Around Janakpur
The countryside surrounding Janakpur is inhabited by Hindu castes and members of the Tharu and Danuwar ethnic groups, and features some of the most meticulously kept farmland you’ll ever see. You can ride the narrow-gauge railway east or west and, during the cooler months, take bike rides along several roads radiating out from the city.
Janakpur Women’s Development Center
Hindu women of the deeply conservative villages around Janakpur are rarely spared from their household duties, and, once married, are expected to remain veiled and silent before all males but their husbands. Fortunately, their rich tradition of folk art offers them an escape. Set in a walled compound, the nonprofit Janakpur Women’s Development Center (Nari Bikas Kendra) provides a space for women from nearby villages to develop. Founded in 1989, with assistance from several international NGOs, the artists’ cooperative helps its fifty-odd members turn their skills into income – and the fact that some have gone on to start their own companies is a sure sign of the project’s success. But more importantly, the centre empowers women through training in literacy and business skills, and support sessions in which they can share their feelings and discuss their roles in family and society.
Initially specializing in Maithili paper art, the centre now has separate buildings for sewing, screen-printing, ceramics and painting. Visitors are welcome to meet the artists and learn about their work and traditions. A gift shop sells crafts made on the premises, as well as the booklet, Master Artists of Janakpur.
Maithili painting
For three thousand years, Hindu women of the region once known as Mithila have maintained a tradition of painting, using techniques and motifs passed from mother to daughter. The colourful images can be viewed as fertility charms, meditation aids or a form of storytelling, embodying millennia of traditional knowledge.
From an early age Brahman girls practice drawing complex symbols derived from Hindu myths and folk tales, which over the course of generations have been reduced to mandala-like abstractions. By the time she is in her teens, a girl will be presenting simple paintings to her arranged fiancé; the courtship culminates with the painting of a kohbar, an elaborate fresco on the wall of the bride’s bedroom, where the newlyweds will spend their first nights. Depicting a stalk of bamboo surrounded by lotus leaves (symbols of male and female sexuality), the kohbar is a powerful celebration of life and creation. Other motifs include footprints and fishes (representing Vishnu), parrots (symbolic of a happy union), Krishna cavorting with his milkmaids, and Surabhi, the Cow of Plenty, who inflames the desire of those who milk her. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the kohbar is that, almost by definition, it is ephemeral: even the most amazing mural will be washed off within a week or two. Painting is seen as a form of prayer or meditation; once completed, the work has achieved its end.
Women of all castes create simpler wall decorations during the autumn festival of Tihaar (Diwali). In the weeks leading up to the festival they apply a new coat of mud mixed with dung and rice chaff to their houses and add relief designs. Just before Lakshmi Puja, the climactic third day of Tihaar, many paint images of peacocks, pregnant elephants and other symbols of prosperity to attract a visit from the goddess of wealth. Until Nepali New Year celebrations in April, the decorations are easily viewable in villages around Janakpur.
Paintings on paper, which traditionally play only a minor part in the culture, have become the most celebrated form of Maithili art – or Madhubani art, as it’s known in India, where a community-development project began turning it into a marketable commodity in the 1960s. More recently, the Janakpur Women’s Development Center has helped do the same in Nepal, making Maithili paintings a staple of Kathmandu tourist gift shops. Many artists concentrate on traditional religious motifs, but a growing number depict people – mainly women and children in domestic scenes, always shown in characteristic doe-eyed profile.
Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve
Straddling a floodplain of shifting grassland and sandbanks north of the Koshi Barrage, Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve is the Terai’s smallest park. There are no tigers or rhinos, nor even any jungle, but birdwatchers can have a field day. Koshi Tappu is among the subcontinent’s most important wetlands, and thanks to its location just downstream from one of the few breaches in the Himalayan barrier, it’s an internationally important area for waterfowl and waders.
Some 465 bird species, many of them endangered, have been counted here. Flocks of up to fifty thousand ducks used to be seen in winter and spring, though numbers have been lower in recent years. Most of Nepal’s egrets, storks, ibises, terns and gulls are represented, as are at least five globally threatened species, including the black-necked stork, red-necked falcon, swamp francolin and the impressive lesser adjutant, one of the world’s largest storks. November and December are the optimum months to see winter migrants, while mid-February to early April are best for the late migratory species.
