl-Memoir/dp/B0DG11HCDQ?fbclid=IwY2xjawKZfpxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHuZcIJO2OXyXcRm1oq1iG6wzeoF7VJFrQ7GXOFI0YxuZZ4id_CNvSZSZZIna_aem_pG_mOKG73RTnYvN8JaC4fA">Walk Like a Girl</a> is a saga of harrowing abuse in boarding schools in Nepal and India, only finding himself facing a different kind of bullying in the US. He prevails over it all to be where he is today: an award-winning American fashion designer with his own label. Walk Like a Girl was launched last week in New York at a time when everything Gurung fought for — tolerance, inclusion and diversity — are in retreat in his adopted country because of a president who has espoused a culture of bullying. The book is a searing, raw exposé of how cruel and abusive people can be even at a young age in school. On the other hand, it also shows that there are generous, compassionate and open-minded souls out there. In his book, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4le_uWX7YE">Prabal Gurung</a> calls out those who tormented and tried to hold him back (some of their names have been altered). The moral of his story is: resist, never stop believing in yourself, do not let others define you, never lose sight of your dream, and help those who have been kept out. “Walk like a girl” was a slur used by bullies back in school in Nepal and India for Gurung’s effeminate ways. He fought back then, and he is still resisting by turning those words into something to be proud of.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250519170544_4ffc9c3f565dd2cfa754d10b224816897b82bb31ebaee91b6d79d469fc96f14e.jpg" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20250519170544_4ffc9c3f565dd2cfa754d10b224816897b82bb31ebaee91b6d79d469fc96f14e" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1253" loading="lazy" alt="Prabal Gurung NT"> <figcaption>Prabal Gurung at home in Kathmandu in the 1990s.</figcaption> </figure>  “Living through it all was one thing, but writing about it is one of the hardest things I have done in my life,” admitted Gurung during the launch. “I broke down constantly during the six-year writing process.” He continues: “I did not want this to be a victim’s book. I did not want to burden my readers with my emotions. I wanted my struggle to be an inspiration for others facing what I faced. I am grateful to those who bullied me in school, they made me a stronger person ready to face the world.” Indeed, this book is a departure from his earlier one titled simply, Prabal Gurung (Abrams, 2019), which was a lush pictorial autobiography of his career in fashion. Walk Like a Girl is not a typical fashion book, it is an intimate tale of <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=16997">Gurung’s travails and triumphs</a>, and how he willed himself to succeed. Prabal pays a lavish tribute to his mother Durga Rana. We find out she is a descendant of the first wife of the eldest son of Jang Bahadur Rana who was banished to Palpa in the late 19th century. Prabal’s father served in the Singapore Police and that is where he was born before the family returned to Nepal when he was four. Gurung relates with brutal honesty about the violence his mother endured from his father. Durga raises three children as a single mother in Nepal, and Prabal credits her for his fierce determination to resist patriarchy and injustice, which in time manifests itself in his hyper-feminine and subversive dress designs. Writing the book has been a cathartic experience for Gurung, who says he is now relieved of the burdens of his past. It no longer haunts him, and he does not have to prove anything to anyone anymore. Walk Like a Girl has life lessons not just for the <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DJmOcSgxdWz/" target="_blank">fashion industry</a>, but for every other profession. How can my job serve a greater cause? Gurung tells us his work is <a href="https://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/why-designer-prabal-gurung-doesnt-want-just-stick-fashion" target="_blank">bigger than just making clothes</a>, it is about making the world a better place because it could do with a lot of improvement.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250519170544_d75296ad8bfdc00d88935f40d23543c6fea3d4d6a10e61a99d6cfc6127f2ee5b.png" data-media-id="editor_10" data-image-id="20250519170544_d75296ad8bfdc00d88935f40d23543c6fea3d4d6a10e61a99d6cfc6127f2ee5b" data-rendition-name="original" width="1516" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Prabal Gurung"> </figure>  This story of chasing the American dream may sound familiar to many immigrants: knocking on doors for jobs, rejections, trying to survive from day to day on expensive rent, and dealing with subtle racism in white America. Gurung finds racism is rife, and he is often mockingly called ‘gaysian’. He writes: ‘There was a strong hypocrisy — this idea of independence felt like a marketting ruse … and for all the talk of feminism in America, these high society women were trapped by the patriarchy just like in Nepal and India.’ After a trek to the Khumbu region in 2013, Gurung is inspired to use the colours, palette and textures of Nepal for his collection exhibited on Manhattan’s 8th Avenue. A major buyer tells him bluntly: “Stick to making pretty dresses … if I need to see a collection like this, I could buy a copy of National Geographic.” The New York Times was equally dismissive: ‘The designer tries to draw connections between blistered techo-fabric used to construct it and the topography of his homeland, Nepal. But, at the moment, he has lost his map.’ One potential investor tells Gurung he cannot design for Americana because “you do not look American”. Gurung wants to use expletives, but restrains himself. After a fundraiser in New York for the Nepal earthquake in 2015, some belittled his effort, saying: “Here comes the saviour."&nbsp; Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/prabal-gurung-by-prabal-gurung">Prabal Gurung by Prabal Gurung</a>, Kunda Dixit The Gurkha DNA must be dominant in Prabal Gurung’s genes because he does not take such mistreatment lying down. When asked by a fashion publicist why he was designing clothes for fat people, he snaps back: “Because of people like you.” He joins the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements, launches the Shikshya Foundation charity in Nepal, and has powerful allies among celebrities who wear clothes he designed: Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Sara Jessica Parker, Kamala Harris, Deepika Padukone … it is a long list.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250519150556_48a5f4211991a23fa85b64bbd5377575ca7081d97309d7542035591dda5180fe.png" data-media-id="editor_12" data-image-id="20250519150556_48a5f4211991a23fa85b64bbd5377575ca7081d97309d7542035591dda5180fe" data-rendition-name="original" width="1114" height="1534" loading="lazy" alt="Being Prabal Gurung by design"> <figcaption>Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wearing Atelier Prabal Gurung’s design for Met Gala 2025 in which the theme was ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’. </figcaption> </figure>  “I don’t dress women to look beautiful, they already are,” Gurung says. “I try to bring out their innate strength and grace.” <a href="https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17908766880140171/" target="_blank">Admirers</a> tell Gurung he makes it all look so easy, but he used to put up a strong facade to not show his own vulnerabilities in public. “I was closed because of my childhood experiences,” he says. “I was always on guard to defend myself because I never knew where the next punch would come from.” But in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPVepzPA210" target="_blank">Walk Like a Girl,</a> Gurung comes to terms with his vulnerability, and bares his soul. It has not been easy, it took sustained will power and support from his mother, sister Kumudini and a circle of close friends. “I made unbelonging my power,” he says. “Nepal is where I still have my heart and soul. Nepal grounds you. It is where people go to find themselves. But I escaped.” Recently appointed vice-chair of the <a href="https://cfda.com/about-cfda" target="_blank">Council of American Fashion Designers</a>, Gurung says: “I can’t believe I am here, it feels like it is happening to someone else. Writing this book, the healing has finally begun.” <h2>‘Everything is better in color’</h2> The Met Gala was two weeks later, and my table was an example of everything I’d been fighting for all these years as my guests represented everything I believed in: dynamic, powerful, influential women who were unapologetically original and unabashedly graceful. I was grateful to Anna for inviting me to host and dress a table that reflected my ethos—and for her guidance in doing so. I was also aware of the privilege as one of the first-­ever Asian fashion designers—not just from Nepal, but from the entire continent— to get the opportunity to do so. That fact was not lost on me. I reached out beyond the expected Hollywood celebrities and well-­known socialites to curate a table of exceptional women who inspired me. I invited Deepika Padukone and Alia Bhatt for their first-­ever Met Galas, as well as Michelle Yeoh, Mindy Kaling, Camila Cabello, Ashley Park, Denée Benton, KiKi Layne, Quannah Chasinghorse, and Grace Elizabeth. Together we checked many boxes: Asian, Black, Latinx, and Indigenous, each woman undeniably chic and powerful, a dazzling array of skin tones and experiences that proved my decades‑in‑the-­making hypothesis: everything is better in color. Excerpt from Walk Like a Girl Viking © 2025 by Prabal Gurung  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250519170520_6b91d560e9f072c37d16876901058c073a51ffa05e7ad1b9461d19e1c9c28215.jpg" data-media-id="editor_16" data-image-id="20250519170520_6b91d560e9f072c37d16876901058c073a51ffa05e7ad1b9461d19e1c9c28215" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Prabal Gurung book details NT"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250519170520_345240c21be400e2ce2ec629b52bd82bb53890e5bd86fe95b48340d84b5f1748.jpg" data-media-id="editor_17" data-image-id="20250519170520_345240c21be400e2ce2ec629b52bd82bb53890e5bd86fe95b48340d84b5f1748" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Prabal Gurung book details NT"> </figure>  &nbsp;

Being Prabal Gurung by design

India and Pakistan are twins separated at birth. Tensions between them have been at a hair trigger ever since independence and has erupted into full scale conflict at least four times in the past 80 years.
The 22 April terrorist attack in Kashmir that killed 25 Indian tourists and a Nepali citizen, threatens to escalate tension between the two nuclear-armed nations. India has squarely blamed Pakistan for the attacks, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given his military “operational freedom” to respond. Pakistan has said it has credible intelligence of an Indian military strike and its officials have promised a “full spectrum” response — a code for a <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/thinking-the-thinkable">nuclear retaliation</a>.
