Rural life

Outside park boundaries we were able to get a glimpse into life in rural Nepal. The small villages we passed through were sometimes no more than a couple of houses clustered on the hillside. The largest community we walked through consisted of 50 or more houses scattered about. These are farming communities, where families grow crops on land that has been handed down for generations. One store owner in Kathmandu, told us that many like him have to leave the villages for the cities because the family land is divided up so many times among the offspring, that there is often not enough acreage left to a family for subsistence. The hillside farming methods we saw have also been passed down from ancestors.

Here's a family out cultivating a terrace with an ox drawn wooden plow.

Every bit of available land is terraced and farmed, even in the larger villages like this one.As in much of Asia, many things are done by hand. These people are threshing grain with a stick. Another man cuts firewood on a tool that looks like a paper cutter.
We passed these colorfully dressed children playing on the dirt road. They were more than happy to comply when I asked if I could take their picture. Of course they promptly asked me for 10 Rupees. More often the kids would ask us if we had any chocolate.