Nepal’s Aid System Is Broken. So These Lifesavers Hacked It
The village of Dandagaun is hard to reach on a good day. The access road starts at the Bhote Koshi River, a Class V waterway that drains Himalayan glaciers, then heads more or less straight up for 5,000 feet, past tiny villages and mountain streams. After 10 long miles it curves into a bowl that opens to the northeast. Here sit terraced fields of rice and corn cut into the hillside. Technically speaking, the village, in Nepal’s Sindhupalchowk district, lies in the Himalayan foothills. But these are foothills in the way that the sun is a medium-size star. The ridgeline above the village rises sharply for a quarter mile. Looking at it requires straining your neck directly up.
In the morning, when light first cuts through the gorge and fills the bowl, Dandagaun is the kind of place that could change an agnostic’s mind. To the south you can see the Bhote Koshi cutting its way through the deep gorge. To the northeast the Himalayas shine like so many white knives. Tibet is 20 miles away. For the mix of 1,400 or so Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians who live here, the presence of the divine is a tactile fact, visible each and every day. Of course there are gods. They live in the peaks just upriver.
