Lingtep field visit - Day 5

Eager to get started on our long-day hike up to Lingtep, we were up early and on the road to start Day 4. We made it back to Handrung (where Dhirendra's illness struck...and a place believed within the family to have ancestral 'bad karma' as it were). We grabbed our pack and were on the way.

Though Dhirendra was still quite weak, were made good time. All along the path, Dhirendra shared stories about what had changed, memories of journeys past, and important spots along the way. Meg was taking it all in, as if visiting a mythical land she'd only dreamed of.

Along the way, we were met by a distant relative and young villager who'd been asked to meet us to bring us 'home'. From then on, we kept meeting up with villagers greeting us with open arms. Even a 'grandson' who nearly put us to shame met us; he was a third our height, wearing little overalls and no shoes. He couldn't have been more than 5 or 6. He tromped on ahead of us during the steepest sections of the hike with his hands in his pockets and a piece of hay in his mouth! Ho hum.

The journey back to Lingtep was exciting, but also one filled with many mixed emotions. Dhirendra was returning after 15 years to a place he called home from birth to age 19. This was a place who's soil, river valleys, rocks, and high altitude sun is all woven into the fabric of who he (and his family) is at the most fundamental level. At the same time, much has changed in the place and the man. Most immediate family has moved away from the village and life looks much different from this side. Meg was simply honored to share all of it.

It was growing increasingly clear throughout the day that this trip was about so much more than pragmatic reconnaissance work for a school.

In the early afternoon, we reached Lingtep Village. Despite Dhirendra's exhaustion, we immediately jumped into helping the dozens of community members engaged in building the stone memorial bench for our father, the late Tulsi Prasad Nalbo.


Despite overwhelming experience of meeting with many new relatives and the villagers, Meg warmly accepted the culture and immediately became part of it.


After building the bench (located just down the path from the village school, where Dhirendra's grandparents' stone memorial bench has been built), the religious/ancestral ceremonies began. First, the ceremonies at the memorial.




Then came the evening ceremonies which went late into the night. These ceremonies were filled with the essentials of Limbu culture - honoring the ancestors, recounting histories from generations and generations ago, drinking copious amounts of Limbu alcohol (tongba), recounting stories in memory of the honored person at the ancestral home, eating lots of yummy food (including the sacrificed goat), mixing and mingling of all age-groups, and an overall loving, warm environment of family and life-long friends.

That night, we fell asleep to the sounds of traditional Limbu ceremonial singing, bundled in our warm clothes.