The River of the Hidden Land

Written by Doug Ammons

Photos by Charlie Munsey

Icy water surrounds us, so cold it hurts to the touch. The wind whips freezing droplets onto our hands and faces, and our kayaks are covered with beads of ice.

The sun is dazzling in the blue-black sky, but the wind and spray remind us that it is late November high in the Himalayas.

We glide across the clear blue water of Lake Phoksumdo. Along the lakeshore, the barren cliffs climb steeply out the water 9,000 feet above us to the hanging glaciers atop one of the Kanjiroba peaks, sitting like a blinding white jewel in the sky. We peer into the depths, but the cliffs continue down under the water, disappearing into the sun-rayed darkness. We are 30 miles from Tibet at the very headwaters of the last big unrun river of Nepal, the Thule Bheri, and in a few days we will start our descent.

A half mile across the whitecapped lake the Ringmo monastery stands on a rocky bench above the water. Faintly, bells and chanting can be heard, blending with the sounds of the lapping water and wind. Buddhist prayer flags dot the cliff faces. Charlie lets his kayak knock together with Scott's and mine, and gives us a smile. "We're here," he says. "We're finally here."

Two days ago our team of kayakers arrived by helicopter, coming all the way from Kathmandu. It took us only two hours to travel hundreds of kilometers over the roughest terrain on earth. It might have as well have been a trip to another planet. We took off from Kathmandu in the 20th Century and landed at 12,000 feet near the shores of Lake Phoksumdo in the medieval land of Dolpo, the most remote and the poorest part of Nepal.

We have an exceptionally strong team made of five close friends. Charlie Munsey and Scott Lindgren have planned this trip for three years, including an attempt turned back by high water in 1993. They have returned once more, asking Gerry Moffatt, Danielle Christ, and myself along as partners.

Charlie and Scott have been partners for some years, paddling together on many of the hardest runs in the US, Canada, and the Himalaya. Gerry is a kayaking veteran of 20 years, 15 of them in the Himalaya. Danielle is the relative newcomer, having kayaked seven years. A former top ski racer, she's one tough lady, having won the Survival of the Fittest contest and being one of the top women riverrunners. We have also asked Rajindra Gurung along, a quick-smiling raft guide and kayaker from Kathmandu. He will be the first Nepali to take part in a major river descent. To round out the crew, I bring up the rear, the old man of the group at 38.

We took off out of the fog in Kathmandu and in a few minutes were gaping through the windows at the jagged panorama of the Himalayas. The 8000 meter peak of Manaslu rose above hundreds of others. The Annapurnas and Dhauligiris came into view with their impossibly huge ice ramps looming before us, glistening white in the sun.

Cruising at 15,000 feet and a little over 100 mph we passed Pokhara, with Machhapuchhare looming over the valley. Continuing west, we flew around the end of the Dhauligiri peaks, then turned northeast up the Bheri valley toward Tibet. Knife-edged ridges rushed by on all sides as the rotors shook the entire machine. We looked at each other, crammed around our gear, then out the windows again. There was nothing between us and the ground, and it was a long way down.

We landed in the village of Dunai and met Angad Himal, a local leader and friend of Charlie and Scott's from prior recon trips. After a quick greeting we arranged with him to bring porters to Lake Phoksumdo in four days. Then we were in the air again headed up the tight canyon of the Suli Gad, one of the two main tributaries of the Thule Bheri.

In a couple of minutes Charlie shouted "There's the waterfall!" over the whine of the engine. I peered down and caught a glimpse of a white cascade falling farther than any waterfall could possibly go. "It's over a thousand feet high!" Scott yelled. Danielle and I glued our eyes to the windows, awestruck at the beauty and absurdly huge scale. In a few minutes Charlie yelled again, "There's the lake!" The helicopter took a banking turn and orange and black cliffs rushed by. As we straightened out, Phoksumdo Lake slid into view, an astonishing deep blue with sunlight sparkling brilliantly on the waves.

We landed on an untended field in a monstrous cloud of dust and quickly unloaded the gear and kayaks. The Russian pilot was in a hurry to get going. Together with the villagers, everyone ran for cover as the machine wound up and disappeared in a storm of dust and whirling blades. In a few minutes all was quiet. We were left standing around a small mountain of gear and six kayaks in a scrabbly field, with the curious Tibetans eyeing us. The problem with modern travel is that everything happens so quickly it's impossible to grasp where you are. We just covered three weeks of walking and 1000 years of civilization in four hours.

