Chandra Bahadur Garbuja

It was 1940, and Chandra Bahadur Garbuja dreamed of serving valiantly under the British Crown against the Japanese. He left the village of Sikha in Myagdi District in central Nepal to recruit with the Brigade of Gurkhas in Dehra Dun. After a few months of training, his battalion of 7,000 was transported by train to Madras, thence to Singapore by ship. Within four months, the Japanese had overrun Singapore and all 7,000 men, Britishers, Indians, Nepalis and some Chinese, were taken prisoner.

While his fellow POWs mourned their fate and pined for home, Chandra Bahadur quickly set about learning to read and write Japanese. His captors liked him enough to include him in a team that was headed for Burma with a load of documents for the rebel army of Indian nationalist Subash Chandra Bose. It was during this long march that Chandra Bahadur learnt the mechanical skills of building bridges and cutting trails that would prove so useful back in the Nepali hills.

After six-months as a well-regarded POW, Chandra Bahadur escaped and crossed into the advancing British lines. Soon the war was over and he was back in Dehra Dun. In 1947, tired of army life, Chandra Bahadur resigned and returned to Sikha. He went back to the tedious and routine work of ploughing, planting and harvesting, and feeding cattle. But he had seen too much of the world to be satisfied with just that. Chandra Bahadur noticed that the residents of the nearby villages of Swanta, Dhaskey Khoray, Pahdwar and Others were having difficulty crossing Myagdi´s many torrential rivers. Reaching back to what he had learnt in his days as" a POW, Chandra Bahadur built seven bridges in the area. Today, almost four decades later, all but one of them are still in use.

In 1953, the well known Japanese professor, Jiro Kawakita, came to Nepal with a mountaineering expedition and he needed a translator. Incredibly, there was Chandra Bahadur, right in the middle of the Magar heartland of Nepal. Thus began a partnership between Chandra Bahadur and successive Japanese well-wishers. For the past 15 years, Chandra Bahadur has been fast friends with Toshio Chino. Together, they have installed four ropelines to transport wood and grass from the forests to the villages of Myagdi, several drinking water systems, one hydropower station and a "hydro ram" which provides lift irrigation.

In January, Toshio came to Sikha yet again for a rural energy survey. Chandra Bahadur was there to welcome his old friend, with a jerrycan full of fresh milk as an offering. Over a cup of tea, he was asked what he would do if war were to break out again and he was with the British Gurkhas fighting Toshio. "I would go to war, but I would fire into the air," he said.