Northeastern Nepal Research Articles

An investigation into the potential for upward range expansion in high-montane species on the roof of the world.

Climate warming is occurring in high-mountain areas at a faster rate than the global average. To escape the increasing temperatures, alpine species may shift in distribution upwards, threatening cold-adapted nival plant specialists. However, little is known about the success of seedling emergence and establishment at high altitudes outside the current range, particularly in the highest mountain areas of the Himalayas. We selected four native alpine species occurring around 4000 m a.s.l. and sowed seeds at the natural growing site (GS), at a high elevation site (HS; 5000 m a.s.l.) and at high elevation with soil from the growing site (HS-S) in the Khumbu Valley, north-eastern Nepal. We monitored seedling emergence and establishment for two consecutive years. Seedling emergence and establishment varied between species. Emergence was similar between GS and HS and improved at HS-S. Establishment was low at high elevations with all but one species having high mortality after winter. Seedling emergence of low elevation plants is possible at high elevations in the Everest region, indicating species may be able to shift their distribution range upwards. However, successful establishment may be limited by the soil and high winter mortality at high elevations, although not in all species. Climate warming will potentially lead to upward migration of some Himalayan plant species, leading to altered community composition in high-mountain areas.

Modelling rock glacier ice content based on InSAR-derived velocity, Khumbu and Lhotse valleys, Nepal

Abstract. Active rock glaciers are viscous flow features embodying ice-rich permafrost and other ice masses. They contain significant amounts of ground ice and serve as potential freshwater reservoirs as mountain glaciers melt in response to climate warming. However, current knowledge about ice content in rock glaciers has been acquired mainly from in situ investigations in limited study areas, which hinders a comprehensive understanding of ice storage in rock glaciers situated in remote mountains over local to regional scales. This study proposes a novel approach for assessing the hydrological value of rock glaciers in a more quantitative way and presents exploratory results focusing on a small region. We develop an empirical rheological model to infer ice content of rock glaciers using readily available input data, including rock glacier planar shape, surface slope angle, active layer thickness, and surface velocity. The model is calibrated and validated using observational data from the Chilean Andes and the Swiss Alps. We apply the model to five rock glaciers in the Khumbu and Lhotse valleys, northeastern Nepal. The velocity constraints applied to the model are derived from interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) measurements. The volume of rock glacier is estimated based on an existing scaling approach. The inferred volumetric ice fraction in the Khumbu and Lhotse valleys ranges from 70 ± 8 % to 74 ± 8 %, and the water volume equivalents lie between 1.4 ± 0.2 and 5.9±0.6×106 m3 for the coherently moving parts of individual rock glaciers. Due to the accessibility of the model inputs, our approach is applicable to permafrost regions where observational data are lacking, which is valuable for estimating the water storage potential of rock glaciers in remote areas.

Swertia chirayita in Nepal Himalayas: Cultivation and Cross Border Trade to China

For ethnic inhabitants in the rural areas, medicinal plants are not only the cultural, sacred medicinal ingredients of traditional medicine, part of traditional belief and biodiversity but also an important cash crop to support their livelihood. With the commercialization of traditional medicine and medicinal plant-based industries worldwide, Nepalese medicinal plants are in high demand. This photo essay presents the various steps from the cultivation to the cross-border trade of Swertia chirayita (Roxb.) H. Karst., a traditional valuable medicinal plant, and a beautiful landscape of Nepal-China border. The essay contains fourteen photographs each described with captions in detail with the information collected during field work. The ethnographic study on cross border trade of medicinal plants was conducted in 2020 at Bhotkhola routes in the northeastern Nepal. Bhotkhola-Tibet border control in 2008 has politically ruptured the original link of traditional exchange among people, goods, and ideas by displacing the community from its everyday borderlands. However, the cross border trade is performed by traditional networks of Bhotiya communities such as rural ethnic inhabitants, farmers, small budget dealers, and traditional practitioners through formal and informal supply chains. The government authorities from both the countries are responsible for regulating, monitoring, and permitting medicinal plants supply from harvesters to cross-border traders.

Death of a headman or the shaman’s logic

Standing stones, Mewa valley Standing stone in Bhote country (left); graves and standing stones in Thanku (right) Photos Philippe Sagant, 1970; sources: LESC_FPS_7.1.12 et LESC_FPS_7.1.4 The events that follow occurred in the sixties, in northeastern Nepal among the Tibeto-Burmese speaking Yakthumba, or Limbu as the Nepali call them. Two headmen, brothers, were locked in a struggle for power. The first, and eldest, had temporarily given up on local action. He was looking to a national positi...

