Author Description

The Marsyangdi River cuts through Lamjung District on the southern slopes of the Himalayan Mountains in central Nepal. On a cliff high above the river sits Lamjung Darbar, an ancient palace of the Shah dynasty kings of Nepal, the religious center of the surrounding mountainside villages and site of the local school. In a Far-off Country chronicles the lives of Lamjung villagers as told by the author, who first lived among them as a US Peace Corps teacher at the Darbar school in 1972-1973, when the remote area was still closed to Western tourists. Over four decades (1972-2011), the author revisited Lamjung as Nepal changed from a feudal monarchy to a struggling democracy. The lives of local farmers were changed by improvements in education and living standards, but also by political instability and more than a decade of Maoist insurgency. The memoir focuses on two very different families: the high-caste Hindu Chetri family of Harka Bahadur Baniya and the Tibeto-Buddhist/shamanist family of Lal Subba Gurung. Both families combined farming and livestock with military service: the Baniyas in the Nepali army and the Gurungs in the British Gurkha Brigade. In Lamjung, the author lived in a stone house, and taught science in classrooms, with no heat, electricity, or indoor plumbing. She also studied medicinal plants with a local Gurung shaman and later conducted research with Nepali scientists on fungal contamination of food grains on Lamjung farms. Village life presented many challenges, including caste discrimination, the status of women, and treatment of the mentally ill, but was also full of festivals, weddings, and other joyful occasions, and sweetened by enduring friendships and the generous hospitality of the people of Lamjung.