Our plan was to spend four days at the lake, then head down the Suli Gad to Dunai, paddling as much of it as we can. From there we traveled up the other main tributary, the Barbung Khola, and paddled down the main Thule Bheri 250 kilometers to the first road.

A few hours after we arrive, we are told there is a festival at the monastery nearby. The monastery has been here 65 generations and represents the religion of B'on Buddhism, a mixture of Buddhism with the old shamanistic B'on religion of Tibet, now unique to the Dolpo. A ten minute walk takes us through a scrub pine forest along the lake shore.

Reaching the monastery we enter an ageless scene. The dirt-smeared herders and farmers of Ringmo gather around the lama, who is dressed in a multicolored high peaked hat and robes. The prayer flags flap in the wind as he chants sutras from B'on scriptures. Along with the 50 or so villagers we bow our heads and are blessed by him. For several hours afterward whirling dances mesmerize the crowd. Monks wearing elaborate masks spin and jump in dances depicting battling snow leopards and deer, celebrating the harvest, and warding away mountain demons for the winter ahead. From the monastery, the all-seeing eyes of Buddha gaze serenely across the remote crags.

That night it is bitterly cold and clear, with a strong wind that blows fine glacial dust into everything. The stars are so bright they seem to jump out of the sky. I wear all my clothes inside my sleeping bag, but my teeth chatter anyway. My water bottle, full of hot tea and carefully stuffed inside my bag, is frozen solid in the morning.

The next day we outfit our boats and paddle out onto the lake. There's a rim of ice around the shore and the water is so cold its spray numbs our hands almost instantly. We hear the bells of a yak herd coming around the cliffs near the end of the lake and paddle over to watch. They appear, driven slowly along the trail by the herder and his family, each yak carrying wool bags packed with salt for trade in the lower valleys of the Dolpo.

Suddenly right in front of us, the final bridge collapses and plunges four yaks into the frigid lake. They struggle through the floating logs to the shore and lunge out, while everybody looks on dumbfounded. The bridge is gone, the herder and his family are stranded with the rest of their yaks, and several other herds are coming down. They all face a grueling week-long trip back over two 17,000 foot passes and around the Kanjiroba mountains. It looks like a disaster.

Using hand gestures, Scott and Charlie convince the herder to load his salt bags onto their kayaks. He looks dubious, but is overjoyed when they bob around the corner and in a half-dozen trips ferry his year's labor to shore. The other two herds and families show up. For the rest of the afternoon we ferry salt bags, help the families cross the cliffs, and wrestle 60 or more yaks off the ledges into the water. What first seemed like a disaster turns into a three-ringed circus, complete with a yak diving contest. Cowboy Charlie rounds the strays up in his own 'yak and drives them to shore. At sunset we finish, soaked and worn out.

Angad shows up with the porters two days later and we prepare to descend the Suli Gad, a small river which flows directly out of the southern end of the lake. It forms the Thule Bheri about 15 miles downstream when it joins the Barbung Khola. We do this section in pieces with many gaps, walking a larger portion than we kayak.

Two miles below the lake is the huge waterfall. Flowing out of the forest, the river pitches off a cliff then falls in cascades, arcing again and again into space, until it finally rumbles into a deep gorge below us. The falls is so huge that from the places it is visible on the trail it doesn't look real. Foreshortening makes it seem outlandish and small, as if it has been magically scrunched into a stream trickling over the rocks.

Large Ponderosa-like pines line the trail as it switchbacks down into the narrow canyon. Cedar trees five feet in diameter nestle in the shadowed hollows along the river. It all looks remarkably familiar, and repeatedly I have the eerie feeling that I am within a few miles of my home in western Montana. Around a sharp corner, I come face to face with a Tibetan family. They look up from a temporary shelter of stacked salt bags, their yaks patiently lying around them like huge shaggy dogs. A large mastiff growls, wagging his tail but unsure of the intruder on the trail. The surprised, soot-blackened faces gaze at me from under the blankets, hair strung with red beads. "Namaste," I say, putting my hands together. Suddenly five sets of white teeth gleam and a cheerful chorus of "Namaste!" comes back. I smile to them and continue on my way. No, this isn't Montana.

