Rural. Artisanal. Pristine.

Two of those of those three words apply to the cheese factories we visited Wednesday.

Located in Bakhor, a tiny village north of Ilam, they are part of a growing industry in Nepal. Western styles of cheese are still new here but they’ve begun catching on with restaurants and consumers in Kathmandu.

In Bakhor, which is 10 miles away from Ilam but more than an hour’s drive along a winding road, several businesses have responded by opening “cheese factories” — actually small facilities like the one you see here with the green sign.

The factories we saw were — how shall I phrase this? — less obsessed with cleanliness than in, say, Wisconsin or Switzerland.

Each produces a single variety of cheese. There’s no Camembert, Fontina or mozzarella, just “cheese.” Artisans in other parts of Nepal do produce fine cheeses, some made from yak milk, but not here.

Still, we were impressed by what we saw: wheels of cheese and strings of churpi, a traditional local cheese so hard that two Nepali entrepreneurs in the United States now market it as dog treats, as featured on “Shark Tank.”

I bought a string of churpi from Kusum Rai, the girl you see here, and plan to bring it home for our dog, Bailey, and perhaps for some other lucky dogs.

You can see strings of churpi drying above Champa’s head.

Let me close with a personal message to my brother-in-law Joel, a cheese enthusiast who is joining us in Nepal along with several other members of our family later this month. Joel, we’re sorry you couldn’t join us today for the tour. On the other hand, since we know you love cheese so much, perhaps it’s just as well.

Finally, a travel note: We leave Ilam tomorrow for Samalbung, a much smaller town located on Nepal’s eastern border with India. I’m not sure about the wifi situation there. As with everything in Nepal, we’ll see what happens.

We have been embraced by Champa’s family since the moment we arrived in Ilam, her home town in Nepal. In fact, the welcome began even sooner, at the airport south of here, where Champa’s brother, Raju, was waiting to greet us with ceremonial katas, or prayer shawls. That’s him in the blue shirt along with Khagendra, Champa’s cousin and neighbor, who took the same flight. We then traveled by jeep from the airport to Ilam.

Let me introduce you to some of the family. Here’s Champa eating lunch with Raju and his wife, Sanjaya, who has been cooking great meals and generally spoiling us without pause. (My former colleagues in Duke’s Office of News and Communications may recognize the blue ONC “Rapid Response” water bottle, which has joined us on the trip.) You can see in the next photo some of the many delicacies that have awaited us in Sanjaya’s kitchen.

Just down the street are several other relatives. Champa is sitting here between Bal Kumari (in the purple) and Chandra Kumari (on the right), two of her cousins. Chandra Kumari was a student in one of my English classes when I taught in the Peace Corps here. To the left is Bindu, who traveled with us here along with her husband, Shankar. We stayed with the two of them in Kathmandu.

While in Kathmandu, we also met Manis, one of the two sons of Raju and Sanjaya, who visited us with his wife Ranju and their daughter, Romisha, all shown here.

On Monday evening, we ate a fabulous dinner with one of Champa’s cousins, Sharda Shrestha, and her husband Madhav. Here’s the two of them along with their son, Pukar, and his wife and daughter.

It’s been great fun to watch Champa walk down a path or through the marketplace, and see people suddenly recognize her. They call out with delight to welcome her home and ask how she’s doing. Needless to say, they also look at me with interest. (You can almost see them thinking: So that must be her American husband.) When I join the conversation in Nepali, they inevitably break into big smiles.

We’ll stay in Ilam until Friday, when we’ll travel to Samalbung, a village located on Nepal’s eastern border with India. We’ll meet up there with Shankar, Bindu and other members of the family, spending a few days before returning to Kathmandu.

Let the reunions continue!

SInce Friday, we have been in Ilam, Champa’s home town in eastern Nepal. It’s where I was initially posted as a Peace Corps Volunteer, at the school where Champa was among the other teachers.

