Women, cuckoos, and new generations among darkening peaks: temporalities of climate crisis in the Himalayas and beyond

1 Introduction¹

In Himalayan environments across centuries humans, non-human animals and plants, and more-than-human beings inhabiting the landscape have been entangled in complex relationships that can be seen as “cosmopolitical ecologies” (see Kuyakanon et al., 2022), involving temporal continuities and ruptures. Throughout Tibetan and Himalayan history, climatic disruptions have represented challenges and opportunities for the people affected and impacted cultural life.² The underlying processes have been characterized by a sense of temporal multiplicity, linked to seasonality; extraordinary human and natural events; and religious and political configurations shaping time-reckoning systems. Limi, as a frontier area, reflects this complexity: the recurring patterns of human lifecycles marked by the regularity of the movements of heavenly bodies and seasonal weather patterns; regular movements of people and herds in the vertical landscape; the cuckoo song heralding spring and the ritual calendar marking each significant point in time; which are subject to expected variability and uncertainties in Himalayan high-altitude ecologies. Recently, however, unusual weather events and shifting seasons, as well as unprecedented transformations in the landscape including fast-developing infrastructures, political upheavals, volatile border geopolitics and accelerating outmigration, feed the sense that multiple interlinked crises are emerging, sometimes associated with the Buddhist and Hindu concepts of the “degenerate age or age of strife” (Skt: Kaliyuga, Tib: du nyigma). Whilst ideas of impermanence and variability have been integral to Himalayan embodied traditions and their temporal horizons, the scale and the pace of current disruptions are perceived as unprecedented. Local perceptions can thus also be seen as mapping onto a mountainous dimension of the global polycrisis (Henig and Knight, 2023). Living with these tensions, the Limi people in north-western Nepal are not alone: their experiences mirror those of other communities in the Himalayas (see, e.g., Millington, 2024; Nie et al., 2021), in the Alps (see, e.g., Nodari, forthcoming) and in the Andes (see, e.g., Bold and Patty Mullisaca, forthcoming). Whilst the comparative dimension can only be hinted at in this context, it certainly deserves further attention in the future. Based on long-term ethnographic research and collaboration, this article looks at communities of high-altitude agropastoralists in the Limi Valley (Humla District, Karnali, West Nepal, see Figures 1–2)—an area that has recently been affected by a range of extreme events hastening its depopulation. The most recent major event was a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) in May 2025, followed by an extraordinary monsoon induced flood, and another one in July 2026.³ Whilst used to a life of remoteness, autonomous governance and many months of inaccessibility during the winter because of snow on the passes, Limi is now rapidly transforming. Communities have been increasingly fragmenting around decisions and responses to old and new challenges and the population is dwindling. As settlements become “ghost villages,”⁴ some of the Limi people strongly attached to their 11th century Buddhist monastery (see Figure 3) and their locality have tried to tackle their many challenges to remain (or, in rare cases, return). This rapidly unfolding situation has brought together multiple temporalities in a sort of suspended “now” and has developed a specific gendered dimension: whilst men, especially monks and officials, are the traditional knowledge holders, it is women who currently act as key custodians of many aspects of Limi's living heritage. Women have undertaken a substantial part of the work to maintain and expand the irrigation system during the COVID-19 crisis. It is also women who are locally most involved in efforts to promote community resilience rooted in the spiritual significance of the place and in innovative ideas for the survival of the village—sometimes following in the footsteps of female historical figures and deities.⁵ The women of Limi are keen to support the school that makes it possible for children to pursue education whilst staying in the village—at least for a period of time long enough for them to get to know the place and thus potentially return to it 1 day, after completing their schooling in Kathmandu or India. However, with the increasing disruption to which the community has been subjected, there are vital questions concerning its existential continuity: will Limi settlements be abandoned, relocated within the valley, or could its current villages indeed come back to life?

When rupture presents itself as a forking of ways it is a time of crisis in the most literal sense of the term, reflecting the etymology of the word derived from the Greek krisis (turning point, decision, or judgment), originating from the verb krinein meaning to decide, judge, or separate. In Limi decisions generally rest with men (assembled in formal councils) or even with more-than-human beings through divination, but in practice women and children emerge as key in negotiating, and potentially reconfiguring, possible futures above and beyond short-termist, divisive logics reminiscent of the “tragedy of the horizons” and its critiques (see Crook, 2024: p. 123).

In order to provide an insight into these unfolding processes, this article is organized into eight subsections: the first has provided introductory contextualization and outline of the main argument about temporalities, crises and gender, and the second will provide an introduction to the field site and methodology. The third delves into the interfolding spacetime dimensionality of Limi's Himalayan landscape, whilst the fourth discusses women's roles in generating responses to current predicaments and the importance of the school as a cross-generation site of engagement. Subsequently the focus shifts to case studies of two exemplary young women in sections five and six, whilst section seven outlines Limi peoples' search for ways forward. A conclusion highlights how Limi's overlapping and sometimes jarring temporalities of climate change generate distinctive forms of gendered and generational agency that is both creative and resisting totalizing narratives of doom and gloom. It also offers a constructive critical engagement with local understandings and decision-making processes that transcend binary distinctions between modernist scientific approaches and local forms of knowledge informed by “other” onto-epistemologies.

2 Himalayan temporalities of climate change: an ethnographic approach to crises in time

Multiple temporalities seem to shape the life of Limi—a place where many localities seem to coexist in the same place according to different timespace framings, implying various connections and disconnections. From this point of view it is an example of a Himalayan “crosslocation” (Green, 2024); a plural space shaped by the cosmology and politics of a complex frontier region defined by the Nepal-China border. Here concepts of crisis and time implicate each other in multiple ways, in an emplaced manner. As highlighted by Marilyn Strathern: “When it entails a human subject at a particular location, a horizon envisions a processual perspective on the world and the kinds of coordinates implied. It is as spatial as it is temporal” (Strathern, 2024: p. 17).

