Background on Nepal -Civil War - Impact of Poverty - Conditions Where Children are From
 Food Deficit Map of Nepal - Buddhism in the Mountains
Life in the Mountains - Mountain People - Living in the Mountains - Mountain Landscapes - Life in the Nubri Region
-  Archive of Earlier Stories

Background on Nepal

Landforms Map of Nepal

Our Children Come From the Snowy North

(Map Courtesy National Geographic MapMachine)


Nepal is the poorest and hungriest country in Asia.
48% of children are underweight. In Afghanistan, it's 43%

Extreme poverty causes more illness, suffering and death than any disease.

Childhood diseases like measles, flu, chickenpox kill kids
weakened by hunger.
80 children die every day from untreated diarrhoea.


Thrangu Rinpoche's schools serve the needs of children who come from the far north of Nepal.

The areas these kids come from are high altitude, and subject to climate extremes. In Himalayan villages, there are no roads, no electricity, no telecommunication, no running water, no sanitation, no health care and no schools. Most of the people are illiterate. Their births are unrecorded and so are their children's. They are, to all intents and purposes, non-existent, invisible people.

Himalayan folkare semi-nomadic yak/goat herders or subsistence farmers. At these altitudes survival is extremely hard. The loss of an animal or a bad crop can mean the family won't make it through another year.

Nepal is battling to overcome a decade of civil war and is losing ground, dropping three points in the Human Development Index in one year. The end of the civil war in 2006 saw what little infrastructure there had been destroyed. Since then, continued political instability, high prices, and natural disasters have pushed much of the country into hunger. The World Food Programme rates the situation in Nepal as "alarming".