Kathmandoo, March 1844

We left Chitlang on January 20th after breakfast, and after two or three hours march over the hills we came to a crest of a range, and below us lay the valley of Nepal. It was unlike anything I ever saw, more like an artificial model than any actual scenery and suggested a crowd of new and strange ideas. How did we ever get here? How shall we ever get away? How could this ‘emerald set in the ring of the hills’ have been first discovered and inhabited? And being known at all how comes it to be so little known? What sort of a world shall we find when we descend?1

Arupokhari, 20 April 1996

This steep ascent feels never-ending: we climb up and up, still up and ever up. It is hot. It is humid. I am exhausted. I am out of breath. Sweat is soaking back and pack.

We pass chortens, pass chautaaras, pass terraced rice fields too steeply stacked—how can anyone work on them, how can anyone eke out an existence in this steep, thirsty, dusty terrain? Eventually we pass people on the trail; we pass glances and glares, pass questioning looks and suspicious stares. Finally, we arrive at this little village, so small, so parched: a fetid lake in the baking sun, no shops, only scattered mud-brick homes and a school, a small mud-floored school with a corrugated tin roof that bakes the students when it's hot, freezes them when cold.