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“I know the birds won’t be here forever, they are being killed and getting extinct due to loss of habitat and human encroachment,” he says. “Although I won’t be able to save them, I will preserve their voices.”

Although there are so many exotic birds, crows are Gautam’s best friends. He can communicate with the crows more efficiently. He opines that these birds use only few basic words to communicate like “come”, “go”, “run - there’s danger”, “let’s gather - one of us is in danger” and few other words. It was his long study and experience that allowed him to call a conference of crows during the auspicious festival Kag Tihar (The first day of Hindu festival - Deepawali, when people worship crow, the messenger of the God of death, Yama). Hundreds of crows came responding to his calls at the Open Theatre in Kathmandu. “They are my friends, and they come to me when I call them,” says Gautam. “They know that their friend needs their help and flock to me.”

Once hounded by media, he has been surviving on the presentations that he holds everyday in different schools. Till date he has visited more than 6,500 schools in 45 districts of Nepal, interacting, entertaining and education the kids about birds, their habitat, their ways of life and their calls.

When asked on how he was inspired to take up this hobby, he says, “When I was a little kid, I wondered how people imitated animals.” “When I grew up, I realized that I could mimic a lot different sounds, so I started my journey and the beautiful birds became my friends.”

Besides birds, he can imitate any other animal. However, following and studying the monkeys of Swayambhunath stupa and Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu, he has learnt the monkey sounds too. He can initiate a brawl between two and more monkeys. And if you really pester him, he can arrange a gang fight among the monkeys and ask all the monkeys to attack you at once.

You will never get bored by his bird calls. However, to entertain the students apart from the monotonous bird sounds he has compiled songs in different bird voices. An album of popular Nepali folk songs remixed in the voice of different birds (particularly heron’s voice) is on the offing.

Although born in a not so known Gadhi village of Makwanpur district in central Nepal, he is aspiring to record his feat in the Guiness Book of World Records. He is in correspondence with the officials and they are positive on recording this extraordinary feat.

Thanks to the open political scene in the country, the runway was the place where we all stood staring at the clouds to open up. I say this because certain places used to be out of bounds area in the days gone by and in the name of freedom, suddenly everyplace is accessible and every action doable. To spur up the otherwise dull atmosphere, a stray dog began running across the sloped runway and soon two more joined the party. A policeman guarding the airport got some order from his senior and started his efforts to drive them away. The dogs ran but aimlessly, almost in circles. They would not get out of the little outlet in the otherwise fenced runway of the uniquely built Lukla airport. He picked up a stone and started hitting the dogs. A couple of his hits missed the dogs before one hit right on its back. The dog made a very loud squeaking noise and managed to draw everyone’s attention. Almost instantaneously, the Russians thronged into the heart of runway. It did not make sense at first before they almost attempted to bring the policeman down by overpowering him. A girl screamed right on his face “Isn’t non- violence something that your country preaches’. Being a good nepali, he just shied away. I am not quite sure whether he understood whatever was said to him but he just kept mum, even dared to smile. Or could it be that he disagreed with the question. Whatever the case be, the trip to mountains had started in somewhat memorable note.

It was perfect - as it later turned out.

After having a breakfast began the walk. It was magnificent. One could invariably be reminded of ‘far from the maddening crowd’ and the feeling that for the next couple of days I could dedicate my life to my own self was too overwhelming. The breath of fresh air and clean open environment was a harsh reminder of the fact that life in the city, in most ways, had very little to offer even though one always harped about ‘development’. I walked watching hundreds of trekkers pass by, some en route and some on their way back, who hardly failed to say ‘Namaste’ once the distance got closer. And with each group of trekkers were a group of porters who walked almost silently carrying huge luggage on a doko. One could only imagine the strength of their shoulders and the neck for often times the sheer size of it all appeared almost too much to carry even for a taxi back in the city.

For a moment, and I must admit it, it just did not feel nice. While the tourists walked around savoring the beauty of the hills and the air, along walked a group of people who as if had no right to enjoy the place they were so fortunate to have been born. To cut it short I just felt as if I was being an audience to modern day slavery. But then, I am sure what you are thinking, this was something that gave us our means to livelihood and the whole thing was not by design but by our own doing. If only we were not this poor – that was precisely the feeling that I had in me then. I walked on.

We rested for a night in a place called Phakding which rested along on the bank of one of the tributaries of ‘sapta-koshi’. There were a couple of Australian couples, a retired army general from Indian army with his grandchildren and a group of Slovak students at the big dinner table in the restaurant of the hotel. We all had managed to introduce each other while we all waited for dinner sipping 400 rupees per bottle beers.
And as we got to know each other better, soon everyone began sharing their travel experiences which seemed to cover almost two thirds of the globe. And the funny part of the whole conversation, well at least to me it appeared funny, was that except for four of us Nepalese in that room everyone had already been to this place before. The Australians, as they told us, have been here almost six times and they had succeeded in bringing 25-30 people residing in the suburban area of Perth over the last twelve years. It was almost as if the realization dawned upon us that Himalaya is not just some numerical value of 8848. And while Jim began explaining the trail over the spread out map on the table, we realized two things. Nepal is not just the two ends of Mahendra highway and there was much more to know about this country.

