HIMALAYA
type: channel
description: HIMALAYA is a biannual, peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by the University of Edinburgh on behalf of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies (ANHS), formerly known as the Nepal Studies Association (1972-2000).
publisher: The University of Edinburgh
language: en
publication name: HIMALAYA
issn: 1935-2212
items: Expanding Horizons, Deepening Engagement
items: A Borderland’s Soul: Through the India–China Border and the Hidden Histories of Kalimpong
items: Bhairab Nach and Navadurga
items: Vkur Nukuj (Let Us Return)
items: Buddhist and Shia Identity in Ladakh
items: Two Decades of Conservation in Ladakh
items: Review of Nepal’s Dalits in Transition by David N. Geller and Krishna P. Adhikari
items: The Difficult Art of Parenting
items: Tibet through a Native Lens
items: Editorial
items: Building a Multilingual Republic
items: Upland Agriculture, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation
items: Himalayan Flashes
items: Examining the ‘feminization of agriculture’ in a mixed-farming system in Sindhuli District, Nepal
items: Ruins in the Making
items: The Promises and Perils of Highland Infrastructure
items: Review of Ek Tha Gaon directed by Srishti Lakhera
items: Review of A Mountain Oasis: Daily Life in a Village in the Yasin Valley, Pakistan by Susan York
items: Vitality and Sustainability of Traditional Music
items: What if Khata Could Talk?
items: Landscape Aesthetics of Remoteness in the Indian Himalayas
items: Marking Impermanence
items: Building “Dyarā” away from Home
items: Another Day at the Airport
items: The Golden Hour
items: The Shepherd Who Did Not Lead
items: Seeing the Mother’s Face
items: The Tin State
items: Meeting Lhamo
items: Rain as a Singular Object with Multiple Ontologies among the Gurung in the Nhāson Valley

Expanding Horizons, Deepening Engagement
type: item
description: This editorial reflects on a period of institutional growth and editorial transition at HIMALAYA, the journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies. Amid recent regional upheavals—including the May 2025 escalation between India and Pakistan—the journal reaffirms its commitment to rigorous, inclusive scholarship on the Himalayan region. Strategic developments such as the adoption of the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform, a publishing partnership with the University of Edinburgh, and expanded print access through IngramSpark have significantly increased the journal’s global reach and accessibility. The editorial welcomes new team members who mark a generational and geographic expansion of HIMALAYA's editorial vision. These include Associate Editor Dr. Shubham Sapkota (University of Colorado Boulder); Reviews Editor Dr. Zezhou Yang (Asia Research Institute, NUS); and in-region Assistant Editors Heidamteu Zeme (IIT Delhi), Gulal Salil (independent artist), and Yatin Batra (University of Delhi). Fatma Matar, a master's student in visual anthropology at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, has also recently joined the team as Assistant Editor. This issue features contributions on ritual performance, visual repatriation, agricultural imaginaries, linguistic justice, and archival critique, exemplifying the journal’s evolving commitment to multimodal, interdisciplinary, and regionally grounded scholarship.
subject: Editorial
  topic: section
subject: Himalayan studies
  topic: keywords
subject: multimodal scholarship
  topic: keywords
subject: Open Access publishing
  topic: keywords
subject: visual repatriation
  topic: keywords
subject: visual anthropology
  topic: keywords
creator: Michael Timothy Heneise
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Michael Timothy Heneise https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-06-12
publication date: 2025-06-12
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2025.10883

A Borderland’s Soul: Through the India–China Border and the Hidden Histories of Kalimpong
type: item
subject: Reviews
  topic: section
creator: Tanka Subba
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Tanka Subba https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-06-12
publication date: 2025-06-12
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2025.10881

