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.