The trail climbs thousands of feet in and out of deep gorges. In some places it is carved into solid rock, and other places built of thousands of flat stones laboriously piled above the water's reach. It isn't until the third morning that we find it possible to kayak.

It is a relief finally to get on the water. Here the Suli Gad is a large and beautiful stream with continuous rapids. We are in and out of the kayaks, looking for routes. Zig-zagging through steep boulder gardens and over small waterfalls, the stream offers brilliant class IV and V technical paddling. The water retains the glacial blue color of the lake and is bitterly cold.

For the last two days the porters have obviously considered us crazy for lugging our multicolored contraptions along the difficult trail. Suddenly they are transfixed by our descent. They run along the trail, laughing and cheering like kids as we shoot over drops. All of us, porters and kayakers alike, are in high spirits when we reach the confluence of the Suli Gad and the Barbung Khola at the end of the day. In the strong afternoon wind, we get out and hike several miles upstream along the Barbung Khola to Dunai, the village which serves as the capital of the Dolpo.

We rest for several days in Dunai, working on the kayaks, packing food and supplies for the more than 200 km descent of the main river below. We visit Angad's boarding school and tree farm, the small hydropower project and the hospital he has designed and helped build. Angad is unbelievably busy, yet always works in the same quiet, patient way, slowly chipping away at the problems of the Dolpo.

It is late in the year and our trip has brought a windfall to the local economy. This is not a popular trekking area because it is so difficult to get to and so poor. Charlie asked Angad to recruit porters from Dunai and the local villages, paying the going wage of 200 rupies or roughly four dollars a day per man. For each of the twenty-odd porters this will be equivalent to almost half a year's wages.

Angad tells us the government has plans to build a road the entire 250 km up the valley, gouging it right out of the bedrock. He is ambivalent about it, pointing out this is a problem all across Nepal. Roads bring prosperity in some ways and tremendous disruption in others. His difficult goal is to decrease the isolation of the Dolpo without destroying its unique culture and beauty (see sidebar).

We trek upstream along the Barbung Khola as the river cuts a deep, narrow trough north and westward behind the Dhauligiri massif. At the end of a long hike we reach the village of Tarakot, perched like a fortress on a ridge, and make camp on a terrace above the river.

The next day we wait until late in the morning for the air temperature to rise near freezing, then put in. Immediately around the first corner we're out and scouting. There's horizonline after horizonline, but Charlie and Scott are so hyped up about finally being on the main river that there's no stopping them. They lead at a rapid pace, craning their necks from the last possible eddy above each drop and paddling aggressively.

Repeatedly, I'm impressed by their lead in the continuous class IV+ and V. The obvious thing we're all watching for are sieves, and several times the river is almost entirely choked off by boulders. But the two seem to have a sixth sense about the river, flawlessly weaving through one blind corner after another.

A mile downstream, bigger set of class V drops bank up against the rock wall on the right. After scouting, Scott and Charlie both shoot down through a maze of boulders, aggressively hit the lower set of funneling ramps, and slice through a final big diagonal into an eddy. Danielle and I follow. Gerry comes next, looking for all the world like he's in perfect control. He disappears into the big diagonal and abruptly ricochets back to the right, pitoning straight-on into the cliff. "Ugly," grimaces Scott, as Gerry shakes his head from the whiplash.

After several miles the gradient eases and the river becomes beautiful class III and easy IV, looking exactly like the open Ponderosa forest and grassy hillsides of the South Fork of the Payette River in Idaho. The only thing that's different is the view of 24,000 foot Churen Himal up the valley.

The sun is high and feels warm as long as we're sheltered, but it is desperately cold in the wind. On the sunlit side of the canyon the sidestreams all dance and sparkle down into the river. Butterflies occasionally flit across the cliffs. On the opposite side in the shadows, the sidestreams are covered in ice. We reach Dunai late in the day, all of us shivering badly.

The next day we rest in the village and finish our packing. Around lunch, Scott, who is an excellent soccer player, tracks down a ball and soon has a pack of children dribbling and passing. He's a whirlwind of chattering and jiving as he hops back and forth. An arm around one child, a big smile for another, he plays nonstop jokes with ballhandling. The kids eat it up. Afterwards, missing my own children, I pull out my bubblemaking wand and start making four foot diameter bubbles for the kids. They crowd around, eyes wide as saucers, and stare amazed at the swirling rainbows in the bubbles. Then suddenly, everyone bursts into laughter. A hooting mob chases behind the huge spheres as they wobble and rise across the courtyard in the breeze, then lazily head out over the river. Charlie and Angad, who have been deep in a serious conversation, can't stop laughing as the kids bounce up and down hollering for more.