Bhairab Nach and Navadurga
type: item
description: Nepal and surrounding regions in India are known for resplendent masked performances. Often ritual in nature, they serve as tools for spiritual belonging, community cohesion, ties of kinship, and artistic expression. Research on Nepal’s culture and performance traditions has been smaller compared to neighboring South Asian countries such as India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Nepal’s performance traditions are complex, with centuries of history, culture, and religious beliefs attached to them. In Nepal, many of these traditional performances are called Pyakhan or stories/parables. They are deserving of in-depth study, much like their other South Asian counterparts. This paper takes a deep dive into masked dance forms of Nepal, especially the making and use of masks in Bhairab Nach, and Navadurga performance.
subject: Research Articles
  topic: section
subject: mask
  topic: keywords
subject: costume
  topic: keywords
subject: ritual images
  topic: keywords
subject: Pyakhan
  topic: keywords
subject: tantrism
  topic: keywords
subject: religion
  topic: keywords
creator: Deepsikha Chatterjee
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Deepsikha Chatterjee https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-06-12
publication date: 2025-06-12
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2025.9978

Vkur Nukuj (Let Us Return)
type: item
description: This article explores the complexities of colonial photography, archival ownership, and visual repatriation within the context of Arunachal Pradesh, India, focusing on historic Nyishi photographs from the Pitt Rivers Museum. By reconnecting the families of Nyishi interpreters Bath Heli and Kop Temi with photographs taken by colonial administrators Ursula Graham Bower and Charles Robert Stonor, the study examines the power dynamics embedded in the archival process. Using an autoethnographic approach, the research situates visual repatriation as a medium for restoring Nyishi cultural memory and examining tribal identity. The findings reveal how photographs, once decontextualized in the colonial archive, carry distinct meanings when reintegrated into their communities— challenging colonial narratives locked within museum spaces and enabling cultural resurgence.
subject: Research Articles
  topic: section
subject: visual repatriation
  topic: keywords
subject: colonial photography
  topic: keywords
subject: Arunachal Pradesh
  topic: keywords
subject: Nyishi
  topic: keywords
subject: indigenous memory
  topic: keywords
subject: autoethnography
  topic: keywords
subject: archival decolonization
  topic: keywords
creator: Menia Taba
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Menia Taba https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-06-12
publication date: 2025-06-12
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2025.10118

Buddhist and Shia Identity in Ladakh
type: item
description: There are many ways to define Ladakh: geographically (as an area between the Himalayas and the Karakoram), historically (as a kingdom from the 10th century until the Dogra conquest in 1834), or linguistically (as a region sharing a common language—a Tibetan dialect). However, most of these definitions have been put forward by foreigners or officials. Do the inhabitants of these areas feel that they belong to the same community? The author's answer is “no.” He concludes that Shi’as in Kargil and Buddhists in Leh consider themselves to constitute separate communities. The survey draws on sociology, ethnology, and some history, extending back to 1931.
subject: Research Articles
  topic: section
subject: Ladakh
  topic: keywords
subject: Buddhism
  topic: keywords
subject: Islam
  topic: keywords
subject: Purig
  topic: keywords
subject: Baltistan
  topic: keywords
subject: Shiism
  topic: keywords
creator: Patrick Kaplanian
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Patrick Kaplanian https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-06-12
publication date: 2025-06-12
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2025.10173

Two Decades of Conservation in Ladakh
type: item
description: Ladakh’s climatic conditions have preserved some of the most impressive monuments in the Himalaya. These temples trace the spread of Buddhism in the Western Himalaya and the development of artistic and architectural styles. However, they are increasingly under threat due to the introduction of modern construction materials and methods, as well as the intensification of climate change induced events. In 1999, Achi Association was formed to conserve temples belonging to the Drikung Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism, one of the oldest orders in Ladakh, and one under which many of the earliest temples in the region were built. In 2010, the establishment of Achi Association India (AAI) expanded this to any Buddhist heritage in precarity throughout Ladakh, regardless of sect. With a quarter of a century of experience in the region, the two organizations collectively produced an impressive fountain of documents that chart and record all aspects of conservation work done across nine sites that date from the late 13th century to the 19th century. In this paper I scaffold an interdisciplinary approach to access these archives, which range from architectural surveys to community engagement reports, accentuating that conservation is a dialectic between stakeholders, where decisions made by conservators — shaped by their training and available technology — are interpreted by other stakeholders, namely locals and the clergy, through their own epistemic frameworks. Mapping the entirety of conservation and restoration, this paper covers multiple aspects of the process, including documentation, community engagement, technical procedures, and the ritual ramifications of decisions.
subject: Research Articles
  topic: section
subject: Archives
  topic: keywords
subject: conservation
  topic: keywords
subject: Western Himalayas
  topic: keywords
subject: Ladakh
  topic: keywords
subject: restoration
  topic: keywords
creator: Sushan Bhattarai
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Sushan Bhattarai https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-06-12
publication date: 2025-06-12
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2025.10112