If you think Durham and some other American cities have changed a lot in the past few years, you should see what’s happened here. Ilam has grown from a sleepy district center into a bustling town with hotels, restaurants, cell phone stores, computer centers, bakeries, travel agencies and schools. There are two newspapers, a radio station and countless satellite television dishes offering everything from local soap operas to American movies.

Located just across the border from India’s Darjeeling, Ilam is Nepal’s tea-growing center. Its tea gardens have expanded greatly yet remain as picturesque as ever. You can now take a pleasant stroll through the main gardens to a new observation tower where for 100 rupees — just under one U.S. dollar — you get a great view of the surrounding area. Next door is a coffee shop offering hot beverages, spicy snacks and free wifi.

When I first moved to Ilam in 1977, I lived in two rooms on the first floor of the house shown here. A new family now owns the house but was very welcoming and let me peek inside.

My school headmaster moved me after a few months to the building shown here, where my room was on the second floor, behind the current sign. It was miserable. Below me, another tenant cooked every night on an indoor wood stove. Smoke rose through the floorboards, filling my room and exacerbating the asthma I’d developed during training. I was unable to get the situation resolved and, before long, got pneumonia and was medically evacuated to the United States. I was able to return to Nepal only by agreeing to move to a new post near Kathmandu. Just seeing the building again brought back all of those bad memories.

They were far outweighed, though, by Ilam’s many attractions. It’s a place that deserves far more attention from foreign visitors, who could spend a couple of pleasant days in a beautiful location and stay in modern hotels at bargain prices. The market days, on Thursdays and Sundays, are especially photogenic, but there are also great local hikes, temples and places to visit.

You can fly in less than an hour from Kathmandu to Bhadrapur, south of here, and then drive to Ilam in less than four hours in a modern vehicle on a good road, for less than it probably costs you to take a taxi from your local airport to your house.

Put it on your list, folks: Ilam, Nepal. As Champa notes in her shamelessly loyal new T-shirt, it’s a town you can quickly learn to love.

Are you planning to attend the documentary film festival this coming spring?

Durham’s Full Frame festival promises to be better than ever, but I’m referring to the 9th Nepal International Indigenous Film Festival, which opens in Kathmandu on March 3.

Last year, about 20,000 people gathered for four days along Kathmandu’s Exhibition Road to watch 48 films from 18 countries. Selected from more than 100 entries, the films ranged from full-length features to short documentaries, animations and music videos. All  depicted indigenous communities; 12 were produced here in Nepal.

The festival is part of a larger effort to help filmmakers from overlooked ethnic groups share their stories. On Tuesday, I spent several hours with some of them.

Nabin Subba, the group’s leader, shown here, produced and directed Numafung, a feature film screened at several international festivals. A decade ago, he and several friends established the Indigenous Film Archive (IFA), a nonprofit organization that provides training, rents equipment and organizes events where young filmmakers can interact. They’ve reached out especially to women filmmakers, whose recent short films explore topics such as divorce in the Gurung community or how Limbu girls learn weaving.

You have to climb four flights of stairs to reach IFA’s small office, where you remove your shoes at the door and then hope the electricity stays on. Sanjog Laaphaa Magar, shown here at one of the editing computers, helps run the office and manage the annual festival. He also organizes a growing library of local and international films.

As in our own country, most Nepalis prefer big-budget films with lots of action and melodrama. Working on a shoestring with a less popular format among marginalized groups in one of the world’s poorest countries, Nabin and Sanjog say it’s a struggle to keep IFA going and still produce their own work. Yet they push forward, as with a new project that will show how indigenous groups suffered the most casualties in the recent earthquake yet received relatively little of the subsequent international aid.

They are eager to expand their ties with documentary filmmakers in the United States and other parts of the world. If Full Frame, the Center for Documentary Studies, or others with appropriate expertise could come to Nepal to provide free workshops, for instance, they’d welcome the assistance.

If anyone reading this is interested, please contact me offline (djarmul@gmail.com) or Nabin (nabinsubba@hotmail.com; he speaks excellent English) to follow up, or forward this story to someone you know. These folks are doing amazing work and they need some help.