When the anticipated gives way to the unprecedented, reshaping life's cognitive and moral horizons, a sense of crisis emerges within which the concept of generations comes to matter: it does so in terms of both transmitted knowledge and responsibility for the future of a place (in Limi and in Tibetan contexts more generally this is phrased in terms of mirab ngama, i.e. “earlier generations,” and mirab jema, i.e., “future generations”). Considering generations as people defined through shared experiences and recollections of events in time can provide a distinctive perspective on the vicissitudes of Limi life: the people Melvyn Goldstein met in Limi in 1974 (see Goldstein, 1974: p. 259–268, 1976: p. 223–233) had never permanently left the Limi Valley, while by comparison in 2025 villages had been transformed by environmental disasters, the arrival of roads and non-compostable waste, the internet and depopulation. The grandmothers and grandfathers of today were the children of then—they have seen a dramatic transformation of their world whilst experiencing the recursive patterns of human life. They are the sources of a grounded knowledge and intimate understanding of the place; children on the other hand are those who can best adapt to innovation.

Against this background, Limi's school has become a particular site of community cross-generational engagement, shaping life trajectories and responses to the interconnected crises—a hub for different forms of knowledge, multispecies mutualities and moral imaginations. Limi's children have thus emerged as key players in addressing a crisis in temporal horizons in which many futures coexist as possibilities. This became evident to me as I became increasingly familiar with Limi's school. I started to engage with Limi school children through my collaboration with the Norwegian scholar Astrid Hovden who had been studying Limi communities since 2011 and whose work is reflected in her monograph, the first detailed study of this area (Hovden, 2025).

Listening to Marilyn Strathern's talk “Being—or not being—a scholar in one's mid-eighties.”⁶ I was fascinated by her discussion of concepts of time implicated in perceptions of crisis, highlighting shifting ethnographic horizons in relation to her Papua New Guinea visit in 2015. I couldn't help but think about my own encounter with Limi: in 2018 I had joined Astrid Hovden who had come to know these village communities intimately for many years and had been surprised by an environmental disaster (see Figure 4)—the 2011 GLOF, which forced her to rethink some of the predicaments of the villages she had been engaging with. This led to a collaborative project⁷ building on our earlier research across the Himalayas. When Astrid and I arrived in Limi in September 2018 the barley harvesting season was in full swing, absorbing all village members. There was a sense of a community in transformation but, within the temporal horizon we then shared with our interlocutors, the process seemed gradual; beyond the vanishing point; unfolding over years in which vulnerabilities could be addressed. However things were to change much more rapidly than I imagined.

A string of crises, including COVID-19 and another GLOF in 2025, transformed the Limi situation radically, so much so that currently the future of the entire valley is plunged into uncertainty. Over the course of three visits (September/October 2022, June/July 2024, and June/July 2026) and through many remote conversations with members of the Limi community, I had to rethink my own ethnographic horizon considering the radical and irreversible disruption to the lives of the people I was focusing on. The Limi I had become familiar with through Astrid's work and my own initial visit in 2018 was transforming at extraordinary speed, with my efforts at understanding it constantly lagging behind a reality that seemed to be moving too fast to be adequately conceptualized by either me or the members of the communities involved, let alone be captured in writing. This was also a methodological challenge: earlier work could rely more heavily on long term participant observation, interviews, and archival research, but the most recent developments forced me to rely also on evidence from newspapers, social media, project reports and even locally produced film, reflecting challenges, expectations and ruptures in anticipated sequences of events. Most importantly, in what Strathern (2024) would call a “crisis in time” my approach had to become increasingly reflective and recursive, as my ethnographic horizon and my own positioning kept shifting.

The very sense of community was rapidly transforming. In 2018 I noticed that Limi people were distributed between those who still lived in the Limi villages with their local governance structures and those who had resettled elsewhere: the villages had their own time horizons shaped by the cycle of barley planting and harvesting and the seasonal movement of herds between the village area and high pastures. This seemed far removed from the temporal frameworks of urban settings, mainly Kathmandu in Nepal and Purang/Burang in China, in which out-migrated Limi households lived or Limi people temporarily resided, working as laborers. These different, distinct communities seemed to be living the same present whilst living in different times (including different time zones): they lived according to temporalities that were different but could be interfaced in specific instances. By 2026 I noticed that the recent string of interconnected crises combined with a radical transformation of communication infrastructure brought the different communities together in new ways, eliciting both tensions and cooperation to address unexpected challenges. This was transformative. When the permafrost in the periglacial landscape above Til village gave way on the 15th May 2025, water came crashing down taking away a portion of village fields, along with the pathway connecting the village to the monastery and the drinking water system. Fortunately, there were no casualties, and a lot could be restored in a makeshift way soon afterwards, but what had crashed on this occasion was the temporal horizon that kept the people in Limi clinging to the place—spreading a feeling of doom across the valley. Things had already been challenged by the COVID-19 crisis and the controversial near-total abandonment of one of the villages, Dzang (see Shahi, 2025). The world that I had fleetingly known in 2018 and that Astrid had intimately engaged with since 2011 seemed to be disrupted beyond recognition in a matter of months. As Marilyn Strathern reminds us, time flow entails a notion of forward motion and an anticipated sequence of events can also be interrupted.

What presents itself as cessation or rupture of movement [...] is perhaps apprehended as a forking of ways—as a crisis—insofar as something will carry forward even if it was not the trajectory one thought one was on. (Strathern, 2024: p.13)

In this setting it became clear that only fresh action would sustain the status quo, and questions were raised about whether this was desirable and if so for whom. The carefully managed sense of community with its autonomous governance, crafted and maintained through generations by a routine of ritual and political processes which Astrid describes (see Hovden, 2025), was coming under considerable strain in the face of entirely unexpected circumstances and difficult decisions.

3 Himalayan crosslocations: multiple and interfolding temporal horizons in more-than-human worlds

Limi is part of one of the most famous sacred landscapes in the world, currently straddling the Tibet Autonomous Region in the PRC, Nepal and India. It surrounds Mt Kailash, with its glittering white summit and distinctive stripes of dark rock, towering over the blue expanse of Manasarovar Lake—a sacred landscape for Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, and others (see Figure 5). For Buddhists it is at the heart of a mandala, a sacred circle enclosing its topography and giving it ritual meaning for local Buddhist monastic and lay communities as well as for the many pilgrims coming from far away to circumambulate it and get its blessing. For them the khorra, the circular path around the mountain, evokes the path toward enlightenment with its liberation teleology, as well as the wheel of dharma and the cyclicity of worldly phenomena, including the heavenly bodies marking time. In a more immediate way, walking the circular pathway (or covering it by prostrating) connects the devout to the sacred terrain with its sensory qualities, its stones, its grasses, its sands, its waters...and, at each step, the ever-shifting horizon.