Writing about power figures

“In the last analysis, whether consciously or no, it is always by borrowing from our daily experiences and by shading them, where necessary, with new tints that we derive the elements which help us to restore the past.”Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft. It is 1970. Philippe Sagant is walking towards the Tibetan Tokpe valley in northeastern Nepal with Motta and Tarang, two Limbu friends from the village of Libang, where he has been conducting a study since 1966. fig. 1 – “The fine team” Right...

Ocular morbidity among porters at high altitudes.

High altitude, often characterized by settings over 2400m, can be detrimental to the human body and pose a significant risk to ocular health. Reports concerning various ocular morbidities occurring as a consequence of high altitude are limited in the current literature. This study was aimed at evaluating the ocular health of porters working at high altitudesof Himalayas in Nepal. A mobile eye clinic was set up in Ghat and patient data were collected from its out- patient unit by a team of seven optometrists which was run for five days. Ghat is a small village in north-eastern Nepal, located at 2860 m altitude. Travellers walking through the trekking route were invited to get their eyes checked at the clinic. Comprehensive ocular examinations were performed, including visual acuities, objective and subjective refraction, anterior and posterior segment evaluations, and intraocular pressure measurements; blood pressure and blood glucose levels were also measured as required. Ocular therapeutics, prescription glasses, sunglasses and ocular health referrals were provided free of cost as necessary. A total of 1890 people visited the eye clinic, among which 57.4% (n=1084) were porters. Almost half of the porters had an ocular morbidity. Correctable refractive error was most prevalent, with other ocular health-related complications, including dry eye disease, infectious disorders, glaucoma and cataract. Proper provision of regular and effective eye care services should be made more available for those residing at these high altitudes in Nepal.

Lateral extrusion, underplating, and out-of-sequence thrusting within the Himalayan metamorphic core, Kanchenjunga, Nepal

Integrated pseudosection modeling and monazite petrochronology of paragneiss from the Kanchenjunga region of northeastern Nepal reveal the presence of cryptic tectonometamorphic discontinuities within the Himalayan metamorphic core. These new data outline a series of thrust-sense structures that juxtapose rocks that generally record a protracted history of early Eocene to latest Oligocene–early Miocene (ca. 41–23 Ma) prograde metamorphism and lateral extrusion against others that typically record short prograde (between 2 and 7 m.y.) and retrograde (between 3 and 6 m.y.) histories variably spanning the middle Oligocene to the middle Miocene (ca. 31–12 Ma). Retrograde metamorphism in the hanging wall of the thrust faults is typically coeval with prograde metamorphism in the footwall, indicating that overthrusting/underthrusting accommodated crustal shortening and drove metamorphic processes. The structures and juxtaposed panels were cut by early Miocene (ca. 20–18 Ma) out-of-sequence thrusting coincident with the previously mapped High Himal thrust. The resulting kinematic model for the evolution of the Himalayan metamorphic core in the Kanchenjunga area demonstrates that the Himalayan metamorphic core was dominated by underplating from at least the Oligocene through to present, and that the internal structure of the exhumed metamorphic core is significantly more complex than has been documented previously.

Songs of Transformation: Vernacular Josmanī Literature and the Yoga of Cosmic Awareness

Josmani, the Sant tradition found in northeastern Nepal and among the Nepali-speaking community in Assam, India has a documented history going back over two hundred years.1 Although other Sant traditions of the Indian subcontinent have received voluminous attention, the Josmani tradition has not been explored within the framework of contemporary scholarship. This article examines the private and public domains of Josmanls, their Yoga practice, and their social life within the context of their worldview. The approach adopted here is comparative and historical with a focus on other contemporaneous Hindu traditions. Besides Josmanls, several other Sant traditions flourished during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Nepal.2 This study is therefore not exhaustive; it explores the role of the syncretic traditions prevalent in the northeastern region of the subcontinent. There can be no disagreement about the identification of the Josmani as a Sant tradition emerging from the same pan-Indian spirit that infused the Alvârs and Nayanars, Kablr and Nanak, and the later Sants of northern India.3 Josmanis identify themselves as Sants (see Sharma 1963: 239, 272, 283, 318-19, 346) and distinguish themselves from other vernacular traditions like the Nath Jogis.4 The common constituents of this tradition are the same as those of the medieval Sants of India. Like other Sants, Josmanis are syncretistic, although the nature of syncretism differs in

Assessing the Prospects for Community-Based Wildlife Management: The Himalayan Musk Deer (Moschos chrysogaster) in Nepal

Community-based wildlife management has been the subject of debate in recent years. We argue for more ex ante assessments of community-based wildlife management to distinguish good prospects from poor ones. We develop a conceptual framework, the Collective Resource Management framework, to carry out such evaluations and apply it to a case study community in northeastern Nepal that involves live capture and extraction of musk from the endangered Himalayan musk deer (Moschos chrysogaster). We find that the case study presents a number of favorable conditions conducive to community-based wildlife management but with several serious limitations. For example, the Nepali government must be willing to allow this activity on a legal basis, because wildlife exploitation has not been allowed within national parks historically; however, there are signs this may be changing. More importantly, the presence of a strong tourism industry in the case study community makes alternative economic activities like musk extraction less attractive, in comparison to poorer regions of Nepal where there is no tourism. The Collective Resource Management evaluation approach shows promise as a structured method to check the viability of community-based wildlife management projects before they are initiated.