If your idea of adventurous shopping involves a local mall, you need to broaden your horizons and come to Kathmandu.

With the exception of small neighborhood shops that resemble bodegas, almost all of the shops here in Nepal’s capital specialize in jewelry, kitchen goods or something else. They’re conveniently bunched together, with spice shops here, shoes there and books around the corner.

Merchants display their goods not only in shops, but outside of temples and on corners. Narrow streets lead to even narrower alleys lined with bangles, televisions, office supplies and beads. Motorcycles and rickshaws squeeze by. Horns blare. Fumes fill the air.

Some shops have curious specialties, like nose pins or unlocking iPhones. Others proudly display names such as “Swastik Plaza.” 

On Monday, Champa and I joined our niece-in-law, Bindu, on a shopping trip that began on New Road and wound through Indra Chowk and other bazaars. We stopped at a jewelry store to repair a ring, a kitchen store to buy metal plates and a hat store for a Nike cap. We climbed two flights up an insanely narrow staircase to an attic stuffed with fabric. While there, I kept thinking to myself, “Please, don’t let there be another earthquake now.”

Along the way, we visited a temple and snacked on momos, samosas and cold drinks. Then we drove across town to one of Kathmandu’s few department stores, Bhat-Bateni, where Bindu bought some kitchen appliances and we bought decorative shopping bags made from rice paper. Finally, we drove to visit Kumar, a tailor who works near our nephew’s office, to pick up a shirt I’d ordered two days earlier — $14.50, custom-made.

By the time we reached home, after 7 p.m., the electricity was already cut off, so we turned on a battery lamp and collapsed on sofas, our purchases strewn around us, waiting to be unpacked the next morning. Our day was a success. We’d shopped ’til we dropped.

What’s in your wallet?

Mine is now filled with Nepalese rupees — thousands of rupees! Since the exchange rate is about 105 rupees for one U.S. dollar, however, that’s less impressive than it may sound. Back when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the late 1970s, the exchange rate was 12 rupees per dollar. Now, exchanging dollars can mean receiving a stack of money as thick as a brick.

The appearance of Nepal’s currency has changed, too. No longer does it feature the king’s portrait.  Since the royal family was removed from power, the money highlights Nepal’s yaks, rhinos, elephants, tigers and other animals, and, of course, Mount Everest. The coins have evolved as well.

My wallet also holds my bank debit card, which I used to obtain rupees at a local ATM in less than two minutes, a transaction that would have been unimaginable a few years ago. In addition, I have a Visa card that enables me to make foreign purchases without an extra fee, although credit cards remain less common here than back home.

My pants pockets contain other insights into Nepal. I carry tissues in case I need to wipe my nose or other parts of my body. Similarly, I have a small medicine bottle that contains diarrhea medicine, if needed, along with Tylenol and vitamins.

A small flashlight is invaluable when electricity disappears, as it does regularly due to planned “load shedding” across Kathmandu’s neighborhoods.

And since air pollution here is even worse than when I visited five years ago and got a throat infection just from breathing, I carry a mask and asthma inhaler. Many Nepalis now wear masks as well. (Fortunately, I’ve barely needed the inhaler so far.)

Not surprisingly, I’ve brought jeans with enough space to accommodate everything I’m carrying. However, we’ve been eating so well that I may need to start spending those rupees faster to give myself more room.

Have you ever heard of Falgunanda? His name is all but unknown to Westerners, even those who have visited Nepal. For that matter, many Nepalis have never heard of him, either. But if you are a member of one of the traditional Kirati ethnic groups of eastern Nepal — the Limbus, Rais and others — there’s a good chance you worship in front of his photo.

Champa is a Limbu, from the Dewan clan, so we’ve known for several years of the growing interest among Kiratis in this religious leader, born in 1885, who revived traditional Kirati cultural practices and challenged Nepal’s dominant Hinduism. Today, many Limbus and others have embraced Falgunanda, for both religious reasons and to assert their ethnic identity. It’s part of a movement among Nepal’s indigenous peoples to reclaim their history and demand a fairer share of the country’s resources. Our nephew, Shankar Limbu, with whom we are staying, has been a leader of this effort and has spoken about it at the United Nations and other venues.