Above, the towering peak identified not only as deity or divine abode but also as an indicator of wellbeing encodes a sense of time on a different scale—a deep time marked by religious prophecies and geological temporal scales alike. Mt Kailash's horizontal stripes, made of sedimentary rocks resting on a granite base, recall (for those cognisant with its geology) the watery environment that produced them millions of years ago, eventually lifted to their current heights by tectonic uplift and shaped by subsequent glacial erosion. The snows covering them tell a story of varying climate, as captured in a local prophecy: at the beginning of time, the peak was white as a conch shell, in the middle of time is striped like a zi stone, at the end of time it will be black as a piece of charcoal (see also Diemberger and Hovden, 2022: p. 148–175). People living at Mt Kailash's feet, and on the Tibetan plateau more generally, are deeply aware of how much human livelihood depends on snow and water on the mountains, so that snowlines are often used as indicators of wellbeing for an environment inhabited by human and non-human animals and plants (see Diemberger et al., 2015: p. 249–271).

More-than-human beings, like Mt Kailash's Geko⁸ or Kangri Lhatsen,⁹ “own” the land and appear to humans in more-or-less Buddhified form depending on the tradition. Like Andean earth-beings (see De la Cadena, 2015), they are in a dynamic relationship with the human and non-human inhabitants of the land under their jurisdiction and this relationship is ritually maintained as part of all-encompassing cosmopolitics (see also Yang, 2026, this collection) and cosmopolitical ecologies (see Diemberger, 2022: p. 19–42). They are central to the sacredness of this landscape, which underpins community rules and regulations that have shaped environmental governance for centuries (these are either orally transmitted or written in documents preserved in boxes formally opened during community meetings, see Hovden, 2025).

Crisis is not new in this landscape, with remains of abandoned villages and disused water systems telling known or forgotten stories of forced relocation due to climate upheavals, shifting water tables, landslides and many other reasons (see Ramble, 2008). From a Buddhist point of view this is all part of the impermanence of worldly existence, encompassing thereby all possible horizons, Buddhist and non-Buddhist. At the same time, this layered landscape bears the traces of a past that pre-dated the arrival of Buddhism.

In a “deep time” perspective suggested by Irvine (2020), or even according to a Braudelian longue durée of human habitation of the Himalayas, the many ecological niches—produced by the distinctive vertical topography and its interplay with the monsoon weather system—are profoundly interconnected in a web of mutual relationships amongst the human and non-human beings that inhabit it. In what Tsing (2015) would define as a “collaborative survival within multispecies landscapes,” humans, other-than-human animals, plants and more-than-human beings have existed along and with each other. A centuries-long history has linked the south and north of the Himalayas so that, rather than a barrier, the snowy peaks and steep valleys have been a source of life-giving water as well as connecting corridors which constitute avenues for trade and pathways to refuges in times of strife. Amidst this landscape, in the first millennium of the current era, agro-pastoralist communities of Tibetan descent settled in a valley of what is currently north-western Nepal, adjacent to the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. Basing their livelihood on high altitude barley cultivation and multispecies herding, they integrated their seasonal transhumance with trans-Himalayan trading ventures.

Historically part of the Kailash Mandala (see Lama, 2002), Limi attracted Tibetan spiritual masters such as the 10th/11th century Lotsawa Rinchen Sangpo (see Hovden, 2025; Petech, 1997:229–255) and pilgrims. Limi was also part of the wider network of the so-called “Silk Roads” connecting western Tibet to the web of pathways that crossed the heart of Asia. The Limi valley itself is home to three village communities (Til, Waltse/Halji and Dzang)¹⁰ and a fourth site with the remains of an abandoned village (Tshamdo) —considered by many the oldest of the valley (see Hovden, 2025: p. 39–77). Its dilapidated fort overlooks a flat area at the crossroads of ancient routes where a new resort run by the Limi cooperative is currently providing hospitality to a modest number of tourists (largely Indian devotees seeking direct sighting (i.e., darsan, vision) of Mt Kailash from the Lapcha La Pass).

Sharing an international border with Purang/Burang and Drachen Counties on the western Tibetan plateau—now a part of China—the Limi area in the Humla district of north-western Nepal is seen as both remote and highly significant to current geopolitics as reflected in a recent publication on new border infrastructure (see New York Times 12.10.2024).¹¹ Its geography is shaped by the tortuous course of the Karnali River, which emerges from the Kailash massif and has historically provided a corridor for trade and religious connections between the Tibetan plateau and the lower Himalayan Valleys. As a “land in-between” (see Hovden, 2025), Limi has been historically connected to both worlds—with the Limi land considered part of the state of Nepal and its people loosely integrated in the Tibetan administrative system and religious networks (Yeh, 2019).

In addition to the seasonality of Himalayan agropastoral life, Limi people situate themselves in time through multiple and competing historical memories and forms of periodization. From the Limi point of view, the remote, but increasingly present, Nepali state shapes the narrative of national and regional history with reference to the 18th century Gorkha Kingdom as foundational for statehood and hierarchy amongst ethnic groups. This has an additional distinctive regional relevance linked to the role of the Khas civilization in the Karnali basin and the role the Khas-Chhetri military-administrative caste played in the rise of Nepali as the language of the Gorkha Kingdom—and eventually as lingua franca when Nepal became a federal republic after a bloody civil war (see Michaels, 2024 for an overview). This is the language of the state and its administrative practices and political processes that are increasingly encroaching in Limi's local governance, generally perceived as distinctive and autonomous. This is also increasingly the language of development and citizenship.

More present in day-to-day Limi life are the temporal horizons of Tibetan Buddhist geographies, linked to the local Tibetan dialect; the ritual practices of monasteries and village communities; the agricultural calendar; the agropastoral activities, trading practices and the sense of belonging to a Buddhist history with its spiritual heroes such as Lotsawa Rinchen Sangpo. Traces of ancient Inner Asian Silk Roads connections and the legendary kingdom of Zhang Zhung that pre-dated the Tibetan empire refer to a deep, largely forgotten, and sometimes reinvented past. This is the temporal framework of both ritually marked seasonality and prophecies linked to the “degenerate age” (Kaliyuga, du nyigma)—similar to what was observed by Alice Millington in Walung, in Eastern Nepal (Millington, 2024).

