After Koirala, what?

Manjushree Thapa, the Kathmandu-based author of ‘Forget Kathmandu: An Elegy for Democracy,’ in The Indian Express:

Girija Prasad Koirala’s resignation as prime minister has been greeted with equal relief and dismay in Nepal. Ahead of the April 10 Constituent Assembly election, Koirala had announced that no matter what the outcome, he would resign afterwards. When the Maoists came in as the largest party, though, his apologists began to claim that the election had been only for a constitution-drafting body, and not for a government. They argued that the interim government - with Koirala as the prime minister, and also as the provisional head of state - could only be voted out with an absolute majority. Koirala went along with this dubious logic; and his refusal to resign came across, to his detractors, as an expression of megalomania.

This launched a month of intense inter-party bickering, bickering which cast an anxious shadow over what should have been a joyous moment for Nepal: the abolition of the monarchy on May 28.

The subjects being bickered over have been among the most decisive of the peace process, subjects that will make or break Nepal in the coming years. Who is to be the head of state, the prime minister or (with the king now gone) a president? Which of these should hold executive power? How, if at all, should the Nepal Army and the Maoists’ People’s Liberation Army be merged? Who should be the commander-in-chief?

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‘We are trying our best to understand democracy’

The Maoist guerrilla leader who is about to become Nepal’s prime minister faces a dilemma: how can he reconcile his ideology with the realities of political office? Raymond Whitaker of The Independent met him:

It is not easy securing a meeting with the Maoist guerrilla leader poised to become prime minister of the new republic of Nepal.

Prachanda, which means “awesome” or “the fierce one”, came out of the jungle two years ago, but his journey from insurgent commander to mainstream politician is far from complete. As if to emphasise his distance from the Kathmandu political establishment, which he calls “feudal”, he lives in a run-down area of the city, close to a rubbish-strewn canal. His house, with sandbagged emplacements at each corner, is guarded by unsmiling male and female cadres in camouflage fatigues and caps with a red star on the peak.

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In search of Nepal’s living goddesses

A prepubescent deity of Hindu-Buddhist tradition is also a modern child of HBO and Barbie. From The Christian Science Monitor:

Like any typical schoolgirl, 13-year-old Chanira Bajracharya struggles to finish hours of homework each day. That doesn’t stop her from stealing away to watch TV (she enjoys HBO; her younger brothers often change it to Nickelodeon) or use the computer. She even has Barbies, but now that she’s older, painting has replaced organizing tea parties as her favorite pastime.

The similarities end there. To start, no one - including her family - may scold her. Chanira eats whatever she desires, though she’s yet to abuse this power by demanding an endless supply of ice cream. And don’t even mention chores.

It may seem like she’s hit the jackpot, but in exchange for this life of relative luxury, she’s forbidden to leave her five-story home, save for religious holidays. She must also endure a constant stream of Hindu followers who come seeking her healing powers or to snap a photo of her.

[Photo: Chanira Bajracharya (c.), is one of Kathmandu's kumaris – a living goddesses until she reaches puberty. Reuters]

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Nepal: the world’s newest republic

In The Telegraph, UK, Thomas Bell reports from Kathmandu:

In his last act before leaving his palace last week, Nepal’s former king, Gyanendra, tried something he never attempted during his disastrous experiment with autocratic rule.

He decided to call a press conference - and for dismayed royalists the ensuing scene encapsulated the fall of an ancient institution that had collapsed from within.

Excited journalists climbed on the palace furniture. They posed for pictures in the chair where Gyanendra would sit, flanked by two stuffed tigers. When the ex-king arrived they heckled him with the rudest words in the Nepali language.

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Symbolic moment in Gyanendra’s fall

Charles Haviland of BBC eports from Kathmandu:

I seriously thought my rib-cage was about to be crushed as I waited outside the palace gates to get into the former king’s news conference.

After two years of living under virtual gagging orders, it was not surprising that Gyanendra Shah would attract considerable interest with his unprecedented statement to journalists.

But the sheer level of curiosity, the pushing and shoving from the hundreds of reporters and others behind them trying to force their way in, was extraordinary.

In the end I was catapulted in by the crowd behind me, leaving me in a no-man’s-land between two gates, facing the brief wrath of police and palace staff demanding to know why I had forced my way in.

[Photos: Top, the former king and his wife Komal leaving the palace in a black Mercedes. Below: Nagarjun palace, the future residence of ousted king.]

