Prologue His parents already knew of his proclivity to create wonderful images of Hindu and Buddhist deities in clay and wood from a small age. When he could get hold of charcoal from his mother's kitchen, he would draw strange but striking images on the walls and floors. Wise elders nodded in approval and whispered to his grandparents Mitra and Kundalaxmi that the boy was a prodigy. He would do the Sakya clan proud one day by helping spread the glory of Sakya Muni to the furthest corners of the world.   T here have been many myths and legends about child prodigies in all cultures. Lord Krishna's birth leads to a miraculous baby exchange where his foster parents Nanda and Yashoda sacrifice their own new born baby girl to save the incarnated Lord Vishnu from the clutches of the evil uncle King Kangsa. When Lord Buddha is born the wunderkind takes seven steps to pronounce to the world that he is the anointed one. Christ's miraculous birth from a virgin mother fulfills ear...

Prologue His parents already knew of his proclivity to create wonderful images of Hindu and Buddhist deities in clay and wood from a small age. When he could get hold of charcoal from his mother's kitchen, he would draw strange but striking images on the walls and floors. Wise elders nodded in approval and whispered to his grandparents Mitra and Kundalaxmi that the boy was a prodigy. He would do the Sakya clan proud one day by helping spread the glory of Sakya Muni to the furthest corners of the world.   T he great Mongol looked at the vast plains stretching before him in eternity and decided that this would be the place where he would build his new capital city, Dadu, and move the court from his citadel in Inner Mongolia Shangdu or Xanadu as we have come to be familiar with in the English language. It was a decision based in realpolitik as after all he was the ruler of China now, not just a barbarian from the outer fringes of empire as his grandfather Genghis Khan and his...

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 ...