Links to the People's Republic of China with its expanding urbanization, as well as other global networks, are much more recent, and associated with geopolitical issues and global narratives of “climate change.” Against this rapidly evolving background, various temporal horizons, associated with specific languages and historical memories, matter to the people of Limi in terms of their citizenship and geopolitical positioning: they deal in Nepali with their state administration referring to the Nepali time reckoning system; speak and act in their Tibetan dialect in the community, orienting themselves according to Tibetan almanacs and the position of the sun; learn basic Mandarin when they work across the border in Purang/Burang orienting themselves according to Beijing time; and pick up English when connecting to the international world.

Whilst widely networked for centuries, Limi's spatial and temporal horizons retained a focus on Limi itself and its governance as an autonomous entity until relatively recently. When Goldstein visited the area in 1974, people traveled, on foot or by horse, but returned (see Goldstein, 1974, 1976). Things have changed dramatically in recent years due to the transforming geopolitical situation; challenges to agropastoral livelihood linked to the loss of some pasture areas to China and changing climatic conditions; rapidly developing new infrastructure; new labor opportunities and constraints; and the education-driven outmigration of children. The villages are currently experiencing rapid depopulation with Limi diasporic communities growing, notably in Kathmandu and Purang/Burang, as well as dispersed across the globe. This is dramatically reflected in Hovden (2025) monograph on Limi based on her fieldwork between 2011 and 2018, which offers a unique glimpse into a Limi world that has since changed beyond recognition. Engaging temporal horizons that reflect both the past and the past in the present, at a time of increasing disruption, Astrid's book is currently consulted by scholars and Limi community members alike (and there is the plan for a more succinct and accessible publication reflecting its key findings for community/school use).

Communities in the diaspora retain some of the governance structures that shaped Limi's political life and produce new ones according to available frameworks (e.g., charities and cooperatives). Ritual life, solidarity networks and shared memories of Limi underpin sociality in the diaspora as a wider network and network of networks (see also Saxer, 2022). At the same time new generations are influenced by national and transnational dynamics, including Nepal's turbulent recent history with its civil war, transformation from monarchy to democracy, and the 2015 promulgation of a federal constitution (see Michaels, 2024). Political challenges, here, dovetail with the sense of crisis evoked by unprecedented environmental disasters, erratic weather patterns, and shifting seasonality now increasingly conceptualized in terms of “climate change.” As we will see below, this became evident during the unrest of September 2025, when young peoples' frustration with the status quo was linked to wider globalized narratives of Gen Z activism traveling on social media.

4 Women taking the lead in anticipating futures by connecting to the past

The community governance system has traditionally put women in a position of subalternity. This does not mean that they had no power, but the way in which they represented their household and shaped decisions was, and usually still is, strongly dependent on senior male members of the household and the community leadership. At the same time, they carried out a large share of the agricultural work, including the maintenance of the irrigation system—a vital but onerous work (see Havnevik et al., forthcoming). “Mothers and grandmothers” (aa, ibi)—as well as ai ibi (aunts and grandmothers)—commanded (and still command) respect and were traditionally seen as a source of knowledge and wisdom despite their exclusion from formal village politics. The village leadership was male and was part of a system of double governance within an equally male dominated state administration (see Hovden, 2025). However, with long work-related absences and outmigration taking away most adult men from the villages, women's responsibilities seem to have increased dramatically in recent years. Grandmothers, as well as some mothers and aunts, keep households alive in the Limi villages when everybody else seems to disappear in various directions (see Figures 6-7).

The women of the older generations in the villages have been the custodians of houses, which according to the community rules cannot be fully abandoned, and fulfilled community obligations in practice (even and especially when the expected male representative was absent). They have also cultivated emplaced forms of knowledge with their attendant temporalities and socialities with non-human animals and plants as well as oral traditions of storytelling, singing and dancing—these coexisted with the Buddhist textual traditions guarded by the monks in the monastery. As they walk the khorra, circumambulating the monastery, step by step, they sense this landscape, embodying both cyclical and progressive time in their movements. They know this landscape and have known it for such a long time that it has become part of them. Their longitudinal perspective thus shapes the spatial and temporal horizons within which they think and act, relating to all beings inhabiting this landscape. They know how to listen to the birds and read the clouds, how to drive herds and dig water channels. Older generation women are keen to keep children in the village but are also aware of their new educational needs and, hoping for their better future in a transforming world, often endorse education-driven outmigration according to patterns witnessed across the Himalaya (see Childs and Choedup, 2019). As we shall see below, however, they are also keen to imagine a possible future for Limi people in Limi.

Children who have left Limi mostly end up in Kathmandu or Purang/Burang (but sometimes India, the Gulf States, Europe, or the US). They have been augmenting diasporic communities by connecting to members of their households who have moved away before them and sometimes participating in their entrepreneurial activities (mainly shops and tea shops). They rarely come back to Limi despite community obligations, and for them the Limi valley has become a distant childhood memory. Some of these children access higher education whilst others enter the labor market. In either case, they become part of the urbanized Nepali youth whose aspirations and frustrations have propelled recent political unrest (see below). Until recently, travel logistics made contact between people still living in the Limi Valley and those who had moved to Kathmandu (and elsewhere) sporadic. Communities have been networked for decades but each node had its priorities and temporal horizons and a certain diffidence (combined with resentment for those households who had permanently abandoned the Limi valley) contributed to a sense of estrangement. However, things are changing fast in the light of current disruptions.

In contrast to the women of the older generation still living in the Limi valley, some young women have fully embraced the opportunities offered by life in the Limi diaspora and its digital connectivity, sometimes using this to reconnect to their village of origin through projects. Projects are not uniquely female led; many community projects are developing under the leadership of male members of the younger generations, but the women's approach is distinctive. They both support and challenge Limi tradition. For example, a young woman, originally from Til village and the mother of a child born from an interethnic relationship, has come up with innovative ideas. Traditionally, she would have been in a difficult position and yet she has become a key figure in reviving links between the Kathmandu diaspora and Limi villages, promoting women's health with a dedicated project providing eco-friendly sanitary pads and a range of initiatives fostering women's literacy.