More here and here

Of head without a crown, jungle retreat and solitaire

C.K. Lal in Mail Today:

WEDNESDAY afternoon, Gyanendra must have felt the unbearable lightness that comes from being released from the burden of history as he prepared to leave Narayanhity palace. He had ascended to the 240- year- old Serpent Throne of the Shah Dynasty under extremely tragic and somewhat suspicious circumstances. In comparison, his departure from the palace and the end of the Shah line has been peaceful to the point of being listless. In the first week of June 2001, King Birendra, and everyone of his family in the line of succession, save Gyanendra and his son Paras, had been killed in a gruesome palace massacre. Almost everybody in the kingdom believed that the survivors had somehow conspired to become the inheritors of the Shah crown, tiara and spectre that traditionally belonged to the slain king, queen and crown prince respectively.

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End of Hindu rashtra

Subhash Gatade in Countercurrents:

Jaswant Singh, the exforeign minister of India, who also handled the finance portfolio for quite sometime, rather could not hide his displeasure in the recently held meeting of the BJP executive.

Of course the immediate provocation for the ex-Army man was neither because of any fresh move by his bete noire in state politics namely Ms Vasundhara Raje Scindia. It also had nothing to do with the manner in which L.K.Advani had flatly denied any knowledge of his not so famous sojourn to Kandahar after the plane hijacking incident.

In fact he shared his piece of mind over recent developments in Nepal. He called it a ‘negative development’ and a ‘danger to India’s security’ and said that ‘as a believer in sanatan Dharma he feels humiliated and as a Hindu, he felt diminished over the ouster of a Hindu king.’

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The decline and fall of Nepal’s last king

From Reuters:

Not long ago he was revered by some as a Hindu god, waited upon by thousands of royal palace retainers. His face adorned banknotes and the national anthem sang his praises.

Now Nepal’s former King Gyanendra is vilified, has lost his crown and is being forced out of his palace.

A specially elected assembly voted overwhelmingly to abolish the 239-year-old monarchy two weeks ago, leaving Gyanendra to go down in history as the last king of Nepal.

Gyanendra will now move to an old royal hunting lodge just outside the capital until he has a chance to find a permanent home.

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Former Nepalese king’s elderly mistress to remain in palace

From Associated Press [via IHT]:

For more than half a century, few Nepalis knew of the mysterious elderly woman living in Katmandu’s royal palace.

They found out Wednesday about Sarala Gorkhali when authorities announced the frail 94-year-old could stay in the palace even though Nepal’s recently deposed king was being forced to move.

The reason: she was the youngest mistress of King Tribhuwan, who ruled the Himalayan kingdom from 1911 until his death in 1955, and has no house to move to or any relatives to take her in, interim Home Minister Krishna Prasad Sitaula said.

So as Nepal’s last monarch, Gyanendra, leaves his family’s one-time seat Wednesday, Gorkhali will remain, a final member of the royal court and a reminder of a dynasty that reigned over the Himalayan nation for 239 years.

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Royal flaws in focus at birth of Nepal’s republic

From Reuters:

Kathmandu: Four people, clad in white mourning clothes, carried a dummy corpse in a bamboo coffin.

“Gyane is dead. We are carrying his body to the cremation grounds,” they said, using an abusive shortened form of King Gyanendra’s name.

Watching the crowds gathered to celebrate the birth of the republic of Nepal last Wednesday, it was clear to me they were not yet done protesting against the king.

I flashed back to 2001, when I was awoken by a midnight telephone call. An old friend was on the line, saying he had heard the Maoist insurgency had exploded a bomb in the royal palace.

The Maoists at that time were still classified as “low intensity”, mainly confined to remote villages and valleys in this Himalayan nation and I thought they did not yet have the strength to do this. I was right.

As a helicopter hovered in the sky and after frantic telephone calls, it became clear: Crown Prince Dipendra had massacred his parents and seven other royals at a family dinner, then shot himself.

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Nepal’s ‘living goddess’ in limbo

Reuters report from Kathmandu:

The appointment of a new “living goddess” in Nepal is being held up by the recent abolition of the monarchy, a Nepalese official says.

According to tradition, the king’s priest appoints the girl, who is chosen in her infancy and is treated as a goddess, or Kumari, until puberty.

But the priest no longer has any say in the republic, the head of the trust overseeing the tradition says.

