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Showing posts from February, 2011

IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST

T he National Geographic Magazine has always been my favorite print medium for gaining insight into vanishing cultures, insular societies and natural phenomena that blow your mind. A combination of precise writing and award-winning photography brought these wonderful worlds to our living room before cable TV took over. I was curious when we got a call from Lisa Choegyal informing us that a correspondent from Natgeo wanted to interview my father. The year was 1982 and I had returned to Nepal from Europe with my recently-married wife just a year earlier. What was the subject of the interview I enquired? True to Natgeo form they wanted to interview father on one of the rarely performed sacred Hindu religious rituals. The One-horned Indian Rhinoceros is one of the few mammals surviving today that has the look of a prehistoric creature a million years old. Chitwan or Chitta-bana , the heart of the jungle, located in the Nepal Terai is the natural habitat of these magnificent beasts. Th