Review of Nepal’s Dalits in Transition by David N. Geller and Krishna P. Adhikari
type: item
subject: Reviews
  topic: section
creator: Ina Zharkevich
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Ina Zharkevich https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-06-12
publication date: 2025-06-12
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2025.10048

The Difficult Art of Parenting
type: item
description: Conducting fieldwork among middle-class families in Bhaktapur, Nepal in 2018-2019, I found that local parents are concerned with teaching their children the notion of ‘moral measure’. At the same time, a strategy of avoidance, rather than open negotiation, is preferred to maintain harmony and preserve kinship networks. Focusing on the case study of Dor Bahadur and his children Sita and Vishnu around a contested birthday celebration, in these visual works in gouache, acrylics, and oil colors, I explore and analyze the role that parent-child interactions play in the making of moral selves among middle-class people in Nepal. Through layers of colors, I convey the sense of the conflictual processes that the protagonists of this story experience, and the concomitant ‘opacity of minds’ established between their existential perspectives.
subject: Research Articles
  topic: section
subject: art
  topic: keywords
subject: morality
  topic: keywords
subject: Nepal
  topic: keywords
subject: parenting
  topic: keywords
creator: Paola Tiné
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Paola Tiné https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-06-12
publication date: 2025-06-12
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2025.10044

Tibet through a Native Lens
type: item
description: This essay attempts to foreground the question of native agency in the making of the photographic archive of Charles Alfred Bell, British Political Officer for Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet. It seeks to approach a new hermeneutics of British imperial archive-making vis-á-vis Tibet by assessing not only how native agency variously informed the sacerdotal, epistemic and technical content of most of Bell’s photographic archive, but also how such agency was central to its very process of visual production. By examining the roles of Rabden Lepcha, Sonam Wangyal or Palhese and Kartick Chandra Pyne, apropos their contribution to Bell’s visual archive, the essay shows how British imperial knowledge-construction on Tibet deployed native agency, thereafter relegating them (mostly) to archival silence. In the process, the essay demonstrates how these silences were not merely accidental, but fundamental to the process of knowledge-production on Tibet.
subject: Research Articles
  topic: section
subject: photography
  topic: keywords
subject: Charles Bell
  topic: keywords
subject: native agency
  topic: keywords
subject: Kartick Chandra Pyne
  topic: keywords
subject: Rabden Lepcha
  topic: keywords
subject: Tibet
  topic: keywords
subject: British Raj
  topic: keywords
creator: Parjanya Sen
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Parjanya Sen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-06-12
publication date: 2025-06-12
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2025.10021

Editorial
type: item
subject: Editorial
  topic: section
creator: Michael T. Heneise
creator: Jeevan R. Sharma
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Michael T. Heneise, Jeevan R. Sharma https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-10-04
publication date: 2024-10-04
starting page: 1
ending page: 2
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2023.9975