[Photo: The previous goddess, Sajani Shakya, retired in March]

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Into the death zone: An amazing mountain rescue operation

The attempt by some of the world’s best climbers to reach a dying mountaineer on Annapurna has redeemed a sport once known for its selfishness. Jonathan Brown in The Independent, UK:

Mingma Sherpa ran through the narrow winding streets of Kathmandu engaged in a desperate search. The Nepalese logistics expert employed by a Spanish mountain rescue team had been looking for help all night. It was not until 5am, shortly before dawn in the Himalayan capital, that he found the man he was looking for and began banging on his door.

Inside his hotel room, the Kazakh climber Denis Urubko was sleeping off the effects of a gruelling expedition to climb Makalu without oxygen. For the mountaineer, his conquest of the 8,463m (27,765ft) peak just a few days earlier was the 15th time he had ventured higher than the 8,000m mark - the point which signifies the start of the Death Zone above which human life is unsustainable. Yet, despite his state of near exhaustion, he was unable to refuse the Sherpa’s urgent pleas. He got up, packed and immediately left for the airport prepared, without hesitation, to go straight back into that most lethal of places.

[Photo: The summit of Annapurna, which stands 8,091m above sea level, has claimed the lives of four in every 10 climbers who have reached its peak.]

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The king gone, Nepal must confront a new danger

Unless the deadlock over government formation is broken soon, the constitution writing process will be compromised, writes Siddharth Varadarajan in The HIndu:

Nearly a week after the abolition of the monarchy in Nepal, a democratically formed coalition government still eludes the world’s youngest republic. Instead of introspecting over the reasons for their defeat in the elections to the Constituent Assembly, the Nepali Congress and the Unified Marxist-Leninists are behaving like victors. And the Maoists, who came first but still lack a majority, have yet to master the art of compromise without which there can be no coalit ional politics. At stake is not just the question of governance but something much more fundamental. For unless the deadlock over government formation is resolved quickly, the political atmosphere in the country will get so vitiated that enormous and perhaps irreparable harm will be done to the prospects of writing the country’s new constitution.

Nepal’s voters want the Maoists to lead the government and process of constitution writing, but only on the basis of power sharing. That is why they gave the former rebels 220 out of the 575 elected seats in the Constituent Assembly (CA) but withheld the two-thirds majority needed to allow them to run a single-party government under the terms of the interim constitution. Of course, the Maoists have never said they wanted to run the government by themselves. As soon as the election results became known six weeks ago, Chairman Prachanda extended an invitation to the others to join a government under his leadership. The terms of power sharing had been clearly spelt out by both the text of the interim constitution and the spirit of its working over the past 18 months and it was assumed that these arrangements would carry over.

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Final battle for Gurkhas

Gurkha captain Kushalsing Gurung, 72, served in the Queen’s Gurkha Engineers (QGE) for 30 years. He was stationed in Malaysia (then Malaya) and Hong Kong, where he built roads and bridges throughout his long career. He is one of thousands of retired Gurkha veterans currently fighting a new battle - to extract from the UK government the same pension that is given to British soldiers. From the Guardian Weekly:

When I joined the Gurkhas in 1952 at the age of 13, I lied to get in. The minimum entry age at that time was 15. I wanted to go to school and there was little prospect of an education in my village. My father was a Gurkha, as was my grandfather, and my brother served in the Indian Army. Being a soldier was considered a well-respected profession.

According to history, the Gurkhas have served in the British Army for almost 200 years. After Indian independence in 1947, under the tripartite agreement some Gurkhas joined the Indian Army and some joined the British Army. My regiment transferred to the British Army and became part of the Brigade of Gurkhas.

I was sent to Malaysia [then Malaya] in 1952 to receive my education. At the time not many Gurkhas had served there. Most soldiers were directly allocated a regiment, but because I was a young recruit I was able to decide for myself. I decided to be in the engineers. I wanted a good skill to bring back to my country.

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The solitude of a king

With the Maoists set to dominate the new Constituent Assembly, Nepal’s king may soon loose his crown. In The Indian Express, Yubaraj Ghimire weighs the royal options:

For almost two years now, King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev has been in isolation. He has become a ‘punching bag’ of sorts for Nepalese politicians and to some extent, the international community, a symbol for everything that ailed Nepal. And, of course, everybody holds him responsible for his fate. He is hardly spotted in public these days, and when he is, it is without the trapping of royalty. He remains mostly confined to the Narayanhiti Palace. Even this could be for a short while longer, for if the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoists (CPN-M) does what it has pledged to, Nepal will be a republic on the first day that the newly elected Constituent Assembly sits.

