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“Cumree, Dashi-deli and Sewaroo” global fairy tale hunters and followers of our quest. Just in case that’s all a bit double-dutch, then it’s a big hello in the local languages of the Lepcha, Bhutia and Limboo nations. Wow what a journey we continue to have! I had a whirl-wind jumble-ride of night buses, tuc-tucs and rick-shaws, cycling over the Nepalese boarder in the twinkling dawn, to then climb higher and higher through West Bengal in sardined jeeps and finally through the gates of Sikkim. Here my base is inside the Hidden Forest clinging to the cliffs of the cloud mountain city: Gangtok.

Sikkim is a very special port-of-call during our journey of discovery; it was even called the “land of fairy-folk” by travellers from Europe, who visited here over one hundred years ago. Can you imagine the journey they had to take?

If you are following the blog missions I am getting from fellow fairy tale hunters, you will know that I got my walking books on and headed for Dzongbu.

Here you will hear the mighty river, which travels from Kongchen Kongchlo (Mount Khangchendzonga) all the way to the Bay of Bengal. Do you remember when I sent you video from the banks of the Brahmaputra at the start of our adventure? Amazingly it’s the same river. Look out for the river at the end of this article.

The Lepcha people have many stories to tell us. Story telling is very important to them. Some of the tales are very scary. Look out for Ajengarr tales coming your way soon!

I was helped with my searching by all the family at mayallyang.com see if you can find them on the internet.

We went from splashing in the crystal river that brings life to the valley, to gazing at the “Big Stone” that is the home of creation from lofty temple summits.

 

The country side here is teaming with amazing animals. You can hear them calling across the jungle.

I can tell I will find lots to do here, if the guardians will let me and my permit lasts long enough.

Guess what! I was very fortunate to meet the students of yet another school. Take a look at the Mayel Lyang Academy school workshop article to find out more about them and what we got up to. This is the river at the bottom of their magical gardens.

Under water spot. Welcome fairy-tale hunters to the secret bit, under the whirl pools…..I have a giant enormous clue for you. If you search hard enough you mind find the treasure we have been looking for buried in the web-site! Try looking for “Jyamphi Moong”, and remember not to whistle late at night.

Welcome back Fairy Tale Hunters. I hope you have enjoyed the last few articles I have put on the web-site. What a great time we have had discovering lost stories of the yeti and meeting master fairy tale hunters.

Not to mention tracking goats, tigers and wolves. Take a look at the school workshop articles to find out more about them.

As an extra treat I joined in with the celebrations of reading Swastani. It has taken people a whole month (full moon to full moon) to read this story and I visited them on the final day in the river village of Sanku. The story is Hindi and involves a princess turning into mud! I wonder if you can find it on the internet.

The reason for the festival every year is that the story reminds us to connect with relatives, which we have been separated from for a long time.

The last few days I have spent dashing about saying good-bye to everyone. Can you remember all the amazing people I have met? Kathmandu is a city over flowing with changes and growing bigger every day.

Can you remember all the amazing story adventures we have had? Here are some clues: The Woodcutter, the river Princess and Mani, King’s Castles, the Flute and the Talking bamboo, the strong horse called Lung ta, A Dancing yeti and the Yeti’s Coat.

Can you also remember all the places I have been on our missions to hunt for Fairy Tales and what I did? Here are some more clues to help your memories: Bumpy bus rides, Stars over Everest, thousands of steps and footprints in the snow, the many dragons and did I mention the football pitches (maybe I forgot to tell you about them?).

So it’s back on the buses and over the mountains, but this time it’s good bye Nepal and soon it will be hello Sikkim. I must go and pack up my bag of tricks for the ride through the night, further east and further back in time.

The Fairy Tale Hunter says a massive “thank you Nepal, for your rich treasure trove of fairy tales”.

The students of Life Vision Academy spent their final workshop day with Andy remembering all the fun we have had together. We wrote down our memories and ideas for future work and then we celebrated with one final fairy tale story! It went something like this…..
The Yeti’s Coat. A Fairy Tale of the Yeti.
Below the snow covered mountains there once was a girl who said she was old enough to clean and cook potatoes. At bed time her grandmother said she would tell her a fairy tale, but she complained that she did not believe in fairy tales and that they were for only for babies.

The next morning the girl decided to go out collecting fur from the thicket at the end of the track so she could make a coat for the winter.

Not far down the path the girl met a furry thing and it said:
“If you walk with me I shall show you where you can find lots of fur”.
So they went on together side by side.

When they came to a bend in the path the girl heard great and terrible shouting of all kinds. The girl did not like the shouting putting her hands to her ears saying:
“Ohhhhh what a horrible noise! I wish it would go away”.
The furry thing said “here take my ears”. So the girl put the ears on her head and then all she could hear was beautiful bird song. After this they went on their way.

