Portering in the Nepal Himalaya is deadly serious business. It involves enormous toil for little gain; it brings on premature aging. It is among the most primitive uses of human
Edmund Hillary climbed Mount Everest in 1953 with his partner Tenzing Norgay. His relationship with the Himalaya has, if anything, deepened in the 35 intervening years. Sir Edmund, presently New
Old Mountain Crops
The world's food supply is precariously based on seven major crops — wheat, rice, maize, potato, barley, cassava and sorghum. We now cultivate fewer species of
At the eastern tip of the Himalaya lies Arunachal, which literally means "mountains of the rising sun", now going through a process of uneasy and sometimes reluctant transition
The villagers of Chorkate in Gorkha District recently had a first hand experience with a development consultant and are not ready for another one soon. A foreign expert decided that
Dozens of interviews with students, lecturers, and top administrators of Nepal's government-run Tribhuvan University have revealed that Nepal's higher education system is in a tailspin.
The entire region is slowly sinking into a slough of alcoholism. Districts that have been traditionally dry are being invaded by liquor stores as an underemployed male populace takes to
The loss of forest cover has been blamed on villagers' need for firewood and fodder. But cremation is also a significant factor, even though some officials and environmentalists understandably
In April, scientists in the United States found that the depletion of ozone gas in the world's atmosphere was at least three times more serious than had been
The premises are cramped and claustrophobic, but it is a beehive of activity: a former auditorium boarded up to yield office space. It is the base camp of the King
THE International Centre for Integrat¬ed Mountain Development (ICI¬MOD) has completed two years of ope¬ration and "is off and running", according to its Director, Colin Rosser.