Building a Multilingual Republic
type: item
description: This contribution is an edited version of a wide-ranging conversation between linguistic anthropologist and past co-editor of HIMALAYA, Mark Turin, and Lava Deo Awasthi, the first Chairperson of Nepal’s Language Commission. In the course of the interview, Turin and Awasthi discuss the Commission’s role and establishment, Awasthi’s appointment to the position of Chairperson, his intellectual training and administrative preparation for the task, and the strategic goals and objectives that he brought to the portfolio. The conversation then moves on to a critical reflection of the challenges and achievements of Awasthi’s term as Chairperson, concluding with his vision for mother tongue instruction and linguistic justice in Nepal.
subject: Perspectives
  topic: section
subject: federalism
  topic: keywords
subject: language
  topic: keywords
subject: linguistic justice
  topic: keywords
subject: mother tongue
  topic: keywords
subject: Nepal
  topic: keywords
subject: policy
  topic: keywords
creator: Mark Turin
creator: Lava Deo Awasthi
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Mark Turin, Lava Deo Awasthi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-06-12
publication date: 2025-06-12
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2025.9734

Upland Agriculture, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation
type: item
description: In the last two decades, different governments in India have made a concerted effort to address the plight of the marginal farmer who owns (or has access to) some private or communal land across the uplands in the northeast of the country. Various governmental schemes and subsidies have been initiated to ensure that other ways of earning a livelihood mitigate falling returns from agriculture and the increasing need for cash among farmers. Upland farmers have evoked both hope and despair from governments that look to transform subsistence-style agricultural practices into revenue-earning endeavours. They have been the source of much political posturing, as the regional political elite, scientists, and industry have taken up their cause. The same farmers have also been subjected to intense policy pressure, persuading them to think differently and pull themselves out of poverty. There is, therefore, an increasing demand for them to prepare for radical changes in their livelihoods and way of thinking. In this article, I draw from fieldwork conducted in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, and Mizoram to examine how new discourses of entrepreneurship and innovation have become essential to understanding social and economic transformations in the uplands of Northeast India.
subject: Research Articles
  topic: section
subject: agriculture
  topic: keywords
subject: Eastern Himalayas
  topic: keywords
subject: entrepreneur
  topic: keywords
subject: innovators
  topic: keywords
subject: militarisation
  topic: keywords
subject: market
  topic: keywords
creator: Sanjay Barbora
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Sanjay Barbora https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-06-12
publication date: 2025-06-12
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2025.9688

Himalayan Flashes
type: item
subject: Special Section Guest Editorial
  topic: section
creator: Carole McGranahan
creator: Sienna R. Craig
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Carole McGranahan, Sienna R. Craig https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-10-04
publication date: 2024-10-04
starting page: 3
ending page: 5
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2024.9653

Examining the ‘feminization of agriculture’ in a mixed-farming system in Sindhuli District, Nepal
type: item
description: This paper aims to explore the feminization of agriculture amidst the agrarian transition from cereal to citrus crops in Sindhuli district. Multiple ethnographic field studies in citrus-producing areas have been used to present the conceptual debate and empirical findings on the feminization of agriculture in a mixed-farming system. The paper highlights changing labor arrangements for household labor, exchange labor, and wage labor in agriculture and presents the nature of the agricultural work conducted by men and women. The paper argues that cash crop farming has resulted in a gendered hierarchy in agriculture, with men primarily occupied with skill-based work in high-value citrus crops, while women’s engagement is mainly limited to subsistence farming and menial agricultural tasks. However, some women directly benefit at the household level because of their involvement in citrus production. The study shows that gender-based inequalities in labor use have the power to reinforce and intensify the existing gender roles that render women subordinate. However, women choose their work based on its importance for household food security. The paper portrays four categories of feminization, namely feminization of labor vis-à-vis managerial feminization, feminization of labor categories such as household, exchange, and wage labor, and feminization of particular crop/livestock and subsistence/commercial farming. The study concludes that feminization varies based on the degree of crop marketability.
subject: Research Articles
  topic: section
subject: Feminization of agriculture
  topic: keywords
subject: division of labor
  topic: keywords
subject: agrarian transition
  topic: keywords
subject: ethnography
  topic: keywords
subject: Nepal
  topic: keywords
creator: Hritika Rana
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Hritika Rana https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-10-04
publication date: 2024-10-04
starting page: 133
ending page: 148
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2024.8123

