K ashi Bai led a double life for a time of her asylum in the court of Maharajah Jung Bahadur Rana of Nepal. She was a widow to the world but she never ceased wearing her tika of red vermilion powder on her forehead, clinking glass bangles on her wrists or the kajol decoration around her eyes. Was her husband the Maratha leader Nana Sahib the fugitive from the British Raj really dead as reported by Jung Bahadur to Governor General Lord Canning or did the young wife know better? Maharajah Jung Bahadur Rana had started to make surreptitious sorties to the residence of Kashi Bai adjoining his Thapathali Durbar. Was the widow secretly married to him and was that the reason why she would not wear the traditional white of a Hindu widow? Tongues started to wag. Nana Sahib A few years after the Indian Mutiny of 1857 was quelled by the British the fugitive Maratha rebel leader Nana Sahib sought refuge in Nepal with a retinue of followers including his adoptive mother, the widow of the las...

T he rhinoceros is as prehistoric a beast as one can find today having roamed the earth for 50 million years and outlived the dinosaurs. These rhinos still inhabit the jungles of Nepal and their population shows signs of healthy increase after us humans reversed its course of annihilating these magnificent animals through greed thanks to the awareness created by a few dedicated conservation organizations and attendant scientific advances on reproductive technology. Indian Rhino Vision 2020 Program has set a target of 4,000 rhinos in the wild in Nepal, Bhutan and India. Besides the Great One-horned Indian Rhino, there are only four more species surviving today, the White and Black rhino of Africa, the Javan and the Sumatran rhino in Southeast Asia. Not all is honky dory of course as poaching, habitat degradation and human encroachment still pose a big threat in all three countries. Nepal took a lead a long time ago by establishing the erstwhile Royal Chitwan National Park and ...

I knew that there was a lot of merriment at His Holiness the Chiniyia Lama's residence at Bouddha when my father and his friends, known to us then as the 3 Musketeers, visited him. In those days I wondered how going to an incarnate Lama could result in riotous merry-making with large amounts of chaang the Tibetan-style millet wine being imbibed until the wee ours of the morning. One of the musketeers Maharajkumar Mussorie Shumsher, son of Maharaj Dev Shumsher known to history as the liberal one, was the person who introduced my father to the Chiniya Lama and a steady bevy of western beauties circling the Lama for both the proximity to divinity and free booze. The other musketeer Honourable Lalit Chand the serving Chairman of the Rashtrya Panchayat, the unitary political system King Mahendra created to replace a chaotic democracy, was probably a reluctant member of the troika given the sensitivity his high post warranted. 3rd Chiniya Lama Punya Bajra with western initiates ...

Bill Stone discovered my Blog and wrote to me reminiscing on his young days in Nepal and living in Kiran Bhawan. I encouraged Bill to give an account of the time he spent in Nepal as it would provide a fascinating glimpse into a past we have come to be nostalgic for. Bill has kindly obliged and, in his own words he writes, "I have thoroughly enjoyed the 'project' and would be glad to submit further installments". Keep 'em coming, Bill! This is Bill's story. INTRODUCTION I came to Nepal as a 10 year old in October 1959, having lived my childhood in the US Pacific Northweat (Oregon, Washington, Monatana). The four years we spent in Nepal were the longest I had ever lived in one place, and so special. Since returning "stateside" I have enjoyed several careers, in pharmaceutical manufacturing, as a Deputy Sheriff, a truck enforcement office, tax fraud investigation manager, and shipping manager. I have never been back to Nepal, but I remember...

I eagerly awaited the daily delivery of the The Motherland newspaper at home because I could see the advertisement of the films running in the local cinemas of Kathmandu: Ashok Cinema in Patan and the rest of them were in the city, Ranjana, Bishwojyoti and Jai Nepal Chitra Ghar. It was a challenge how to get to the first show of a new release but some of my friends who were more centrally located were clever enough to secure tickets to them, Dipak Bir Singh and Pitamber Rana my school chums come to mind. The Motherland was one of the first English daily to be published back in 1958 A.D. and circulated every morning, all 1800 copies of it! There was not much else to read in the papers then; the king and queen, sporting dark glasses and gloved hands, were always inaugurating something new for the benefit of their shirtless subjects, the prime minister and his ministers were singing paean to the party-less Panchayat polity deemed most suitable to the soil of Nepal. We studied the ...