5 A Gen Z woman at the heart of Limi's environmental and political activism

Most recently, a young woman from Limi, Tashi Lhazom, has become prominent as a spokesperson for areas that have been recently affected by GLOFs, mobilizing material support and scientific expertise through social media as well as becoming co-author of scientific publications (especially after the flood that affected Til village on May 15th, 2025, see Sattar et al., 2025). As an artist, she produced a documentary showing the predicament of Limi's main village and its eleventh century monastery titled “No Village No Monastery.” In this documentary she “explores the plight of the villagers caught between their deep devotion to their heritage and the very real danger of impending floods.” The film follows the story of “Sonam Dhondup, a monk at the monastery, who wrestles with the fear of losing the sacred building to the next GLOF” and “Pema Dolma, a yak herder who lost her herd in a previous avalanche, but remains resolute in her devotion to the monastery, despite the hardships.” Through their contrasting viewpoints “the film sheds light on the complex realities faced by the Limi community. Will they abandon their ancestral home to preserve their lives, or will they stay and risk everything to protect their cultural heritage?”¹²

Tashi Lhazom's environmental activism drew the attention of Nepal's interim prime minister, Sushila Karki, who sought to stabilize the situation after the September 2025 riots until the March 2026 elections. When put forward as a potential minister for children, women and welfare, however, Tashi Lhazom was queried in terms of her ancestry and Nepali-ness: she did not fit into the conventional profile of a civil servant or a political leader and was falsely accused of not being a “true citizen of Nepal.” This unleashed a debate about ethnicity and representation which revealed how high Himalayan areas are often marginalized (except for those that have become famous due to mountaineering and trekking). It was unusual for a woman from such a remote rural area to rise to prominence and this was met with some surprise and disbelief. It seemed that the so-called Gen Z movement—of which Tashi Lhazom was seen as a representative—could offer new opportunities thanks to new technologies and connectivity but ended up reflecting older forms of discrimination. Robust responses supporting Tashi Lhazom fed into an ongoing lively debate seeking to overcome divisions along lines of class, caste and ethnicity as well as gender. On October 17th, 2025, the Himalayan Times reported that a national debate about “Nepali Identity” was sparked when Tashi Lhazom was recommended for the ministry a Gen Z representative and expert in the field of climate change in the media. Highlighting that interrogating citizenship had become a political expedient, the popular Nepali newspaper commented that when the people from the south of the country:

...progress in politics or positions, they say, “Indian,” and ask about their citizenship. When the indigenous of the north try to progress, they term them “Tibetan” and ask for their citizenship. And even when they show their citizenship, they say, “It must have been attained through bribery”¹³

According to the article, the debate over Tashi Lhazom's nationality and identity had prompted many prominent people to write and speak out against discrimination and disinformation about “Nepali Identity.”

Tashi Lhazom was not appointed minister in the Autumn of 2025, nor was she elected in March 2026. Whilst not successful in gaining a seat, nevertheless, she remains a prominent public intellectual in a conversation that brings together the environmental crisis of the high Himalayas with the current political crisis in Nepal and beyond. She embodies the search for a form of citizenship that does justice to Nepal's diverse population and has the potential to address current and future challenges. Her prominence is linked to environmental advocacy and a commitment to education and welfare as well as the use of connectivity, which has become recently available across rural Nepal.

Born in 2000, she left the village to pursue education. She had personally experienced the predicament of the high-altitude rural communities. Her parents were from the Limi community of Halji and her mother belonged to a nomad family. She had some informal schooling and when she reached age seven it was decided that she would leave the village to access formal education, which was made possible thanks to a charity. Whilst taking full advantage of the opportunities that followed, she has not forgotten Limi. When she was told during the electoral campaign that Limi was not democratic, she responded that this was not true. She highlighted that it was an ancient system of autonomous governance with due process and the representation of households. It had issues and reforms may be discussed, but this autonomous system has kept the community together and contributed to protecting the environment.

Whilst the 2015 federal constitution sought to overcome earlier prejudices linked to the Hindu Monarchy and be more representative of Nepal's ethnic diversity, competing ideas of citizenship and political legitimacy reflect unresolved tensions and controversies emerging from a complex history. These dovetail with the delicate geopolitical position of Nepal, sandwiched as it is between India and China (see Mulmi, 2021), and came to a head with Gen Z activism in the wake of the September 2025 riots.

6 The temporality of the new generations

The darkening peaks, disasters and hope for a future inspired Tashi Lhazom's environmental activism. Her trajectory intersects in Limi with that of Anjila Thapa, a young woman of the same generation committed to an inclusive vision of Nepal and to imagining a future for the high Himalayas.

Thapa is not from Limi but has fully embraced Limi's predicament by creatively co-shaping education in remote rural settings of the high Himalayas. She has a similar ethnic and caste background as those who challenged Tashi Lhazom by casting doubts on her Nepaliness, but she has a very different outlook and imagines a very inclusive Nepal, proud of its diversity. Born in a high Indo-Nepalese caste in rural Eastern Nepal, it was Anjila's personal history that shaped her vision.

Although born into a Chettri family, I grew up with Mushar kids [i.e., of a different and lower ethnic group] as my

next neighbors. My childhood was shaped by the importance of agriculture, rooted in dependence on the land and its cyclic rhythm. I experienced how weather could be both a blessing and curse, I have always had deep devotion for my land. Our land was our economy, food and pride. My grandmother was widowed at the age 20 and she led a single life but she taught me my first Nepali Alphabet by learning from “Adult Literacy Class”

Anjila speaks affectionately of her grandmother who had a seminal influence on her. Her commitment to education was reflected in Anjila's later life:

Growing up, I was an ambitious student, and my dream was to become a doctor and serve the community. However, in practice, this seemed impossible for a farmers' kid. Eventually I joined a 90-day volunteering program which offered me different perspectives on how to serve the community. I pursued studies in education, and this is what took me to Limi as an officer of the NGO Aatmiya. I was the first female member of staff and the first to be sent to such a remote place.

For Anjila this was an entirely new world—linguistically, environmentally and logistically challenging; this was the kind of location that people would not normally aspire to be sent to. Limi was considered the remotest of the remote—even by the standards of Humla, a region considered to be in the extreme West from a Kathmandu perspective, Limi was seen as challenging and isolated, cut off from the Humla administrative seat for months at a time because of the winter snows. As an education officer she evaluated the situation of the local school:

In my first community assessment, I realized that there was a major concern in education: there was a massive winter gap in teaching when government teachers would leave the area when this became difficult to access because of the snowy passes. Also, grandmothers complained that their culture was neglected and no Tibetan was taught—something that should have been addressed after the federalization of Nepal in 2015. Not only that, in Limi I observed that it was grandmothers who largely looked after the grandchildren, whilst parents went to work in China (in the neighboring town of Purang/Burang). They would escort or carry their grandkids on their back to and from school. Many expressed the desire for schooling for the children during the winter months. That gave birth to the idea of a “Winter Camp” making teaching in winter possible in Limi, with the support of the community. We could assist in this through providing support and infrastructure. Mothers and grandmothers could come and teach traditional songs and stories. Also, students could go around and learn about the monastery, visit the river, and talk about changes in the landscape such as the reason why there is less snow these days, or why the cultivation of barley is declining.