Ruins in the Making
type: item
description: What do high Himalayan villages feel like as they shift in form and character through patterns of outmigration and the effects of climate change? How do people wrestle with enduring connections to place, through the pain and uncertainty that accompanies social and ecological change? What does it mean to steward a landscape and attend to sacred geography as well as history through these transitions? These questions are explored in this flash ethnography, set in the village of Samdzong, upper Mustang, Nepal.
subject: Special Section Research Article
  topic: section
subject: Flash ethnography
  topic: keywords
subject: Mustang
  topic: keywords
subject: climate change
  topic: keywords
subject: migration
  topic: keywords
subject: sacred geography
  topic: keywords
creator: Sienna R Craig
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Sienna R Craig https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-10-04
publication date: 2024-10-04
starting page: 38
ending page: 40
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2024.9162

The Promises and Perils of Highland Infrastructure
type: item
description: In recent years, state-led infrastructure creation in the name of progress and development has occurred across the Himalayan region. It has increased the presence of the state in places formerly regarded as relatively isolated. Despite being aspirational, infrastructure creation projects have uprooted people from their lands, deprived them of their livelihoods, and transformed their identities. This paper focuses on Pakyong Airport in the state of Sikkim, which has provoked huge protests in recent times. Through the study of this mega-infrastructure project, the paper addresses everyday processes associated with rampant change, transformation, and the formation of social memory forged through resistance and struggle in the form of counterpublics. Considering different processes, the paper assesses how Himalayan infrastructure development has a varied impact on the people and politics of the region.
subject: Research Articles
  topic: section
subject: Highland
  topic: keywords
subject: infrastructure
  topic: keywords
subject: Eastern Himalayas
  topic: keywords
subject: counterpublics
  topic: keywords
subject: land
  topic: keywords
creator: Archana Pathak
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Archana Pathak https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-10-04
publication date: 2024-10-04
starting page: 112
ending page: 132
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2024.8860

Review of Ek Tha Gaon directed by Srishti Lakhera
type: item
subject: Reviews
  topic: section
creator: Vidushi Dobhal Naithani
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Vidushi Dobhal Naithani https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-10-04
publication date: 2024-10-04
starting page: 155
ending page: 157
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2024.9505

Review of A Mountain Oasis: Daily Life in a Village in the Yasin Valley, Pakistan by Susan York
type: item
subject: Reviews
  topic: section
creator: Fizza Batool
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Fizza Batool https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-10-04
publication date: 2024-10-04
starting page: 162
ending page: 165
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2024.9466

Vitality and Sustainability of Traditional Music
type: item
description: Dāphā bhajan is a participatory genre of Hindu–Buddhist devotional music, sung by groups of farmers and other Newar singers in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. It is deeply integrated with local neighbourhood communities, but owing to recent disasters (the 2015 earthquake, the 2020–2022 Covid-19 pandemic) and ongoing cultural changes, its sustainability is in doubt. In 2022–2023 the authors conducted a survey of selected groups to investigate the performers’ perspectives. In this preliminary report we find that dāphā groups showed resilience in recovering from the recent disasters, the main effect of which was to exacerbate ongoing systemic problems. Chief among these is the difficulty of recruiting and training new members, to which some groups are responding with innovative solutions. But a range of other interconnected issues also emerged. We conclude that although many groups exhibit continuing vitality and an integrated relationship with the local communities in which they are embedded, their dependence on traditional models may be unsustainable without a degree of change.
subject: Research Reports
  topic: section
subject: Newar music
  topic: keywords
subject: Kathmandu Valley
  topic: keywords
subject: sustainability
  topic: keywords
subject: devotional singing
  topic: keywords
subject: participatory music
  topic: keywords
creator: Nutandhar Sharma
creator: Richard Widdess
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Nutandhar Sharma, Richard Widdess https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-10-04
publication date: 2024-10-04
starting page: 149
ending page: 154
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2024.9012