When the packing is all done late in the evening, the cards and the sharks come out, as Gerry reveals his true forte. "Dirty Clubs?" he asks me in his Scottish brogue, eyebrows raised. "Doctor, do you know that game? No? Ahh, it's a wonderful game, let me show you..." The night spirals off into a haze of beer and cheating, as Danielle and Charlie do their best to keep Gerry in line, while Scott and I try to figure out why it is that the rules never seem to be quite the same from round to round. The next day after saying goodbye to Angad and the school children, we head down the main Thule Bheri.

The first long day of class III and IV travels down a wider valley and brings us to Tibrikot. We camp in the boulderstrewn yard of the "Hotel Famus", whose name is spelled in three different ways. The hotel consists of four tiny rooms with filthy beds. As scabies, bedbugs, and other unrecommended pets are endemic in the area, we set up our tents between the rocks in the yard.

High on a promontory above the river stands an abandoned temple with long banners streaming in the late afternoon wind. At sunset we climb up to investigate. Back up the valley the westernmost of the Dhalighari peaks rise like luminous phantoms above the clouds. The river is in deep shadow, but we can see downstream that it makes a sharp bend, splits the earth and disappears into a gorge. All has gone well so far, but the most difficult sections lie somewhere ahead.

The next day, Rajindra paddles through the long lead-in rapid with us, pushy and technical class IV+. He has been paddling intermittently along the river, and portaging the harder rapids since he is used to big water instead of planning and executing complex lines. He handles this demanding rapid very well. Afterward, his hand gestures and smile tell the story, "I came through down, nice and easy. It's okay. I pass through boulders smooth, and the waves. I did - I did success!" Just downstream, the rapids increase to class V and head into the canyon.

Rounding the corner, we suddenly change worlds. Immense rock walls arch up out of the water on each side, and tall cacti are scattered about. The rest of the day we swap leads as the river alternatively perks up to class V and calms down.

That evening we're treated to a fantastic light show. As the sunset lingers thousands of feet above on the walls, the spans of golden rock reflect the light back and forth until the entire canyon shines a lustrous yellow-gold. There are no shadows. Every rock and tree is luminous. The river, and even the air itself, are glowing.

For the next four or five days the river stays a delightful mix of everything from Class II to Class V. Again and again, we have brilliant technical IV to IV+ rapids from put-in to take-out. There's every kind of drop imaginable, with an occasional gnarly class V thrown in to keep us on our toes.

The late fall weather holds, and each day dawns clear and cold. Every morning we go through the same routine of prying frozen puddles out of the bottoms of the kayaks, and knocking the ice off our spray skirts and drytops.

As the days roll on, all of us battle colds and injuries from the nonstop action. Tendonitis, muscle spasms, bruises, and nasty infections all take their toll. One night we all bemoan our ailments around the fire until Charlie breaks in. "You're a sad spectacle, gentlemen," he shakes his head in mock disgust, carefully cleaning his own badly burned foot, "Remind me next time I do a hard river to go with guys who are healthy."

On the seventh day down from Dunai, suddenly the gradient takes off. The continuous class IV becomes solid class V+. We spend an entire day on the opening rapid, nearly a half mile long, steep and funky. All of the scouting has to be done from the river terrace 100 feet above the water, and we know that we can't see many of the subtleties. It looks runnable. There's only one way to find out.

I go first and get all scrambled up, flipping right after the opening moves. I can feel the boulders whipping by past my head, quickly crank a roll, then sketch into an eddy. After a few breaths, it's another 300 yards of piling into cushions, boofing, and punching holes. Scott enters, almost gets knocked over, but regains his balance with a deft flick of his paddle. He quickly cuts far left and over two big ledges, then back into the center to miss a sieve. Punching through a bizarre exploding hole, he tail-stands for a good 40 feet downstream before he gets the boat down and slices through the last set of moves. Danielle paddles strongly, but hesitates near the bottom and a hole typewriters her all the way far left. She finishes the rapid with an awkward run over several ledges against the boulders on the bank. Charlie is next, and the rapid doesn't take any guff from him either. It violently jams his boat under at the crux until only the top of his helmet is visible. He pops out like a cork and rushes through the second half of the rapid, huffing and puffing into an eddy far below. Gerry is on line too, but gets pounded back and forth by the holes. At the bottom he looks like someone who's gone a few more rounds in the ring than he wanted to. As we stuff our throw ropes and prepare to make camp, Gerry sums it up, "I think it's safe to say that rapid gave us a good beating." We go to sleep knowing the next section will be even harder.

