My Nepal Diary - III - A Game of Carom

My Nepal Diary - III

A Game of Carom
Lo-Manthang --- Kagbeni
Carom and Archery Vs Trekking, Cycling and Marathon

As i understood the Pahāṛī; पहाड़ी people are interested in games like Carom and Archery compared to the non-Pahāṛī; पहाड़ी people. Non Pahāṛī; पहाड़ी people normally go for trekking cycling or Marathon which for a Pahāṛī; पहाड़ी is a daily routine not a game. 

  Lo - Manthang School: A game of Carom

 Intense game

 The teacher scolding them for making noise

 Place Changed but not the game nor the screaming nor the intensity 

Kagbeni:World Archery Championship (world cup)

 Team A

 Scorer

 The Target

 Team B

 

The South col Trekkers, Mustang Marathon and the Hong Kong based Cyclist

 

My Nepal Diary - II - crossing a landslide

My Nepal Diary - II

Crossing a Landslide 
Chele  

Waiting for the road to get clear. The group is debating we should start walking or wait...
landslide looks small from the distance but it isn't. suddenly we see a yellow thing moving near the landslide - AHh the clearing process has started. 

Still few decide to walk (including myself)-- others wait for the road to get clear so they can take a vehicle  --- hmm one sick patient - we have to reach Jomsom as soon as we can. 

Waiting means few hours and our debate is --walking at least will release our tension and shred our frustration. Not realizing the landslide is..hmm

hmm sick patient on a pony?

I try and climb the rumble and the scraper truck looks quite aggressive. The man doesn't look happy-- so i decide to wait.....

It is almost 23-24 hours and at last we get through a friend in India to tell we are safe...and give her all responsibility to inform all our families.

The group looks relaxed -- fingers crossed

My Nepal Diary

My Nepal Diary - I
2015

Before I narrate  A story - I would like to start My Nepal Diary by posting some nice, beautiful and positive photographs.

These images I have taken on the route of Lo-Manthang, upper Mustang, Nepal

Mustang - The Forbidden Kingdom
one of the last Shangri-la’s in the Himalaya. A lost kingdom bordering Tibet which has a regulated entry of not more than three thousand visitors per year. 

Sculpted canyons and fantastic rock formations, medieval villages, ruined fortresses, royal palaces, unexplored Neolithic cave complexes, Tibetan Buddhist gompas and snow-peaks characterize this spectacular region, a thumb sticking up into the Tibetan plateau. Upper Mustang and its walled capital, Lo Manthang, is a remote and starkly beautiful region, home to Buddhism as well as the remnants of the older, mystical Bon religion.
http://www.southcol.com/

My walk is from Jomsom to Lo-Manthang

 These images are not in chronology -- they are just a good feel pic

 Pony riders traveling to Lo by following The Kali Gandaki river. 

    Ruins of Gelling

 Kagbeni Monastery

 New traffic

    Lo kings horses

   on The Kali Gandaki river.

POI / भारत के लोग

POI / भारत के लोग

  Installation details:

1. Printed mosquito net of 12ft height
1. POI video: 45 min duration

1. Map video: 5min approx. duration

1. Audio File
 

Credits:

Sound design: V. P. Mohandas

Compositor: Manish Raut
Editor: Archana Hande & Rikhav Desai

Image credit: Dr, Bhau Daji Lad Museum.

Installation site: Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum,

Most of the images in this installation draws from the Museum’s collection of rare books, photographs, paintings and prints to essay a reading of how an Indian identity was constructed in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries by the British. Using the Museum collection as the frame of reference Hande creates a topography of images both contemporary and historic that emerge like ghosts and disappear in a shroud that is actually a mosquito net, ephemera from the past seeking to inhabit a tangible form in the here and now.

The artist speaks of her interest in the idea of how identity has no origin and is a constantly shifting ontological construction that changes with each passing moment. However she explains that the human need for security and certainty prevails and we are co-opted into believing that which others wish us to believe. The issue of what is authentic, what is pure and original as a cultural construction is questionable and difficult to substantiate as the very act of practice in the present mediates and changes the original.

Hande uses the idea of a mosquito net, a British import now used ubiquitously in India, as the protective layer which encloses the ephemeral images of the hundreds of types of people which she has sourced both from her own personal collection and from the Museum. She speaks of a semiotics of identity, signifiers which become codes of connection or disharmony. “This language is performed through a documentary practice which transforms the original idea in its very practice,” she says.Using video, assemblage, popular imagery and sounds to create an immersive experience the artist asks us to reflect on who we are and how we have come to see ourselves....
Tasneem Zakaria Mehta