Three terrane-defining thrusts of the Kumaun Himalaya: controversies on position and nomenclature

Three of the five thrust fault systems defining the boundaries of four lithotectonic terranes of the Himalaya and involved in controversies related to their positions and nomenclature, are the objects of discussion in this paper. Youngest of the five terrane-defining faults, the Himalayan Frontal Fault (HFF) is a series of reverse faults that demarcates the boundary of the Siwalik front of the Himalayan province with the alluvial expanse of the Indo-Gangetic Plains. Over large tracts, it is either concealed under younger sediments or has as yet not reached the ground surface and is therefore a blind fault. The nature of this frontal fault varies along its length. Where the hidden ridges of the Indo-Gangetic basement impinge the Himalaya, the mountain front is ruptured and the HFF is repeatedly reactivated. In the sectors intervening these ridges, it is not expressed on the surface, but the ground of the adjoining Indo-Gangetic Plain is sinking, the rivers are shifting their courses and large tracts of land are waterlogged and characterized by The Vaikrita Thrust is the plane that marks pronounced metamorphic break and abrupt change in style and orientation of structures within the succession of crystalline rocks that build the bulk of the snowy ranges in the Kumaun Himalaya. Not only is there a jump of pressure of the order of 4 kb and a temperature rise of >200 oC, but also is there a conspicuous change of neodymium isotope value across the tectonic plane that separates the low-grade metarnorphics in the lower part from the high-grade metamorphic rocks of the upper part of the Great Himalayan succession. The Vaikrita Thrust is therefore recognised as the Main Central Thrust (MCT). While the basal low-grade metamorphic assemblage comprises 1900±100 Ma old highly tectonised porphyritic granite characterised by low initial strontium isotope ratio, the upper high -grade metamorphic group is intruded by 20±1 Ma old anatectic granites characterised by garnet, kyanite, sillimanite and cordierite, and a high but variable value of strontium isotope ratio. Moreover, the anatectic Lower Miocene granites are singularly absent in the succession of the Lesser Himalayan nappes. Probably it is this thrust that has flexed downwards the plane of decoupling and displacement between the under thrusting Indian plate and the overlying Himalayan mass.
 The terrane-defining fault between the high-grade metamorphics with granitic rocks of the Himadri (i.e., Great Himalaya) and the Tethyan sedimentary pile was recognised as the Malari Thrust Fault in the northern Kumaun Himalaya in the early seventies, as the South Tibetan Detachment System in southern Tibet adjoining north-eastern Nepal in the early eighties and as the Zanskar Shear Zone in north-western Himachal Pradesh in the late eighties. Not only is there an abrupt change in the metamorphic grade across the tectonic plane, but also an attenuation and wholesale elimination of some lithostratigraphic formations of the hanging wall besides the difference in the style of deformation. Exhibiting predominant dip-slip movement in the central sector of the Himalayan arc, the Trans-Himadri Fault (T-HF) was formed as a consequence of the Tethyan sedimentary cover detaching from its rigid foundation of the basement complex that was squeezed up following blocking or slowing down of tectonic movements related to India-Asia convergence. The sedimentary cover lagging behind the thrust­ up basement complex slid down and toppled over northward and gave rise to back-folds and back-thrusts. In Kashmir, western Himachal Pradesh, central Nepal and north-western Bhutan, in sharp contrast, there was very strong compression, so that the Tethyan sedimentary rocks-along with a slice of the low-grade metamorphic basement in the hanging wall advanced southwards across the Himadri and were emplaced as nappes and klippen south of the Main Central Thrust. The T-HF movement occurred approximately around 20.9 Ma, although the movement had started quite earlier in some places. Quaternary reactivation resulted in river ponding and development of huge lakes such as the Garbyang palaeolake in the Kali valley and the ~ 40,000 year-old Goting palaeolake in the Western Dhauli Valley.