On Friday, we hiked with Shankar to Kirat Manghim, a traditional Kirati temple in Sankha Devi Village on the outskirts of the Kathmandu Valley. Along the way, we passed some of the countless Hindu temples, like the white one shown here, which are so omnipresent in Nepal. Buddhist temples are also common, and there are a growing number of mosques and churches as well. However, here in the valley there are few temples especially for Limbus such as Champa and Shankar.

Visiting this one was worth the largely uphill walk of nearly two hours in late-summer heat. The two main structures and prayer flags, shown above, were modest in size and decoration. But they provided a peaceful oasis, and the friendly caretakers were quick to offer chairs and lemongrass tea to help us recover from our ascent.

The main temple features bells and a drum on the outside and an altar and photo of Falgunanda on the inside. We removed our hiking shoes before entering, made an offering and then received tikas on our foreheads as we exited. We also signed the guest registry, with my own signature, in English, now standing out among pages of Nepali signatures. (Yes, I know how to write my name in Nepali, but it was fun to highlight my status as one of the few Westerners to ever visit.)

Nepal’s indigenous people’s movement resembles similar campaigns in other parts of the world, from Indian peoples in Latin America to tribal groups in East Asia. One can also make interesting comparisons with our own country. It’s an important effort, long overdue, and we’re proud of Shankar and his colleagues for what they are doing. We think Falgunanda would be proud, too.

You don’t have to look hard to find signs of the terrible earthquake that rocked Nepal on April 25, claiming more than 9,000 lives and injuring more than 23,000 other people. Both of these buildings in the Lubhu neighborhood of the Kathmandu Valley, where we hiked on Friday afternoon, suffered devastating damage and remain in rubble. People died here.

Even more people died in the nearby city of Bhaktapur, which shares the traditional brick architecture that proved so unstable in the quake. Bhaktapur is a World Heritage site and beloved tourist destination, with elegant temples and sculpted windows, but much of it was destroyed. Likewise, many towns and villages even closer to the epicenter are still struggling to rebuild, their situation worsened by Nepal’s ongoing political dysfunction.

What’s striking for a visitor arriving five months after the disaster, though, is how the Kathmandu Valley simultaneously continues to boom and expand. I lived here for more than a year in the late 1970s and remember bicycling along idyllic fields and paths in neighborhoods now crammed with houses, shops, vehicles and pollution. The photo shows what has become a common sight: green fields being replaced by cement homes. Indeed, Champa and I are staying in a house that didn’t exist a few years ago, one of many transforming the local landscape. These newer structures generally fared better in the earthquake, although many did suffer some damage.

On Thursday afternoon, we walked to a modern shopping complex that sells everything from ready-made Indian food to Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, along with Western fashions, appliances and whiskey. I rode up several escalators to buy a memory stick for my laptop — much cheaper than at Best Buy, thanks — and passed a display for luxury condominiums. (Let me pause: Luxury condominiums in Kathmandu. Wow.) Just down the road, these construction vehicles were finishing up another day’s work on a bridge.

I’m reluctant to draw any conclusions about the earthquake until we’ve visited other parts of the country and talked with more people. Despite the enormous destruction and human toll, however, it does seem the Kathmandu Valley is continuing to build and grow, for better or worse, regardless of what’s happening elsewhere.

We’ll be visiting some of those other places soon. But first, stay tuned for a visit to a fascinating temple rarely seen by Westerners. If you have any reactions to what I’m posting, I encourage you to share your thoughts here.

A gunman just shot up a school in Oregon, Hurricane Joaquin is bearing down on the East Coast and Donald Trump is still running for president, but you wouldn’t know any of that here in Kathmandu. The big news since we arrived three days ago has been India’s blockade of gasoline supplies into Nepal.