The emergence of the Maoists as the single-largest party in the forthcoming Assembly, and the likelihood of a government under its leadership, has sent out the message that time and tide don’t wait for anyone. And in this tsunami of change, Nepal-which lost its status as an officially Hindu nation two years ago-looks set to lose the world’s only Hindu monarch whose forefather began the Shah dynasty 240 years ago.

Nepal is now speculating over the king’s future. Will he seek asylum in India? Will he counter the political tide? Or will he live on in Nepal as an ordinary citizen?

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Ballots over bullets

Kunda Dixit, editor of Nepali Times, in The Times of India:

Kathmandu: Mao is dead; long live Mao. The Great Helmsman maybe in a mausoleum in Beijing, but he is alive and kicking in Nepal.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Maoists were supposed to come to power by the barrel of the gun. In Nepal, they have been voted to power. With results of last week’s elections nearly in, it’s been a rout. The Maoists have got 50 per cent of the votes in the first-past-the-post ballot, with the mainstream Nepali Congress (NC) with just 14 per cent and other parties trailing further behind.

The result has left pundits scratching their heads, foreign embassies in Kathmandu are red-faced, the NC and CPN-UML are too stunned to even speak. Even the Maoists themselves were surprised by the vote.

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Nepal’s Maoist landslide

An electoral earthquake reflects the social distance that had grown between Kathmandu’s elite and media and Nepal’s people, says Prashant Jha, a political analyst with Nepali Times, in OpenDemocracy:

The results of the general election in Nepal on 10 April 2008, won overwhelmingly by the Maoists - officially the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) - have come as a complete shock. Many people thought the former armed rebels would be a distant third, winning perhaps fifteen-to-twenty of the 240 seats directly elected to the constituent assembly under a first-past-the-post (FPTP) system (335 of the remainder are elected under proportional representation). Some argued that the Maoists would do better than conventional wisdom in the capital Kathmandu suggested, giving them about thirty-to-forty of the FPTP seats. Only a few voices sensed the people’s desperate yearning for change, the Maoist base among the young and marginalised, and flagged the possibility of the party coming in second - or first.

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Triumph of the new mainstream in Nepal

By voting in the Maoists, the Nepali people have chosen the party most likely to push for an egalitarian society and inclusive republican system in the Constituent Assembly. Siddharth Varadarajan in The Hindu:

After failing to recognise the obvious groundswell of support that had built up for the Maoists in the run-up to the Constituent Assembly (CA) elections in Nepal, India needs to move quickly to adjust itself to the new power balance. Despite receiving reliable field reports of the widespread support the Maoists were enjoying across the country, South Block deluded itself into believing that the former rebels would be at best a distant third. Bogus surveys commissioned by t he U.S. embassy in Kathmandu in which the Maoists were shown as winning only 8 to 10 per cent of the popular vote started circulating within the corridors of power in New Delhi. Accordingly, the foreign office’s contingency planning revolved around coping with the fallout of a poor showing by the former rebels. Even here, the official assessments showed scant understanding of the ground reality with improbable scenarios like a Maoist “urban insurrection” being bandied about.

More on his blog:

Nepal’s “radical Democrat”

Flanked by portraits of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, Baburam Bhattarai, the chief ideologue of the Nepal’s Maoists, spoke to Nepali Times about sleepless nights, his party’s economic agenda and about whether he’d been offered the prime ministership.

Nepali Times: How does it feel to arrive here after the long journey from a village in Gorkha?
Baburam Bhattarai: There is a deep sense of responsibility, and that comes from the fact that I was born in an ordinary village family, my mother can’t read or write, my father is a farmer. As a child I used to tend livestock and help in the farm, and when I went to high school I had to carry water and cook for myself. From that to be able to go to a good school and be educated, and to have that contrast in one lifetime is fascinating in a way. But now we have been brought to this position where we have to try to resolve issues of national importance, there are enormous aspirations, there is lots to do but we have very little time and resources. It makes us somewhat anxious, thinking about whether we can do it or not. There are sleepless nights, getting up at three in the morning and not being able to go back to sleep.

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A house for King Gyanendra

As the Maoists widen their lead in the historic Nepal elections, it is clear that the monarchy’s days are numbered and King Gyanendra could be seeking a new home in India. Josy Joseph of DNA has the story

Facing a possible deposition at the hands of Maoists, Nepal’s unpopular king Gyanendra could seek refuge in India. 

And the king’s new home could be a palace in Rajasthan’s Sikar district, hometown of his daughter-in-law Himani — wife of Nepal’s crown prince Paras Bikram Shah.