Fieldwork as Commitment

********** To me, fieldwork is the heart of geography. I consider it the most magical, essential, and challenging part of being a geographer. Fieldwork is the ultimate mode of geographical exploration. It renews and deepens our direct experience of the planet and its diversity of lands, life, and cultures, immeasurably enriching the understanding of the world that is geography's core pursuit and responsibility. Fieldwork takes us beyond current frontiers of knowledge and preconception, enabling firsthand discoveries that no amount of theorizing or study of preexisting accounts or maps could ever reveal. Without fieldwork, geography is secondhand reporting and armchair analysis, losing much of its involvement with the world, its original insight, its authority, its contributions for addressing local and global issues, and its reason for being. This essay examines the rewards and responsibilities of long-term fieldwork with indigenous peoples that involves many rounds of returning to communities over many years. Such fieldwork is based on a continuing commitment to people and places. It is built on relationships and reciprocity, requiring a dedication to research that is as relevant to indigenous peoples' concerns as to academic ones. It demands time, sensitivity, and an involvement as much emotional as intellectual. In return, it makes possible research that differs fundamentally from short-term studies in depth and breadth of inquiry. The best fieldwork reflects a level of local knowledge, indigenous insight, and regional understanding attainable only through long relationships with a particular people and particular places. With this come new obligations and responsibilities that may reshape the direction of your career and the goals of your research. FIELDWORK AS A WAY OF LIFE My fieldwork revolves around indigenous communities and homelands. A quarter of my life over two decades has been spent in the Nepal Himalaya. Much of that work has focused on the Sherpa-inhabited areas of northeastern Nepal, including five years in the Khumbu Sherpa villages within Sagarmatha (Mount Everest) National Park and in the many Sherpa settlements of the lower-altitude Pharak and Katuthanga regions just to the south (Stevens 1991, 1993a, 1993b, 1997, n.d.). I have worked in forty-five Sherpa villages in these three settlement areas (Figure 1). For twenty years I have returned annually for fieldwork on cultural ecology, political ecology, environmental history, conservation geography, and tourism studies. This work involves wide-ranging interviews, observations, household surveys, and mapping of many facets of local life, including: indigenous geographical, environmental, and agropastoral knowledge; agricultural and pastoral practices and forest use; community-based natural resource management and co nservation; interregional and trans-Himalayan trade; settlement, economic, environmental, landscape, and cultural history and recent change; tourism development and impacts; and the many issues created by the establishment and management of inhabited national parks and protected areas in indigenous homelands. In part, it was the opportunity to conduct such fieldwork that brought me to geography, and it has become the main focus of my time and work. For me, nothing can compare with the rewards of fieldwork--the intellectual excitement of firsthand discovery and of gaining increasingly deep local knowledge and regional understanding, the satisfactions and meaning of living and working for extended periods in remote and wild country and in magnificent places, the chance to learn from people whose ways of life and attitudes toward living you admire, the opportunity to experience rhythms of everyday life and community that are impossible to find at home in twenty-first-century America, and the way in which the work itself both demands and evokes alertness, resourcefulness, adaptability, self-reliance, judgment, compassion, and original thought and insight. …

Mapping Power: Disputing Claims to Kipat Lands in Northeastern Nepal

Through a close reading of a land dispute in northeastern Nepal, I examine broader shifts in local‐national political relations as Nepal is transformed from a kingdom to a nation‐state. In addition to documenting the shift from a customary to a private system of tenure, this case raises broader questions about the relationship between identity, politics, and place, and the impact of globalization on these relations. [land tenure, identity and place, narrative, national/local relations, globalization, Himalaya]

Are traditional healers the solution to the failures of primary health care in rural Nepal?

In the last two decades the great expansion of Primary Health Care (PHC) in the rural areas of developing countries has not been matched by significant improvements in health standards. Nepal is no exception. This study explores the view that some of these failures derive from the communication difficulties that exist between the rural health services and the client population. In other parts of the world traditional healers have been used as go-betweens to overcome these difficulties. In this study a group of 22 Traditional Medical Practitioners in a district of North Eastern Nepal were trained as TB and Leprosy referral agents. Ways of integrating them into existing rural health services were explored by discussion between themselves and local government health workers. Our results suggest that they are interested in participating in PHC delivery. Their specific task of referring patients proved more successful for leprosy than for TB. While their most important influence was a general effect of improving attendance at rural health facilities. This improved attendance is likely to be their chief success at raising health standards. By improving the communication between the health facilities and the people; the confidence of local people in PHC is raised, this brings more people into contact with the services and thereby raises health standards.

The Sherpa temple as a model of the psyche1

This essay is an interpretation of the structure and symbolism of a Sherpa Buddhist temple in northeastern Nepal. The temple represents an objectification of a model of the mind which underlies Sherpa religious thinking and also has interesting implications for the psychoanalytic theory of the structure of the psyche.

Glacio-Meteorology on Mt. Everest in 1963: The Khumbu Glacier of Chomolongma in Northeastern Nepal

(1964). Glacio-Meteorology on Mt. Everest in 1963: The Khumbu Glacier of Chomolongma in Northeastern Nepal. Weatherwise: Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 167-189.