What if Khata Could Talk?
type: item
description: Tibetan pastoralists often say that many know how to graze animals (ཟོག་ལུག་འཚོ་བ), but few know how to nurture them (ཟོག་ལུག་སྐྱོང་བ). Skyong (སྐྱོང) means nurturing or attending to something or someone with tenderness. While conducting fieldwork research among Tibetan pastoralists in eastern Tibet, I learned that animals were dying from eating discarded plastic khata (ceremonial scarves) and prayer flags. Even those who nurture animals through winter, when grass was scarce and snowstorms were constant, were not sure what to do to prevent this. This ethnographic experience inspired me to make a documentary film and to experiment with flash ethnography on this topic of the sacred status of khata in relation to its poisonous contemporary materiality. This flash ethnography takes creative license, allowing khata to speak.
subject: Special Section Research Article
  topic: section
subject: flash ethnography
  topic: keywords
subject: Khata
  topic: keywords
subject: meaning
  topic: keywords
subject: materiality
  topic: keywords
subject: Tibet
  topic: keywords
creator: Huatse Gyal
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Huatse Gyal https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-10-04
publication date: 2024-10-04
starting page: 24
ending page: 26
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2024.9093

Landscape Aesthetics of Remoteness in the Indian Himalayas
type: item
description: This paper examines the pictorial practices of landscape painting in colonial British art and the textual practice of colonial travel writing to examine the landscape aesthetics of remoteness in the Indian Himalayas. It argues that neither the ‘picturesque’ nor the ‘sublime’ genre of colonial landscape paintings can describe the representation of the marginalised geographies of the Indian Himalayas and the colonial impetus to engineer them. By offering a paradigm of the landscape aesthetics of remoteness, this paper demonstrates how remoteness is aesthetically reproduced in the colonial visual imagination, which informs the mapping, engineering and transformation of the Himalayan landscape. It examines the landscape aesthetics in the travelogue and its accompanying illustrations of aquatints in the works of James B. Fraser (1820a, b) and of the lithographs and accompanying text in the work of Thomas Daniell (c.1800) for the North-Western Himalayan region in India. The paper situates these representations of colonial landscape paintings in a broader study of ‘landscape and power’ (Mitchell 1994). It analyses the pictorial and textual practices through the dialectic of the ‘interior’ and the ‘frontier’ that produces the landscape aesthetic of remoteness and provides a new paradigm for studying landscapes and their representation.
subject: Research Articles
  topic: section
subject: remoteness
  topic: keywords
subject: Himalayas
  topic: keywords
subject: landscape painting
  topic: keywords
subject: landscape aesthetics
  topic: keywords
subject: travel writing
  topic: keywords
creator: Bhoomika Joshi
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Bhoomika Joshi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-06-12
publication date: 2025-06-12
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2025.9589

Marking Impermanence
type: item
description: This essay explores works by contemporary artist Sonam Dolma Brauen through two lenses: as the result of ongoing and changing functions of an object, and as part of a broader dialogue about indexical imagery in contemporary art. Sonam Dolma’s family escaped from Tibet to India when she was young, carrying few possessions on their difficult journey through the Himalayas. One of these items, a small metal tsa tsa mold used in Tibetan Buddhist rituals, would later become an instrument of creation in Sonam Dolma’s art practice. Comprised of multiple plaster casts made from the original object, the artworks mark the former presence of the object—they are indexical. I examine two works, My Father’s Death (2010) and Red Carpet (2011), exploring this indexical nature and asking, how might new functions emerge from old forms?
subject: Research Articles
  topic: section
subject: Sonam Dolma Brauen
  topic: keywords
subject: Tibetan art
  topic: keywords
subject: contemporary art
  topic: keywords
subject: indexical
  topic: keywords
subject: object
  topic: keywords
subject: diaspora
  topic: keywords
creator: Sarah Magnatta
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Sarah Magnatta https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-10-04
publication date: 2024-10-04
starting page: 64
ending page: 80
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2024.8956