According to dependable sources crucial to India’s Nepal policy, the Indian government would accept and provide necessary security to the king if he opts for a peaceful life outside the Himalayan kingdom.

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On AFP, the Nepal king’s royal priest sees a bad omen

A religious adviser to Nepal’s King Gyanendra has revealed that the already embattled monarch has been struck by yet more misfortune.

Not only is the king facing the rapid rise of ultra-republican Maoists who want to sack him, he has also been hit by a terrible omen: a 20-metre (66-foot) pole falling off a wooden chariot.

It may sound trivial to some, but Madhab Bhattarai — a Hindu priest, guru and close aide to the king since 2002 — said the tumbling pole was being taken very seriously behind the walls of the royal palace.

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Hello Maoists, bye bye king

Former rebels are poised to take power in the beleagured kingdom of Nepal. But they must put aside a crime-tainted past and deliver reforms, writes Ed Douglas in The Guardian

Jubilant supporters of Nepal’s former rebel Maoists took to the streets yesterday to celebrate what they are already claiming as an election victory in the troubled Himalayan kingdom.

Preliminary results indicate the Maoists are well on the way to becoming the largest party in the country’s first elected constituent assembly, in elections aimed at cementing a peace deal that ended a decade of civil conflict. Their faces smeared with vermilion, several prominent Maoists who won seats, including their leader ‘Prachanda’, staged impromptu victory parades.

more

Previously in AW:

• Nepal’s perilous ascent
• Of monarchs and Maoists
• Monarchy fades from view
• Long journey to mainstream politics

Nepal’s perilous ascent

Manjushree Thapa, the author of “Forget Kathmandu: An Elegy for Democracy,” in The New York Times:

Nepalis will vote today for the first time since a democratic uprising in 2006 that rejected King Gyanendra Shah’s absolute rule and led to a peace deal that ended a 10-year Maoist insurgency. This is not an ordinary election. We will be voting for a 601-member constituent assembly that will draft a new constitution that most likely will abolish the monarchy and will certainly restructure Nepal.

It is compelling, and moving, to live through the remaking of one’s nation.

Still, Katmandu has grown hushed and watchful, and anxious, as Election Day has neared. In previous weeks, the political parties staged rallies, canvassed door to door, and filled the streets with scratchy loudspeaker announcements imploring us to vote.

[Nepal is voting in landmark elections today, March 10]

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Of monarchs and Maoists

Kunda Dixit, editor of the Nepali Times, in The Wall Street Journal:

It’s been over a decade since the Maoists declared war on Nepal’s monarchy, and two years since King Gyanendra abdicated his throne. If all goes well on Thursday, both eras - of Maoists and monarchs - could come to an end, as voters cast their ballots for a 601-member assembly that will draft the country’s new constitution.

This election is critical for Nepal’s future. Since the King abdicated his throne in April 2006, elections had to be postponed twice because political leaders - both Maoists and from the parties - who thought they would lose colluded to have it postponed. The Maoists resigned from the government and rejoined it, and the country seemed to be on the brink of war again. Then, unrest on the plains bordering India threatened an ethnic conflict.

[Photo: King Gyanendra (left) and Prachanda]

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In Nepal, hope and (some) fear on the campaign trail

Nepal goes to the polls on Thursday in an election that could bring the Maoists into mainstream democratic politics and spell the end of the monarchy. Simon Denyer of Reuters has the story.

High in the Himalayas, impoverished, ill-governed Nepal is hoping its first elections in nine years will help cement peace after a decade-long civil war, and allow it finally to join its booming big brother, India, in a new era of prosperity.

Two years after mass street protests brought an end to an ill-fated period of royal rule, the vote will also formally restore democracy to Nepal. “It is not going to solve everything overnight, but it is closure for one chapter in our history and the beginning of a new one,” said Kunda Dixit, editor of the Nepali Times.

Yet the challenges ahead are immense, not least because violence and intimidation have seriously marred the campaign and could undermine the voting day itself.

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Former US President Jimmy Carter is in Kathmandu as an observer. He tells Kantipur Online’s Prateek Pradhan, Narayan Wagle, Damakant Jayshi and Dinesh Wagle that the election will end conflict and establish a republic.

Former US President Jimmy Carter said that the constituent assembly election in Nepal - on Thursday - would end armed conflict and establish a new republic in the country.