Scott and I are up before daylight and head down the trail to scout. Charlie has already run on ahead on his own. We're astounded as the river races around corner after corner, pounding though mazes of huge boulders. Every single section has big holes and wild corkscrewy water. It is continuous class V+ for at least 5 miles, but Scott and I agree it should go. It looks wild.

We are back in camp eating breakfast when Charlie returns. He is one amped boy. "This is it! This is it!" he shouts. "I recognized the rapid where we stopped scouting two years ago." He's practically hopping he's so excited. "The pieces are all here. This is the big section, the main gorge."

We start early in the morning. The first rapid has a snakelike lead-in through the boulders to a big ledge on a corner. Scott rockets down, cuts tight against the inside and plummets over. Hitting the hole at the bottom, his boat squooshes wildly upward like a watermelon seed. He struggles against a current seam erupting like a geyser, then whips into an eddy. Charlie's next around the corner, looking relaxed and composed. He rides high onto the cushion against the cliff and slickly banks the corner like an Indy 500 racer. I try the same with less elegant results. Finally, Gerry romps into view, jaw set, arms pumping, and gets stuffed straight down the gut of the drop. We all cringe and groan "ooooh," but after some creative flails of his paddle, he bounces up with a surly look and catches an eddy below us.

It's a wild, wild day. The river is one continuous horizonline. We're in and out of the boats scouting, bouncing possible lines off each other. There's maybe 3000 cfs and a gradient of 350 feet per mile, but even big numbers don't do it justice. Truck and housesized boulders litter the riverbed, forcing complex moves in extremely powerful current. Sometime late in the afternoon, I turn and look up the river in astonishment, nudging Charlie and Scott. Behind us, the river stairsteps up into the sky.

We head downstream. In some places the main channel is choked off or slams into a rock sieve, and we maneuver into the steep smaller channels. In one rapid, the river bounds down a frightening series of ledges directly into a monstrous undercut boulder. In another, there is a bizarre zig zag of four nasty ledges in a row, hammering us around like maniacal pinballs.

Charlie leads into a deceptive drop, spins on the corner, and disappears. Scott cranes his neck, suddenly stiffens and shouts, "He's vertically pinned!" and takes off like a madman, planing into a ridiculously small eddy just above the drop. Charlie flushes out, cranks a quick roll and we see that his paddle is broken in half. Stroking hard with the single blade, he cuts into an eddy just above the next big drop. When we reach him he's not very happy. "Bow got hung up in the rocks under the ledge. Broke my paddle prying out." he explains, then looks sadly at the shattered fiberglass and adds, "New paddle, too." I give him my spare breakdown paddle and we continue. Near sunset, the rapids ease off, and we know we're through the crux.

After two days of mixed difficult water, we camp at Rhadijhula. Pulling our kayaks up onto the bank, dozens of curious villagers crowd closely around us. "This is what a goldfish feels like," says Scott with a rueful smile. "There's only one show in town, and we're it." Gerry strikes up an animated conversation with several locals, laughter and gestures punctuate scattered English and Nepali words. Danielle says, "You'd think after 15 years over here he'd be fluent, but Gerry does things differently. I think he only knows 30 words of Nepali, but he knows exactly when to use them."

100 kilometers of paddling are left, down a much larger and milder river. On the 20th day since we landed at the lake, we say goodbye to our porters and head downstream. Every time we pass a village, hordes of children line the river, calling and laughing. We paddle past several cremation ceremonies and bow our heads in respect. Hour turns into hour and everyone settles into their own thoughts. The path downriver is clear.

We slowly come out of the mountains and into the lower hills of the Bheri valley. In place of the barren mountains there is ever-thickening jungle. At nightfall we stop, exhausted from fighting a strong headwind, and sleep on the stones beneath the broad branches of a Bo tree. The following morning we're up before first light, paddling into the mist. After several hours, I see Charlie and the others climbing up a roadcut with their boats on their shoulders. It's the end of the paddling. After 21 days, 250 kilometers, and 10,000 feet of whitewater, we've reached the first road.

