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Hidden Valleys of the Himalayas
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17849 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1990 |
1,988 Words |
| Author
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Elaine Brook and Lhakpa Sherpa
Elaine Brook has climbed extensively in Europe, South America,
and the Himalayas. She is the author of two books and
numerous articles. Her husband, Lhakpa Sherpa, runs Himalayan
Travel, his own trekking company. They live part of the year
in Hereford, England, and part in Nepal. Lhakpa is the nephew
of Tenzing Norgay, who climbed Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary
in 1953. |
In the spring of 1988 we led one of the first western expeditions to reach the remote valley of Tsum in northern Nepal, close to the Tibetan border. We had overcome not only the barriers of the rugged terrain but also five years of organization and negotiation with a ponderous Nepalese bureaucracy before obtaining permits to enter the region.
Tsum is said to be one of the eight bayul, the legendary "hidden valleys” of Nepal, concealed in the remote mountain wilderness of the Himalayas. Many of the valleys still remain concealed from the outside world, but some, like the cold, high reaches of Tsum, have been discovered and inhabited.
The valley is isolated, both geographically and politically. Lying between the ice-hung Himalayan peaks of the Ganesh and Sringi ranges, it is cut off from the lowlands of Nepal of the south by deep, forested gorges and swift rivers, and from Tibet in the north by high, snow-covered passes and a closely watched political boundary. The people who farm the thin, rocky soils below the snowline are of Tibetan origin and speak a Tibetan dialect. Their religion and culture are rooted in Mahayana Buddhism, which they brought with them from their homeland. Most of Tsum's educated people are monks.
The monks tell many legends of Tsum's discovery by their ancestors. But in the shrinking world of the twentieth century it is questionable whether such remote communities can continue to remain isolated fro moutside influences. Similar Himalayan regions, such as the Solu-Khumbu valleys around Everest, have changed greatly with the influx of
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