Inspired by the grandmothers' requests and finding support in a young teacher from Limi who had returned to the village after completing his education in India, she designed the winter-camp as a trial and raised funds for it. She then spent a winter co-running it with the community. She commented:

I dream of a world where every child can grow up in their land, in their identity with their parents and grandparents. And it is our responsibility to create that for our children, not letting social inequalities, geography and environmental degradation take away the right of all children to grow anywhere in the world. This is the dream that encouraged me to see the possibility of a winter camp or even just living in Limi in winter

It is to her that one of the Limi grandmothers expressed her wish:

This school is where my two grandsons will get education. I am their guardian. I am very happy for the school, but our children are not learning Tibetan. In future they will have to do administration related work, they need to learn scripts—without this knowledge how will they? Can you teach this, and our culture?”

The grandmother's request reflected both Limi's traditional bureaucracy, in Tibetan script, as well as the awareness that with the federalization of Nepal the school curriculum was expected to be more adapted to local settings—including its diverse ethnic and linguistic identities.

Anjila's task however, has been truly dauting. Nepal is on the DAC list of ODA countries with high levels of poverty and a range of social and environmental challenges including climate change. The recent political crisis reflects profound contradictions driven by inequalities, corruption and mismanagement as well as increasing environmental disasters. In brief, in a poor country there are people and areas that are much poorer and more neglected than others and within which women and girls are particularly disadvantaged and at risk of being excluded from education—which is what prompted the young woman from Til mentioned above to address specifically the question of female literacy.

It is against this background that, through a serendipitous encounter with my daughter Yancen on a Limi trail,¹⁴ Anjila reached out to a team from the Cambridge Department of Social Anthropology and together they have developed a string of Impact projects.¹⁵ This offered her an opportunity to engage with the ABC methodology (Anthropology by Children/Communities, designed by Kelly Fagan Robinson) and make the Shree Sunkhani Basic School in Waltse/Halji a partner in a wider network of collaborating schools in different countries. This provided support and useful input, but key was the collaboration on the ground.

Anjila remembers that one of the most important moments was when she joined forces with one of the teachers. He was one of the Halji kids who had left the village but had just returned. She gave a brief account of his story in a project report, which I am summarizing here:

“Around age five he had been taken to Himalchal Pradesh, India, for his education.” When talking about this period of his life, he mentioned one of the most vivid childhood memories dating back to when he was around 11 years old. He was told that his mother was coming to visit. Feeling that he had never seen her before [as he had left the village very young] he wasn't even sure if he had a mother. When he finally met her for the first time, he remembers feeling confused and overwhelmed, and even ignored her, unable to understand or process the situation. That sense of confusion remained ingrained in his mind.

“From an early age, he was told by visiting relatives that he was the eldest in the family, and it was his responsibility to eventually return to the village to look after his family.” Carrying this sense of duty throughout his childhood, he always knew that returning home would likely mean the end of his formal education. After completing Grade 10, he was expected to return, but he requested permission from the village authorities to complete his higher secondary education. With his strong academic performance, he was allowed to finish his qualification in the science stream. In 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic, he returned to Halji. As per the Limi community tradition, eldest sons are required to return to take on family and household administrative responsibilities. Failing to do so means that the family must pay a high fine to the community—and his family could not afford to do so. With this in mind, he returned to the village accepting that his future would now be rooted in Limi rural life.

In the years that followed, he supported his family through agriculture and served in various community roles. He was actively involved in managing the electricity infrastructure for the village and participated in local committees but believed his educational journey had come to an end. However, in May 2024, when the NGO Aatmiya had taken an interest in Limi and was looking for a local teacher, he joined the school. He soon became a valued Tibetan teacher and contributed significantly to school life. During a winter camp, his skills and qualities stood out—particularly his ability to collaborate, coordinate, and contribute with a vision. During the camp, he shared his story and was assisted in finding an online bachelor's degree opportunity. He was excited and felt that this opportunity would not only benefit him but also serve as an example for other young boys who are expected to return to the village.

After 5 years away from the academic setting, he enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts program at Amity Online University. Reflecting on his journey, he shared, “If this winter camp hadn't happened, I would still be thinking that my chance to study had passed. I had accepted that my role was only to serve the village and support my family. But this experience helped me see that I can continue and now I feel hopeful not just for myself, but for others like me who may think education ends when they return to the village.”

It was a powerful story that opened up new horizons for the children and dovetailed with their mothers' wish not to lose contact with them at a young age. It was also a way of exploring ideas of “citizen science” as a mode of engagement with the new challenges of climate change driven environmental disasters.

Limi's experiment interfaced with the work of other teachers across the globe and children were able to connect via the internet, which had just arrived in Limi, with other children in Italy and the UK. Stories of animals, plants and water traveled through cyberspace, with children discovering differences and extraordinary commonalities such as the cuckoo as a harbinger of spring in many different places (in a remarkable globalized network of migration).¹⁶ Sharing stories of weather and ways of monitoring it as well as tackling disasters let a remarkable common ground emerge in conversation with parents and grandparents as well as experts. Digital conversations were followed by exchanges of letters and gifts, establishing a relationship that fostered a sense of transnational community and broadening each other's horizons, becoming more aware of one's own in the process: Younger generations across the world were trying to understand global challenges by sharing local-to-local experiences—they were also engaging in a cross-generational dialogue in search of futures that defied actions driven by narrowly defined short-term benefits without consideration for long-term consequences—resonating with what is sometimes defined as the “tragedy of the horizons”. Whose horizons are at stake after all?

Challenges remain and they are many, including dealing with the non-compostable waste involved in the devices that enable communication. Paradoxically these reflect the many environmental unintended consequences of transitions to “green economies” in a place like Limi that had been environmentally sustainable until very recently—and whose very recent transition to non-compostable waste production had very immediate and visible impacts on the landscape (see Diemberger and Skrivere, 2021).