For Nepal, the killing of its national in the Pahalgam attack comes as another stark reminder that in conflicts from Afghanistan to Iraq, from <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/how-to-agree-an-armistice-in-ukraine">Ukraine</a> to Israel, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/10-nepalis-from-one-town-fighting-in-ukraine">Nepalis are getting caught in the crossfire</a>. The last time full-scale fighting broke out between <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/peacemongers-at-india-pakistan-border">India and Pakistan</a> on Kargil in 1999, at least 22<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/india-s-trial-by-fire-for-soldiers-from-nepal?%27%5C%22="> Nepalis fighting for the Indian Army</a> were killed in action.
Three of Nepal’s immediate neighbours (China, India, Pakistan) have nuclear weapons, and they do not have good relations. With China supplying weapons, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/war-and-warming">missile technology</a> and other support to Pakistan, this triangular friction could set off a regional conflagration.&nbsp;
<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0" target="_blank">Research at Rutgers University</a> has calculated that even a week-long tactical nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would throw up so much smoke and debris into the atmosphere that it would block out the sun for years, and lead to a collapse of the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/grow-nourish-sustain-together-world-food-day">global food system</a>. This does not take into account the radioactive fallout that prevailing winds would blow up to <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/lives-on-the-line-in-the-himalaya">the Himalaya</a>, contaminating glaciers that are the sources of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/saving-what-is-left-of-himalayan-rivers">Asia’s main rivers</a>.
The impact of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/climate-breakdown-linked-to-thame-flood">climate breakdown </a>on High Asia was already ringing alarm bells about its <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/himalayan-icecap-melting-faster-than-thought">shrinking ice cap</a> reducing the dry season flow of water downstream. Water was going to be the next strategic commodity, geopolitical experts warned, and the next wars in Asia would be over water.
That water war is already happening. India retaliated to the Kashmir attack by suspending the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/world/asia/india-pakistan-indus-waters-treaty.html" target="_blank">Indus Waters Treaty</a> of 1960 mediated by the World Bank that has withstood at least three wars between India and Pakistan. The treaty gives India control over the three eastern tributaries of the Indus (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beas_River" target="_blank">Beas</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravi_River" target="_blank">Ravi</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutlej" target="_blank">Sutlej</a>), while Pakistan got water from the Indus and two of its western tributaries (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_River" target="_blank">Indus</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chenab_River" target="_blank">Chenab</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jhelum_River" target="_blank">Jhelum</a>.
Pakistan was assured of 70% of the annual flow, and India could use a reasonable amount of water for<a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=15231"> irrigation and hydropower</a>. &nbsp;Within days of its threat, India stopped water flowing down to Pakistan from the Chenab river and is reportedly preparing to do the same on the Jhelum.
The sabre-rattling has reached a crescendo. Besides threats and counter-threats there are also symbolic drills, with the Indian Air Force practicing landing on an expressway in Uttar Pradesh by its Rafale, Su-30 and Jaguar fighter jets to demonstrate ‘operational readiness’. In response Pakistan test-fired its Abdali ballistic missile that can carry a nuclear warhead and has a range of 450km.&nbsp;
The danger is that with ultra-nationalist rhetoric and the beating the war drums by both sides, India’s government and Pakistan’s military may have to ‘do something’ to appease domestic public opinion. But any tactical strike, an artillery exchange, or territorial incursion could quickly escalate out of control.
Expecting an Indian retaliation for the Pahalgam killings, Pakistan is using<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/interfaith-collaboration-for-nuclear-disarmament"> nuclear deterrence </a>and warning of “catastrophic consequences”. The two neighbours came close to a nuclear exchange in 2019 after an attack on the Indian military in Kashmir, and prompt international intervention led by the United States cooled tensions.&nbsp;
This time, the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/trump-shock-wave-hits-nepal">Trump administration</a> is too distracted and not as engaged. Pakistan has denied it was responsible for the terrorist attack and called on Washington to stop a possible Indian retaliation. India and Pakistan have stopped overflights by each other’s airlines, and some international carriers have even stopped flying over Pakistan fearing an air war.
Washington, Beijing, the UN and the EU have all urged restraint. Iran, which has good relations with both India and Pakistan has sent its foreign minister to urge both countries not to go into a tit-for-tat war. Iran has its own nuclear flashpoint to worry about with tensions in Israel, &nbsp;Yemen and Syria.
India and Pakistan both share similar problems of joblessness, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/why-nepal-s-poverty-rate-is-stuck">poverty </a>and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/climate-change-new-threat-to-nepal-s-rhinos">environmental threats</a>. Neither side needs the threat of a senseless war, and we in the neighbourhood do not need it either.&nbsp;
Kunda Dixit
This Editorial is brought to you by <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/" target="_blank">Nepali Times</a>, in collaboration with <a href="https://inpsjapan.com/en/" target="_blank">INPS Japan</a> and <a href="https://sgi-peace.org/" target="_blank">Soka Gakkai International</a>, in consultative status with UN ECOSOC.

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