Building “Dyarā” away from Home
type: item
description: The culture of migration is so deeply ingrained in the Nepal highlands, that individuals from marginalized households in the western provinces view migration to India as “a rite of passage to adulthood”. The western Himalayan region, due to its close proximity, attracts a significant number of Nepalese migrants during the non-agricultural season, where they engage in informal work opportunities and return to Nepal in the agricultural season. This type of migration is described in existing studies as ãune-jãne, or coming and going, which signifies the temporary and circular nature of the movement. However, over time, migrants have adopted a different approach, with a greater emphasis on choosing temporary migration to Gulf countries while also spending significant time in the western Himalayas, leading to semi-permanent migration as compared to earlier, temporary migration. This semi-permanent migration serves as the central focus of this essay. This photo essay displays the Nepalese migrants who have migrated to the remote regions of Uttarakhand, a state in the western Himalayas of India, and who have been residing in the Garhwal region of Uttarakhand for the past few years. It aims to provide a closer peek into the realm of the everyday practices of these migrant workers, focusing on how they build their living space on agricultural fields, which they refer to as “Dyarā”; cultivate the abandoned fallow lands; and are involved in vegetable cultivation. Further, it also tries to show how their children perceive the space and adapt to it.
subject: Photo Essays
  topic: section
subject: Dyara
  topic: keywords
subject: Garhwal Himalaya
  topic: keywords
subject: Nepalese
  topic: keywords
subject: migration
  topic: keywords
subject: Uttarakhand
  topic: keywords
creator: Garima Bhandari
creator: Anindya Jayanta Mishra
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Garima Bhandari, Anindya Jayanta Mishra https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-10-04
publication date: 2024-10-04
starting page: 41
ending page: 63
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2024.9240

Another Day at the Airport
type: item
description: Traveling is a complicated endeavor. For some, it is as simple as picking up one’s passport and heading to the nearest airport. For others, it is a harrowing experience, one marked by uncertainty. For tourists, traveling represents a temporary detachment from the mundanes of everyday life. For many migrants, it is an incredibly significant decision that can define their very futures. Drawing from a personal encounter at the airport, this flash ethnographic piece hopes to be able to illustrate the dichotomy of traveling i.e. the ease, and pleasure for some, and the uncertainty of refusal for others.
subject: Special Section Research Article
  topic: section
subject: Flash ethnography
  topic: keywords
subject: Tibet
  topic: keywords
subject: migration
  topic: keywords
subject: refugees
  topic: keywords
subject: documents
  topic: keywords
creator: Tenzing Wangdak
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Tenzing Wangdak https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-10-04
publication date: 2024-10-04
starting page: 9
ending page: 11
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2024.9096

The Golden Hour
type: item
description: In interviews with leading emergency medicine doctors and developers of a national system of pre-hospital care in Nepal, they allude to the significance of treating trauma patients during “the golden hour”. This flash ethnography highlights the intersubjective meaning making of an outsider ethnographer, whose familiarity with the metaphor comes from photography, and doctors, who use the phrase in its emergency medicine application to describe the brief window of opportunity to intervene after a traumatic injury.
subject: Special Section Research Article
  topic: section
subject: Flash ethnography
  topic: keywords
subject: hospitals
  topic: keywords
subject: emergency medicine
  topic: keywords
subject: ambulances
  topic: keywords
subject: Nepal
  topic: keywords
creator: Jan Brunson
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Jan Brunson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-10-04
publication date: 2024-10-04
starting page: 35
ending page: 37
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2024.9106