7 Back to the future? A new initiative looking for a way forward

Inspired by the community-driven initiative in education, further ideas were developed to make environmental and cultural education include engagement with the unique local Buddhist heritage, both tangible and intangible, as well as the merits of traditional barley-based livelihood (as a point of discussion in terms of nutritional value compared to low quality food coming from the Chinese, Indian and Nepali markets). The monastic community of Rinchen Ling was involved, guiding children through the monastery offering commentaries as well as an introduction to the 11th century building and its history as a site established by Lotsawa Rinchen Sangpo. Moreover, the young Limi teacher and Anjila not only designed and ran the winter camp, but together with the mothers and grandmothers of Halji initiated the project “Documenting Limi's oral traditions for the next generations” on local cultural heritage, focusing especially on women's oral traditions.¹⁷

In many ways the ancient past was becoming present and valued in all its dimensions. It connected the children to their sacred geography and the great traditions to which Limi belonged. The school was no longer an outpost of a state that was overpowering yet remote, a site reflecting a distant modernity that was unreachable—or only reachable at the cost of abandoning home. The school emerged as a site of integration of knowledge traditions, languages, interspecies thinking and even ideas of citizenship.¹⁸

Disruptions however are many and fast paced, threatening the very existence of Limi as an inhabited place. Whilst the village communities are wrestling with partial or full abandonment of their villages, possibilities for imagining a future in Limi are still being explored. One avenue is that of a relocation of the three villages to the area of Tshamdo (also known as Takchi) to address their vulnerabilities to floods and make the most of proximity to the new road leading to the Lapcha La pass—the ancient gateway to Mt Kailash, which is likely to promote trade and tourism.

A report in the Himalayan News Service, dated January 23rd, 2026, describes the Limi situation and reports that a Limi delegation warned state authorities climate-induced vulnerability could lead to irreversible displacement unless state engagement and policy flexibility are implemented. It also reported the decision that Limi communities would move the three valley villages to Takchi, the Limi people's ancestral settlement area, in order to take advantage of the economic opportunities brought to the valley by tourism as well as to lessen the impact of climate-change related natural disaster (Himalayan News Service, January 23rd).

This move to Takchi in the Tshamdo area would be a radical step but perhaps not as radical as fully abandoning the valley. Responsibilities for looking after the original Buddhist monasteries and temples, however, seem, so far, an argument for not entirely abandoning Waltse/Halji and Til. Also, what would happen to the school, would it be abandoned or relocated? Opinions in the village communities and the diaspora vary. Exploring the possibilities of new developments in Tshamdo, where the Limi cooperative tourist resort is located, seems worthwhile, despite it being windier and colder than the currently inhabited villages and therefore less well suited to the high-altitude agriculture that has been supporting Limi for generations. Relocation as a “climate change” driven migration would of course benefit from dedicated state support. Here as elsewhere Limi people seemed to adopt “climate change.... as a catch all for all kinds of calamities, while simultaneously underscoring uncertainty as a persistent existential condition” (Strathern, 2024: p. 17). Many, especially women, are reluctant to move and refer to the many practical challenges as well as divinations highlighting that Til and Waltse/Halji should not be emptied; others are dreaming of new entrepreneurial opportunities and the possibility of attracting back younger members of the Limi communities that have out-migrated. At the time of writing the conversation is still ongoing and solutions being discussed.

In this context re-inhabiting the ancestral settlement of the Limi Valley would be a remarkable return to an ancient past in new guises. An archaeological exploration may yield new surprises as Tshamdo was apparently established first, before the other villages that go back to at least the 11th century if not earlier. This locality links Limi to Manasarovar Lake via the Lapcha La pass, which offers a unique glimpse of Mt Kailash and still has great ritual importance during funerals and pilgrimage for the blessing bestowed by visual connection to the mountain (attractive also to tourists). For the moment, the deeper history of this place remains shrouded in the layers of dust and stones that make up the ruins. The name of the fortress “the fortress of the old lady” (genmo dzong) is linked to an ancient narrative: at a time of military strife an old lady saved the place when this was under siege. Whilst water was scanty, she pretended to wash her hair in plain sight using butter. This led the enemies to believe that water resources were plentiful inside the fortress and that resistance was thus possible, so the army withdrew. Whilst this story circulated locally as a tale of Limi Genmo Dzong (see Hovden, 2025), we eventually discovered that it was a narrative trope often associated with ancient ruins of a similar shape in other parts of Tibet.¹⁹ Whatever its deeper history, though, the name of the fortress and the story also evoke the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the old ladies of Limi and beyond.

8 Conclusion

Listening to children telling each other stories of birds and insects, mountains and lakes, receding snowlines and darkening peaks, weather challenges and ways of addressing them, I couldn't help thinking that they are the ones who will bear the brunt of the worsening global environmental disruption; but they are also the ones who have the imagination and the potential to join hands to address these challenges. From this point of view, crises can become opportunities, as often seen in Himalayan histories and beyond (although at the time of writing the world seems in a particularly dark place, with war not only causing tragedies but also producing enormous amounts of greenhouse gases).

Limi people's imaginative ways of navigating the present and fighting for their future, especially through women-led initiatives, show how events and changes in communities on a very local basis can feed back into a wider national and global conversation on the cosmopolitics of climate change. Against the background of interfolding crises, Limi's mothers and grandmothers seem to have a story to tell of courage and cross-generational engagement in which the different temporal horizons of human lives, as well as lives beyond the human, can find common ground to imagine futures transcending onto-epistemological differences. Most remarkably, Limi's overlapping and sometimes jarring temporalities of climate change—as part of a global polycrisis—seem to generate distinctive forms of gendered and generational agency which not only resist totalising narratives of doom and gloom but also offer important practical reality checks to envisaged solutions. Similar to the setting discussed by Ulturgasheva and Bodenhorn (2026) (in this collection), they can be seen as cosmopolitical through their co-production of actions.

Generative AI statement

The author(s) declared that Generative AI was not used in the creation of this manuscript.