Not much further along the path they came to another bend, the girl said:
“Poooooooor! What a terrible smell! I feel sick; I wish it would go away”. The furry thing said “here take my nose to wear instead”. So the girl put the nose on and then she could only smell beautiful flowers. “oh that’s so much better”, she said to the furry creature and they continued along the path.

Soon enough they came to yet another bend in the path. Here the girl said “Baaaaaah! What a terrible taste! I will surely be sick if it does not go away”. The furry thing said “here please take my tongue” and when the girl put it in her mouth all she could taste was sweet honey. “Oh that’s so much better” said the girl and the two of them continued along the path.

Not much further down the path they began to walk through some tall plants. “Owe, owe, owe! These plants are stinging me” said the girl “I wish the pain would go away”. The furry thing said “here take my fingers”. After the girl put the fingers over hers all she could feel was soft grass and she said “oh that’s much better, thank you very much”, and they continued to walk further along the path.

Finally they came to the end of the path where there was a large clearing but what the girl saw did not please her. As far as she could she everything was burnt and the ground looked black. “Oh no” the girl said “what a horrible view. I wish I could not see it”. The furry thing said “don’t worry, here take my eyes”. After the girl put the eyes on all she could see was beautiful flowers, which made her happy again.

The girl said that she was very tired after walking so far and that she would lie down to sleep for a while and that she could collect fur from the thicket when she woke up.

When she woke up the furry thing was no-where to be seen. She found to her surprise that she had been sleeping on a lovely bed of fur, it felt very cosy indeed. She decided to take the bed of fur home with her as it would be perfect for making a coat.

Back at home she started to make a coat and soon discovered that there was enough fur to make a big coat, a hat, some gloves and even some shoes.

Once she had finished stitching she tried everything on at once. She smiled, as it felt very warm. She was so happy that she went out of the house and played in the snow at the bottom of the mountain, running up and down with her arms in the air, jumping about making big foot prints.

When she got home she hung up her clothes in her cupboard and went down stairs for some tea. All the adults of the village were there talking very quickly waving their arms in the air.
“We saw a Yeti! A Yeti! It left giant foot prints everywhere”.
The girl listened to their stories of the yeti far into the night, as they all kept warm safely by the fire-side.

Thank-you Life Vision Academy for all your hard work over the last eight weeks.
This story has been written by Andy Comley (2012), who is a member of The Guild of Fairy Tale Hunters, during his research. To find the full story with his illustrations it is published as a story article on yetifairytales.com

 

The Wolf and Goat Stories. A workshop at Life Vision Academy.

The Story
Once upon a time there lived a father and his only daughter, her mother having died.

The father decided that it would be a good idea to get married again.


When the new wife arrived to live with them she brought her daughter with her too. The two children were about the same age, but soon it was clear that the new mother did not like her new step daughter.


One morning the new mother sent her step daughter to pick the fish shaped sweet bread from the special bread tree.

As the daughter was collecting the sweet bread she heard the voices of an old man and woman below her calling to her:
“Give us some sweet bread”

She gave the couple bread, but they said that it tasted of mud. Again the couple asked for sweet bread, but again when the daughter gave them some bread they said that it tasted of mud. For a third time they asked for sweet bread, but this time when the daughter gave them bread the caught hold of her and took her back to their house as a prisoner!



What the girl did not know was that the old couple were ghosts.

During the day the ghosts made the girl cook and clean their house whilst they went to the river to sharpen their knives. At bedtime the old woman ghost called to the girl to come and sleep in her bed as she would be warmer beside her. However as the girl slept the ghosts cut her with their knives and ate pieces of her.

In the morning the girl felt itchy and thought she had been cut but she could not find any wound.


So it continued until one day while the daughter was making bread a mouse came into the kitchen and said “sweak sweak…give me some bread and I will tell you why you feel pain”. So the girl gave the mouse some bread, but the mouse said nothing. The mouse stayed in the kitchen and said again “sweak sweak…give me some bread and I will tell you why you feel pain”. So the girl again gave the mouse some bread, but the mouse said nothing.

Again the mouse said “sweak sweak…give me some bread and I will tell you why you feel pain”. But this time the girl said that if she gave him some bread but he continued to say nothing then she would hit him with a stick. The mouse took the bread and said “sweak sweak…you feel pain because the old couple are ghosts and that they are slowly eating you as you sleep in their bed at night”.


“What shall I do?” asked the girl.
“Next-time the ghosts go to the river take their jewels in your pocket and then take some charcoal from the fire place. Chew the charcoal and then spit on each step as you leave the house. Lock the door tight and them run to your home. This the girl did.