The Shepherd Who Did Not Lead
type: item
description: This is an ethnographic snapshot of an encounter with a Gaddi shepherd in the hills of Himachal Pradesh. The Gaddis are a semi-nomadic pastoral people who live across the Himalayan belt of Northern India. In this piece, I recount how this lone shepherd, with just a slight gesture and in unspoken words, shows me how a journey can be lived unbounded by time
subject: Special Section Research Article
  topic: section
subject: Flash ethnography
  topic: keywords
subject: shephard
  topic: keywords
subject: time
  topic: keywords
subject: fieldwork
  topic: keywords
subject: Gaddi
  topic: keywords
creator: Ishani Dasgupta
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Ishani Dasgupta https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-10-04
publication date: 2024-10-04
starting page: 12
ending page: 14
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2024.9099

Seeing the Mother’s Face
type: item
description: An anthropologist describes a journey to visit a friend’s mother in Nepal. As she crosses over mountains and valleys with her friends from the village, she considers the meanings of maiti, the maternal home, and what it means to see a mother’s face.
subject: Special Section Research Article
  topic: section
subject: Mother
  topic: keywords
subject: maiti
  topic: keywords
subject: belonging
  topic: keywords
subject: flash ethnography
  topic: keywords
subject: Nepal
  topic: keywords
creator: Aidan Seale-Feldman
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Aidan Seale-Feldman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-10-04
publication date: 2024-10-04
starting page: 15
ending page: 17
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2024.9101

The Tin State
type: item
description: What does change look, sound, and feel like? After Nepal’s 2015 earthquakes, everything is remade in tin. Walking through this newly reflective landscape, we see how things are transformed in both material and political terms, as post-disaster reconstruction proceeds in tandem with the process of post-conflict federal restructuring. This short piece of flash ethnography takes us beyond the immediate destruction and trauma into the sensory world of the post-earthquake ‘tin state’, offering a view into how people experience the long-term shifts in sensibility that both environmental and social change provoke.
subject: Special Section Research Article
  topic: section
subject: Flash ethnography
  topic: keywords
subject: Nepal
  topic: keywords
subject: disaster
  topic: keywords
subject: development
  topic: keywords
subject: political transition
  topic: keywords
subject: earthquake
  topic: keywords
creator: Sara Shneiderman
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Sara Shneiderman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-10-04
publication date: 2024-10-04
starting page: 27
ending page: 30
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2024.9090

Meeting Lhamo
type: item
description: This story describes a snapshot of a Tibetan nomadic woman who later became a construction worker after moving to a settlement town. It highlights some of the challenges her family faces as they move away from herding life and embrace a new way of life.
subject: Special Section Research Article
  topic: section
subject: Flash ethnography
  topic: keywords
subject: Tibetan nomds
  topic: keywords
subject: relocations
  topic: keywords
subject: Lapa
  topic: keywords
subject: construction work
  topic: keywords
creator: Sanggay Tashi
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Sanggay Tashi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-10-04
publication date: 2024-10-04
starting page: 21
ending page: 23
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2024.9102

Rain as a Singular Object with Multiple Ontologies among the Gurung in the Nhāson Valley
type: item
description: Rain, a droplet of water that comes from the sky, appears as a singular object with multiple ontologies among Gurung, an indigenous people of Nepal dwelling in the mountain region. This paper offers an ethnographic analysis of the relationships between society and the environment through the names of rains among the Gurung based on the nine months of fieldwork between 2012 and 2018. In the article, Gurung’s nomenclature for rains strongly raises the question of universal and quantitative scaling to nature and natural phenomena, particularly a water droplet from the sky. For the Gurung, names for rain, which are grounded on land and expressed autochthonously, have cultural meanings that play an important role in comprehending the indigenous notion of the environment. However, global climate change is not only affecting the precipitation pattern in the Himalayan region but also uprooting the nomenclature of rain that is rooted in ancestral thick and insightful observation of the environment.
subject: Research Articles
  topic: section
subject: Gurung
  topic: keywords
subject: multiple ontologies
  topic: keywords
subject: name
  topic: keywords
subject: rain
  topic: keywords
subject: Himalaya
  topic: keywords
creator: Jiban Mani Poudel
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Jiban Mani Poudel https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-10-04
publication date: 2024-10-04
starting page: 81
ending page: 96
doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2024.8048