“I see this election as doing two things basically: one is ending an armed conflict, and secondly forming a new republic with an end to the dominating royalty,” Carter said during an exclusive interview with the Post and its sister paper, Kantipur here on Tuesday. “We are very excited about the prospects of this country finding peace and also finding democracy based on republic. It is a very wonderful achievement.”

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And on how the Carter Center is observing this historic election click here.

Nepal palace bloodbath princess talks for first time

‘I would never have been happy as queen’ says Nepali princess Devyani Rana. Dean Nelson in The Sunday Times, UK:

The princess whose forbidden love brought the Nepali royal family to its knees has returned to the Himalayan kingdom to canvass villagers in elections this week that will seal the fate of its king.

Devyani Rana is talking to local women to rally the royalist vote for her father’s political party in an election which is certain to abolish the monarchy and transform Nepal into a republic.

She is the woman for whose hand in marriage Crown Prince Dipendra battled with his family; a struggle that broke him mentally and led him to murder his parents in a palace bloodbath in June 2001.

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In Nepal, monarchy fades from view

The royal past is being slowly rubbed away across the onetime Hindu kingdom of Nepal as the country prepares for a vote for a special assembly to rewrite the Constitution. From The New York Times:

Gorkha, Nepal: This is the cradle of the kingdom, from where, more than 250 years ago, a shrewd and ambitious king named Prithvi Narayan Shah set off to conquer faraway lands and create the nation now known as Nepal. Here today stands a gleaming white marble memorial in his honor, except that on the pedestal where his likeness once stood, His Majesty’s name inscribed below, there is now something decidedly less majestic: a pot of pink geraniums.

The king’s statue was toppled by Maoist insurgents last year. They dragged the head through the narrow cobblestone lanes of Gorkha, smashing it until it broke into pieces and singing, “Long Live the Maoists.”

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A Nepal village that’s a kidney bank

In Hindustan Times, Anirban Roy visits a village in Nepal where at least one member from each family has sold their kidneys in India.

Madhav Parajuli, a 33-year-old farmer, said he was taken to Gurgaon near New Delhi to donate his kidney and was cheated on the payment promised to him. He wants the government to compensate him now that the key accused in India’s illegal kidney transplant scam has been arrested.

Dipak Nepal, 23, had a narrow escape. “They took me to Delhi with the promise to pay 1.5 lakhs (Nepali rupees). But when they started bargaining with me saying they will only pay 45,000 rupees, I ran away.”

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In Nepal, the Maoists’ long journey to mainstream politics

In Outlook, Manoj Dahal interviews Prachanda, chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist.

In December 2007, Outlook featured a story on Prachanda (The Rado Maoist), chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist, on the remarkable change in his lifestyle after he emerged from the bush to join mainstream politics. The story said he sports an expensive Rado watch, travels in an airconditioned Pajero, loves his daily two pegs of Johnnie Walker whisky, and has been accused of promoting his children in the party hierarchy. On a cold January morning this year, the Maoist supremo, dressed in a trendy tracksuit, met Outlook’s Manoj Dahal and sportingly fielded questions on his new lifestyle, the problems revolutionary parties encounter in maintaining their ideological purity and India’s role in Nepal.

Excerpts:

A sojourn to Muktinath

Our thanks to Himal Southasian’s Kanak Mani Dixit for pointing out an utterly delightful blog called phalano.com. This article on Muktinath by Rishi Amatya and Bhushan Timla is from there.

Muktinath, located within the famous Annapurna Circuit Areas, is one of the most famous and respected shrines in the country. The beautiful aspect of the shrine is that followers of both Hinduism and Buddhism regard the shrine with utmost respect. Pilgrims come to pay their homage to the god all throughout the year.

With the harsh and arid landscape of the path that leads to the temple, the trek was previously limited to serious trekkers. However, a newly construed road (It’s slated to complete later this year) is intending to change all that.

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When Nepal’s PM manufactured fake Indian currency

Yubaraj Ghimire in The Indian Express

Nepal’s Prime Minister G P Koirala was involved in manufacturing counterfeit Indian currency notes when he was in political exile in India in the early 1970s. This startling disclosure has been made by Koirala himself in a weekly TV interview series on his past political activities.

Appearing on Kantipur Television, Koirala, in another interview, claimed that R N Kao, then chief of India’s external intelligence agency RAW, had given him the green signal to hijack a Nepal Airlines plane with the promise that nothing would be done to him. Koirala led a team of Nepali Congress leaders who hijacked a Nepal Airlines flight from Biratnagar to Kathmandu in June 1973 and took away four million rupees meant for the Rashtra Bank.

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