When the ghosts returned from the river they found the door to their house locked shut and they called out “let us in”. From inside the house the fire called back in reply “I’m coming”.

The ghosts repeated their call to be let in, and the fire wood continued to reply that it was coming. This continued all day long. They girl made it back to her home safely and told her story to her step mother showing her the jewels.

But she forgot to mention the mouse or that the old couple were ghosts.


The step mother was very impressed with the jewels and decided to send her own daughter to pick some sweet bread. The step mother’s daughter went to the tree and started to collect sweet bread.

Before too long she heard the voice of an old couple below her asking her to give them bread. In the same way as before the old couple kidnapped the girl and took her to their home. In the same way as before they made her work in their home cooking and cleaning whilst they went to the river to sharpen their knives. In the same way as before they invited her into their bed and she awoke feeling pain.

One morning the mouse came into the kitchen and said “sweak sweak…give me some bread and I will tell you why you feel pain”. So the girl gave the mouse some bread, but the mouse said nothing so the girl killed the mouse.

At home the step mother waited for her daughter to return home with lots of jewels.

Whilst she was admiring herself in the mirror she began to wonder why her daughter was taking so long to bring her the jewels. A crow landed outside the window and said:

“I have seen her daughter, but she was only bones”.

The mother did not believe the crow and went to the sweet bread tree.

But all she found there were bones.




The Game of Dho-cholecha or Bak-choy.

Draw the grid pattern. Find 4 Wolves and 20 goats.
Wolves can eat goats (goats can’t eat wolves). Wolves eat goats by “leap frogging” them if there is a clear space.
Game starts with Wolves (or Tigers) already waiting in each corner. Goats go first by placing a goat on any intersection. Then a Wolf moves one place away from where it is lurking.
Goats must add a new goat each turn after that, taking turns with the moving wolves, until all goats are on the board.
If the wolves can-not move the goats have won (which can happen at the point when the last goat goes on the board).
If the wolves eat 5 goats it is impossible for the goats to win and the wolves have one.
Have fun………
This story article is the result of a combination of recording the story telling of Sareeta Sanu of Patan and Keasr Lall of Kathmandu. The images are from the adventures of hunting for fairy tales in Nepal and those at an art workshop at Life Vision Academy School, Kaushaltar (09.02.12) and the theme music is from a live musician on the streets of Dakshinkali who knew the story as well. The game at the end of this article is also Dho-cholecha and it can be found all over Nepal usually drawn on the ground in public spaces. Dho-cholecha is also commonly known and interchangeable as Bak-chi, which is “tiger and goat”.

Namaste global fairy tale hunters, I hope you are continuing to enjoy our adventure as I hunt for fairy tales of the yeti in Nepal. Mission control, back in the UK, tells me that we have had over 1000 visitors to our website. If you have recently found us then welcome aboard, and please join the crew by sending your ideas and artwork via the contact link.

I’m back in Kathmandu, which is full of thunder storms and torrents of water, but just for now I’m going to tell you about what happened last week with a dungeon.

After lots of exciting meetings and interviews with artists who specialise in folk tales and children’s stories I took a mission from Mr. Kesar Lall (you can articles about him on the site too) and left for the torrents of the Trisuli River Valley. Soon I was clambering over rocks and spanning the cascades on rope bridges.

A night on the river bank, with dreams full of jumping fish and then a morning of an ancient path of 3000 stone steps up to the Palaces of Nuwakot. This is the Palace of King that concurred Nepal hundreds of years ago. Do you remember the ruins we discovered in Guansahar? Well this King was responsible for them. It is here that he made his prisoners build nine stories of dungeons. Can you imagine the footsteps in the snow?

Here in this secluded mountain top village rests the oldest temple in Nepal. No one knows when it was made. It is covered in pictures and carvings I dare not show you!

Thankfully the current guards did not put me in the dungeons and I escaped to a local farm garden where I was surrounded by a paradise of flowering banana palms, humming birds and all the delights of a Royal King.

The valley is quite now except for the raging river far below. I walked for three more days criss-crossing the valley, staying in local village house relying on my broken Nepalese to find food and shelter.

I climbed countless steps and then more steps only to find the forts of modern day guards, as the border crossing with Tibet and China rises less than twenty miles away. The morning mists concealed the echoes of chain gangs building new bridges through the mountains.

I get the impression the yeti stories are still here though. I discovered that his was the valley of the stories of ghosts and dungeons, of prisoners and hidden magic. Someone keeps leaving me clues at every turn.

Don’t worry I found two more stories and they are very special indeed. They are safe in my treasure pot and I will tell them to you soon enough. For now the sun sets behind the national plant of Nepal in a Kings paradise garden (I wonder if you can tell what it is?).