Any alternative text (alt text) provided alongside figures in this article has been generated by Frontiers with the support of artificial intelligence and reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, including review by the authors wherever possible. If you identify any issues, please contact us.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Footnotes

Edited by: Rosalyn Bold, University College London, United Kingdom

Reviewed by: Usman Idris, Cenderawasih University, Indonesia

Arif Nizam, Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development, India

Footnotes

This article is based on historical materials, reports and participant observation (no dedicated interviewing was involved in its production) and the views expressed in it are all mine. It emerged in the first place from a long-term collaboration with Limi communities and their leadership (especially Paljor Tamang), which I wish to thank for their support and resilience. At a personal level I wish to thank Anjila Thapa, Tashi Lhazom, Tashi Phurbu, Rinchen Loden, Astrid Hovden, Kelly Fagan Robinson, Libby Peachey, Cassandra Savoldi as well as my daughter Yancen Diemberger and my partner Bruce Huett, who have been key in our collaborative work. More generally, this article reflects research and impact activities that took place in recent projects hosted at the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit of the University of Cambridge, including “Himalayan connections: melting glaciers, sacred landscapes and mobile technologies in a Changing Climate” (2018–2022) funded by the Norwegian Science Fund and co-hosted by the University of Oslo and University of Cambridge; the CHRG project “Women led innovation addressing the environmental and social crisis of the high Himalayas: a case study and impact project in North-Western Nepal” (2026); the AHRC IAA project “ABCs of Climate Action: Weather, risk and connectivity across schools in the Himalayas, Alps and UK” (2023/24, JFZA/042) as well as the earlier AHRC research projects “Transforming Technologies and Buddhist Book Culture: the Introduction of Printing and Digital Text Reproduction in Tibetan Societies” (AH/H00159X/1) and “A Tibetan woman-lama and her reincarnations: a study of the bSam-sdings rDor-je Phag-mo (15th-21st Century)” (AN11783/APN19407) and an AHRC funded network on Climate Histories. Research and impact projects benefitted from the expert advice of Nick Davies, Barbara Bodenhorn, Christoph Ramshorn, Mark Aldenderfer, Jan Kropáček, Charlotte Ramble, Michael Bravo, Theo Hughes Morgan and the administrative assistance of Chloe Gayer-Anderson and Anna Clayton. Collaboration between schools would not have been possible without Sonia Hegan and Karen Scott at Dry Drayton Primary School and Tiziana Rota and Laura Algisi at the primary school of Caravate (Italy). Finally, I wish to thank Aatmiya Nepal and Eco-Himal Italy and UK as well as Paolo Pagella, Patrizia Broggi and Gianluca Zambotto for their support to the Limi community at a difficult time.

Elsewhere I highlighted the close connection between Tibetan environmental history and literary production and distribution, see Diemberger (2025): p. 47–60.

Small glacial lakes and permafrost formation reacting to rising temperatures and changing weather patterns have created increasing risks of environmental disasters that are difficult to anticipate and monitor (see Sattar et al., 2025). This year Limi's situation has been exacerbated by an extraordinarily snowless winter and spring, reflected in the drying up of springs and spread of parasites on trees, followed by late and extremely intense monsoon rains. On July 31st a new flood washed away bridges that had been recently reconstructed,

See Shahi (2025).

Tibetan religious and political history has been shaped by many remarkable women, whose relevance was often marginalized by historiographical tropes. They are nonetheless important exemplars. I discussed this elsewhere, see Diemberger, 2025: p. 47–60, Diemberger, 2016: p. 267–308.

A CUSAS seminar in Cambridge on 5th March 2026, Department of Social Anthropology.

“Himalayan connections: melting glaciers, sacred landscapes and mobile technologies in a Changing Climate” (2018–2022). https://www.socanth.cam.ac.uk/directory/research-clusters/economy-environment-wellbeing/himalayan-connections-melting-glaciers-sacred-landscapes-and-mobile-technologies-in-a-changing-climate

Geko (Ge khod) is the name of the deity identified with Mt Kailash according to narratives of the Zhang zhung kingdom and the Bonpo traditions in western Tibet.

Kangri Lhatsen (Gangs ri lha btsan) is one of the ancestral gods inha of the Limi community inhabiting Mt Kailash.

Village names appear in different forms in different contexts: Waltse, which is the most common term in local Tibetan records, is usually called Halji in English, Dzang is also called Jang.

The article “China's New Great Wall Casts a Shadow on Nepal” by Hannah Beech and Bhadra Sharma published on October 12th, 2024, in the New York Times highlights the challenges along the Hilsa border post, which is directly relevant for the Limi people.

See https://nafilmsociety.org/naiff-festival-lineup-2024/no-monastery-no-village/.

See https://thehimalayantimes.com/nepal/talk-of-tashis-appointment-in-cabinet-stirs-debate.

Anjila was walking to Limi when she bumped into Yancen who was returning from a period of fieldwork for her dissertation in anthrozoology on human-horse communication (University of Exeter). Yancen joined me and Astrid (as well as Hanna Havneick and Riamsara Kuyakanon) on our first joint trip to Limi in 2018 and developed a research project subsequently. Anjila and Yancen's encounter, on the trail next to the eleventh century hermitage of Chayi, turned out to be truly auspicious as it fostered collaboration and support for the Limi school in the framework of the impact project AHRC IAA Project “ABC's of Climate Action: Weather, risk and connectivity across schools in the Himalayas, Alps and UK” (PI Hildegard Diemberger, Co-I Kelly Fagan Robinson) and follow on projects. This built on earlier support for the Limi schools initiated by Astrid Hovden and her collaboration with Aatmiya, which Yancen had informally supported when carrying out her research as part of her collaborative engagement with the Limi community.

See https://www.socanth.cam.ac.uk/news/standing-precipice.

The behavioral ecologist Nick Davies, referring to recent research highlighted to the ABC team how Cuckoos from Europe and Asia all migrate to Africa. See also Davies (2015) and Davies et al. (2012).

Funded by the Williamson Memorial Fund this project involved the recording of song and dances and having them commented on by community elders (both on site and those who have migrated to Kathmandu and beyond). This aimed to provide a unique resource for the community (but also for international scholarship) whilst also offering the basis for a rigorous engagement with the local heritage when designing the school curriculum adapted to local circumstances (according to the guidelines of the curriculum reform, which followed the federalization of Nepal in 2015). A famous Tibetan scholar, the late Tsering Gyalpo (Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences), highlighted the distinctive character of song and dance traditions of this region, potentially linked to the ancient Tibetan heritage of the area and even possibly to the pre-Tibetan Zhang Zhung kingdom (Gyalpo, 2006). Whilst some scholarly work to this effect was carried out in China in a rapidly modernizing context, nothing was done on the Nepali side of the border. Some of these unique traditions have been preserved in Limi cultivated by the local communities.

See also Tall Bear (2011) on the importance of a pragmatic approach to “indigenous knowledge.”

I encountered the same narrative with reference to similar tour-shaped buildings in southeastern Tibet.