Next morning we walked up to Namche bazar. The place somehow took me by surprise for I had this picture in my mind that Namche lay atop a hill from where you could see Everest. Rather it lay on the slopes of a hill like almost like a baby in a mother’s cuddle. A heavy duty meal and a light snap, we readied ourselves for a walk in the trail encircling the Namche. After couple of hours we found ourselves in one of the most beautiful places that I have ever been to, the Khumjung village.

The village of Khumjung nestled in the lap of divine Khumbila Mountain, as I learned, was also referred as Edmund village. The village with its picturesque settings was perfect, to say the least. As my colleague travelling put it, if any Nepali were to be directly air dropped in this particular village and were told that this was one particular place in Switzerland, chances were there that the person would tend to think along the same lines. It had almost everything that any human habitat would look for. One had to, almost forcibly, take a pause and think for a moment that here was a place completely inaccessible by roads and yet had each and everything that one could think of vis-à-vis development. And yet there are n numbers of places in the country accessible through every possible means (highways/airports) and yet life continues at its basic minimum. There was a lesson to be learnt although I am not sure what exactly. ‘Commitment’, for one, seemed to cross my mind.

By the time we returned back to hotel in Namche it was almost pitch dark. The day had certainly been an eye opener in many ways. With a plan of sipping our morning coffee at the Everest View hotel, we all headed to our respective $10 / night rooms.

The thirty six hours experience had already turned out be the one to carry along for a long time. Also begging was a prospect of even more exciting tomorrow.

Unedited version of the article published in the Sunday edition of the Kathmandu Post, 29th June.

One can experience bird-eye-view of Pokhara as gliding allows him/her to share airspace with falcone, eagles, kites, while floating over monasteries, villages, temples, lakes and jungles, with a magical view of the majestic Himalayas. Try it.

Took this picture last year, at the landing spot near ‘Duna Tapari’ Pokkhara.

Wendell Phillips noted American abolitionist once said “Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is much higher and truer courage.”

If you can’t recognize the HERO in this picture and wondering what’s happening there, then I have to give you the prologue first.

More than 20 hours had past and rescue squad consisting of Nepal Army, Police, Trekkers and Locals were frustrated and tired. Even after their continuous effort, attempts and re-attempts they were not able to rescue two and half year old girl, who had fallen in narrow gorge some 60 meters down below the ground. [gorge of Seti river in Pokhara, Nepal].

Then our Hero “Kamal Nepali” comes forward and volunteers himself for the rescue operation. Not knowing what lies ahead into that dark and mysterious gorge. Rescuers saw the hope as his body was small enough to crawl deep inside the gorge. But some objected pointing at his age and size, but our hero was determined and he insisted. He was the best available option left there.

After half an hour into the unknown, Kamal appears with the girl. Mission accomplished, he SAVED LIFE that day. Crowd cheered and applauded, everybody including girl’s father hugged him, and there was tears of joy everywhere.

Next day I read two liners in Newspapers, “Teen saved girl’s life”, my personal view is we should not be stingy on writing about this HEROIC act. This should have been FRONTPAGE News if I would have been an editor.

Scene for the movie Enemy at the Gates:
Stalin’s envoy Nikita Khrushchev comes to Stalingrad and warns a group of Soviet political officers, “If the Germans capture this city, the entire country will collapse.” Khrushchev demands suggestions as to how to motivate Soviet troops to stand up to the Germans, and Danilov proposes, “What we need are heroes.” “Do you know any heroes around here?” asks Khrushchev, to which Danilov replies, “Yes, Comrade, I know one.”

Don’t you think even NEPAL needs many HEROS like Kamal, at this juncture of time??

Source:http://blog.sajilonepal.com/2008/06/hero-is-born.html

In every walk of life, every moment we come across with lots of hurdles, challenges, fun and lot more. If there are no challenges, no questions, no fun, no excitements then, life won’t be as beautiful as we imagine it to be. There are people who say - “Sitting silently doing nothing” this is the art of living. How can it be the art of living? Doing nothing means there is no action, no creativity and how can we define it as art?

If we go to the outer space and look at the planet earth, what we find is every species and every organism living in the planet are struggling for the survival. Some are busy in feeding its brood, some are building nests, some are having food, and so on. We humans are busy in carrying out daily activities. We are in a rush for completing the task. To me walk of life is just like a person in the middle of the road wondering to move backward or forward, and making the right choice; if he moved towards the back he gets backside and if he advance he reach ahead. There no difference in two moves. Both of them move. Both reach to their destination. So, life is nothing more than the gap between the two people’s decision and their destination. How they reach to the next side. What they do to reach the next side that is life.

Every day we come across the same situation. We complete one and by the time we have completed it there comes another one, it goes on and on. This is the walk of life.

Nepal is so rich in Nature, be proud of it.

And I am the iron guy day by day rustin’
The hills are lookin’ at my condition
But I don’t wanna mention
To any one
To every one

Suddenly I think of myself
Oh! I am at the down of the hills
Laughin’ and mockin’
Whatsoever people are talkin’
And I find myself down the hill

As a vagrant perosn

Knowing not

Where to go

After death.

Once again streets of Kathmandu start to stink after Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) fail to dispose tons of garbage to its regular landfill site at Okharpouwa. Chances of health hazards are enormous and there are many hurdles to solve this problem but changing our habit in throwing away waste at home could be one best solution. Dumping paper, glass, plastic and bio degradable waste separately will give a good option to recycle them, cutting down the amount of solid waste by 50 percent.
In the pictures: Cows grazing on pile of garbage near Dillibazar.