I returned back to Kathmandu because it was fast approaching the full moon and the end of Swastani month. This is a special festival all about one story which takes a whole Luna month to read. To find out if I made it you will have to search for the article.

This will be my last week in Nepal. How time has flown bye so quickly I struggle to fathom. So many new fairy tale hunters have joined us on the way it is difficult to think of a number. Before I leave there is plenty for me to do. I must leave now to go to Life Vision Academy fort their latest art workshop (you can find out by reading the Dho cholecha article). After Nepal, you ask? Well, keeping watching this space and you’ll find out.

What brought us together to be sat in a peaceful garden one Saturday afternoon in north Kathmandu? I full of questions and carrying a treasure chest full of children’s creative ideas, pinned together by nothing but imagination and wonder at the mysteries of the Yeti. You surrounded by the plants you have tended, your family raised by stories spanning a life that is bound by nearly a century. Our talk is overflowing with adventure, discovery and loss, of ancient Kings and their castles and Fairy Tale hunting.

A greeting again, from the Fairy Tale Hunter and it is my pleasure to introduce to you Mr. Keasar Lall. Born in the 1920’s he has spent his entire life collecting folk tales from the length and breadth of Nepal and most importantly for us he has specialised in discovery tales of the Yeti. We can try to conjure in our minds the images of his adventures that took place before Nepal even had roads. We are very fortunate to meet him on our journey and I hope that you can spend some time reading his inspiring books. Below is a short article for you, of how we spent the afternoon discussing why we hunt for fairy tales and what we have found.

I asked Mr. Lall what he did when he met people and how he recorded their stories. You have to remember that when he started his collecting adventures it was a long time ago. Some of the people he met were not used to strangers from far away visiting their hidden villages in the mountains. Sometimes they spoke very differently or were frightened or amazed at technology such as tape recorders. So Mr. Lall had to be very patient and inventive when meeting new communities. One of the most useful things in his “Bag of Tricks” was the stories his was carrying to tell others. If he could tell a story then other people would remember their stories. It reminded me that it was similar with us, using the stories that the children in UK had put in my “Bag of Tricks” to tell the children around the world. Mr. Lall was interested to know of the art of Fairy Tale writing in the UK and he remembered that the Fairy Tales hunted by The Brothers Grimme from Germany, had amazed and inspired him when he was a child. One of his favourite stories as a child was Hansel and Gretel.

When Mr. Lall became older he started his work as a writer by having the confidence to send stories over the mountains and across the jungles all the way to India. His first works were printed in newspapers far away from his home in Delhi. He noticed that sometimes people were not telling children stories anymore and he quickly became passionate to stop the old folk stories from being lost forever. These were the stories that had been past to children from parents, grandparents and great grand-parents over generations for hundreds and thousands of years. This quest became his life’s work and has resulted in many books and travels across the world.

Even though Mr. Lall has passed on his collection of sketch books and reports from his travels to the Society of Nepal Folklore he still had a special bookshelf at home with his books. We spent a long time looking at his amazing collected works. As I was passed each copy I wondered at all the hard work that had gone into each one, the mountains and valleys crossed and the places he had to find to stay the night. Several time he worked with illustrators who would draw pictures to accompany the tales he had discovered. Mr. Lall said that pictures were a wonderful way of telling stories, though he was very surprised about the results when people from other countries had tried to imagine what Nepal and its people looked like with-out even visiting. Several of his books had been printed in different languages so the whole world could have access to the tales.

I was very privileged to be shown Mr. Lall’s latest work. He showed me a new manuscript for his latest book on folk stories and his creative Poems. He was even able to help me with an unfinished “Dho-cholecha” I had found. Dho-cholecha is a type and a collection of local Newari children story telling. You can find this story in a featured article where it was the theme in a creative workshop at Life Vision Academy, which enabled the story to be passed onto another generation.

Too soon the sun had passed from the garden and I left for the busy streets of Kathmandu. If I am lucky I may return on another afternoon to Mr. Lalls amazing world of Fairy Tale adventures.

Mr. Lall has kindly contributed some of his work to support us in our project and you can find his writing and creative ideas in featured articles on the web-site. There is brief collection of related poems, “The Dho-cholecha” story and something very special to do with our quest at yetifairytales.com. Take a look at the site’s book shelf to find some of his books, use the links we have supplied for more direction via book publishers, or look the titles up on the internet for your-self.

This article was completed in last week of January 2012 by the Fairy Tale Hunter who was very grateful for the support of Mr. Lall’s family, the staff of Ratna Pustak Bhandar and the Horizon book shop.