We trudge heavily into the small village that has grown up around the road head. A large crowd surrounds a junker bus, its engine revving as black exhaust pours out. Gerry, who has hustled a few minutes ahead of us, yells, "It's the only one this whole week! We've got two minutes!" We rush madly, stuffing our wet gear into the boats, then tie them down on the top of the bus among the bicycles, baskets of vegetables, and squawking chickens. We hurriedly cram ourselves inside. The gears grind and the bus lurches forward, people shoe-horned into the aisles and seats. I find myself looking into the dark eyes of three young children who peer shyly through a forest of legs. Outside, the morning mist is lifting softly off the jungled hills.

We've traveled from the tenth century down the river to the 20th Century, and made the only bus for a week by two minutes.

Passing out of the village, piles of garbage line the road, plastic, painted signs and trash are everywhere. Sickly looking dogs forage, chased by small children who stop to play within a few feet of the passing bus. After weeks of beauty in the mountains, we're suddenly confronted with the problems of the Third World as it struggles into modern times. Nodding toward the scene Charlie says quietly, "That's why Angad doesn't want the road into the Dolpo."

The driver turns on earsplitting Hindu pop music. Dust and exhaust come in the broken windows as we bounce past the bridge to Surkhet. We're headed home, a 30 hour drive. It won't be until sometime tomorrow that we rattle, bleary eyed and exhausted, back into the noise and dirt and crowds of Kathmandu. As the villages slowly bounce past, I'm not the only one thinking back to the clear water of Lake Phoksumdo. Now more than ever we're surrounded by the seeming opposites of this land - modern and ancient, dirt and beauty, poverty and spiritual wealth. It is the chaos of Nepal, and it remains as inscrutable as the all-seeing eyes of Buddha.

***

Editor's note: This story is an excerpt from a chapter in an upcoming book, Whitewater Descents and Other River Journies, (Water Nymph Press) edited by Doug Ammons.

An Emmy award winning film was made of the trip, "Thule Bheri - River of the Hidden Land" for the Outdoor Life Cable Channel.

Sidebars:

Angad Sidebar

Often expeditions to remote places depend upon the good will of local people. Angad Himal of Dunai helped our team immensely. Soft spoken and gentle, he heads a small group of leaders in the Dolpo who are trying to solve the many problems of this very poor region: medical care, deforestation, sanitation, and most of all, education. He runs a boarding school which takes in children from the outlying mountain villages. Our team sponsored a child from Ringmo, and has contributed a guitar, music, and many books to the school. If you wish to donate to the school, please contact Doug Ammons at 415 Keith Ave., Missoula, MT 59801 (406-543-3917). Your donations will help these people more than you can ever imagine. Thank you.

Charlie and Scott sidebar:

Charlie Munsey and Scott Lindgren are best friends and two of the world's top young expedition kayakers. Distinctive characters, Charlie has about the wryest sense of humor on the planet, while Scott's style is full-bore, shoot-from-the-hip. They make quite a team. Charlie is also an accomplished adventure photographer and Scott is a cinematographer, making two of his own films for his company, Driftwood Productions. They spend their free time looking for wild new rivers to paddle, and bribing Russian helicopter pilots with vodka to scout obscure places.

Editor's note: This story is an excerpt from a chapter in an upcoming book, Whitewater Descents and Other River Journies, (Water Nymph Press) edited by Doug Ammons.

An Emmy award winning film was made of the trip, "Thule Bheri - River of the Hidden Land" for the Outdoor Life Cable Channel.

Sidebar:

Angad Sidebar

Often expeditions to remote places depend upon the good will of local people. Angad Himal of Dunai helped our team immensely. Soft spoken and gentle, he heads a small group of leaders in the Dolpo who are trying to solve the many problems of this very poor region: medical care, deforestation, sanitation, and most of all, education. He runs a boarding school which takes in children from the outlying mountain villages. Our team sponsored a child from Ringmo, and has contributed a guitar, music, and a library to the school. If you wish to donate to the school, please contact Catherine Inman, Friends of Dolpa, email address catherine_inman@hotmail.com. Your donations will help these people more than you can ever imagine. Thank you.

***