This gas station and others are usually busy with customers. Since Thursday, however, the Nepalese government has banned petrol sales to private vehicles, accelerating a local sense of crisis. A day earlier, we passed hundreds of motorcyclists waiting in a line stretching across several city blocks. Cars waited in similar lines, often to no avail.

India is acting in support of Nepalis of Indian descent and others who have been protesting what they consider unfair representation in the country’s new constitution, which the major political parties recently adopted after years of dispute. Since almost all of Nepal’s fuel passes through India, the blockade was immediately disruptive, including to our own travel plans. As I write this, there are tentative reports of a resolution. We’ll see what happens.

Personally, I’ve been more distracted by the simple pleasures of Nepal, which have surrounded us since we arrived. Champa and I went out to dinner with our nephew and his wife, for instance, and enjoyed local delicacies such as these delicious momos, or dumplings. The bill for the four of us, with drinks, was less than $13. As we took a long walk on Friday afternoon, far from the tourist areas, we passed children playing next to temples, women working in lush wheat fields, ducks waddling across the street and students with ties and backpacks returning home from school.

I’ve also been charmed by the signs on Nepal’s local shops, which continue to use English in unexpected ways. (“Fooding and lodging” remains a standard.) The sign for this tattoo parlor appeals to “ladies and gents.” Nearby was a shop selling Mountain Dew, which is manufactured locally and called “Dew” by everyone. We also passed this Hindu swastika on someone’s house — not unusual in Nepal, but still a reminder that we’re no longer home.

We’ve seen lots of evidence of the April earthquake, which will be the subject of my next post. If you have reactions or comments, please share them here!

This image has been on my mind lately, as we prepare to hit the road again for our next big adventure.

On Thursday, we’re leaving Durham for a quick visit to Maryland, a big family party in Philadelphia and then off to Nepal for nearly two months.

That’s why I’m thinking about the photo. If you think it shows a Nepali home devastated by this past spring’s earthquake — well, good guess, but wrong. It’s actually a home we saw in New Orleans during our cross-country drive this summer. We looked beyond Bourbon Street and other tourist areas to see how the Lower Ninth Ward and other poorer neighborhoods were faring nearly a decade after Hurricane Katrina. Although we saw too many homes like the one at the top, we also saw lots of newer homes like these, built by the Make It Right Foundation — Brad Pitt’s organization — and by individual homeowners.

Shorty after we returned to Durham, the airwaves were filled with retrospective stories about “New Orleans, Ten Years Later.” They showed some of the same neighborhoods we had just seen ourselves. To be sure, our visit to New Orleans was brief and superficial, but still we felt a connection to what was on our screen. As I wrote during our trip, we also came face to face with California’s drought, Western wildfires, the U.S. border area with Mexico and other issues that no longer seemed so distant. Simultaneously, we explored America’s incredible beauty, history and diversity. On the same day we took the photos in the Lower Ninth Ward, for instance, we had a great time strolling across town along the Mississippi River, shown here. In general, we were filled with new experiences and insights every day.

After driving 11,000 miles and visiting 31 states over seven weeks, we were pretty tired when we got home. Since then, we’ve been resting up, seeing family and getting ready for Adventure #2, in the Himalayas.

We didn’t know before we left in July whether we would find these extended trips as invigorating as we expected. We’d always loved to travel but still … that’s a lot of miles, and we were so busy with everything that we barely knew what else was happening in the world. It turned out we loved it even more than we hoped.

Now we leave on an even more challenging journey, this time to the country where we started our life together. We expect to spend some time in Kathmandu, then travel to Champa’s home town of Ilam, in eastern Nepal. Soon after we return to Kathmandu, we’ll welcome several members of our U.S. family, for a group trip and a meet-up of the two clans.

Sorry, but we weren’t able to get a visa for G, the Blue Devil gnome, who will be staying home this time. However, I do expect to post on this blog, depending on the availability of electricity and an Internet connection, and hope some of you will find the journey interesting. Fingers crossed. Off we go again. Until we reach the other side of the world: Namaste for now.