The reserve was established to protect one of the subcontinent’s last surviving herds of wild buffalo, believed to number 150–170 animals. However, there are concerns about the number of domestic buffalo getting in and mating with the wild ones. Mugger crocodiles and many species of turtle and fish are also present, as well as blue bull, wild boar, langur and spotted deer. Before the flood, numerous gangetic dolphins could sometimes be seen playing in the water above or below the barrage.
With no rhinos or large carnivores, Koshi Tappu is comparatively safe to enter on foot with a guide, though wild elephants have been known to maraud in this area. Elephant rides (Rs1000/hr) and canoe trips (from Rs2500) can also be arranged. Between the channels of water, a number of semi-permanent islands of scrub and grassland are the main stomping ground for blue bull. (Tappu means “island” in Nepali, an accurate description of this floodplain in the wet summer months.) Blue bulls are big animals with sizeable horns; they normally run away at the first scent of humans, but you have to make sure not to threaten them or block their escape route.
Nepal’s river dolphins
Nepal’s susu, or gangetic dolphins, belong to one of only three species of freshwater dolphins in the world and, like their cousins in the Amazon and Indus, are highly endangered. A small, isolated population survives in the far west of Nepal, downstream of the Chisapani gorge in the Karnali River. Before the 2008 flood, dolphins used to cavort openly in the outflow of the Koshi Barrage, less than a dozen kilometres from Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve; since then spottings have been less frequent, though three stranded dolphins were rescued by the army and released back into the Koshi in early 2009. However, whether these practically blind animals (they use echo-location), revered in myth as “messenger kings”, return in numbers, or go the way of the now-extinct Yangtze Dolphin, remains to be seen.
Biratnagar
BIRATNAGAR, Nepal’s second largest city, is an industrial place close to the border and pretty much devoid of any charm. Industry here was deeply shaken by the Madhesi movement; in 2009, protests and bandhs (strikes) by various minorities and political groups reached such an extreme that industrialists reacted by conducting their own bandhs against the bandhs; Biratnagar was eventually declared a “bandh-free” area. The main reason visitors pass through is in order to catch a flight to Kathmandu or anywhere in the eastern hills. Aside from a small but lively Hanuman temple, around 500m northeast of the bus station on Main Road, there is nothing really to see or do.
Janakpur
JANAKPUR, 165km east of Birgunj and 25km south of the Mahendra Highway, is the Terai’s most fascinating city. Also known as Janakpurdham (dham denoting a sacred place), it’s a holy site of the first order, and its central temple, the ornate Janaki Mandir, is an obligatory stop on the Hindu pilgrimage circuit. Possessing a strong Indian influence, the city is small and manageable: motorized traffic is all but banned from the centre, and tourist hustle is largely absent.
Despite the absence of ancient monuments to confirm its mythic past – no building is much more than a century old – Janakpur remains an attractive city. Religious fervour seems to lend an aura to everything; the skyline leaves a lasting impression of palm trees and the onion domes and pyramid roofs of local shrines. Most of these distinctive buildings are associated with kuti – self-contained pilgrimage centres and hostels for sadhus – some five hundred of which are scattered throughout the Janakpur area. The city’s other distinguishing feature is its dozens of sacred ponds, which here take the place of river ghats for ritual bathing and dhobi-ing.
Brief history
Hindu mythology identifies Janakpur as the capital of the ancient kingdom of Mithila, which controlled a large part of northern India between the tenth and third centuries BC. The city features prominently in the Ramayana: it was here that Ram – Vishnu in mortal form – wed Sita. In Janakpur the chant of “Sita Ram, Sita Ram” is repeated like a Hindu Hail Mary, and sadhus commonly wear the tuning-fork-shaped tika of Vishnu. Mithila came under the control of the Mauryan empire around the third century BC, then languished for two millennia until Guru Ramananda, the seventeenth-century founder of the sect of Sita that dominates Janakpur, revived the city as a major religious centre.
Janakpur’s festivals
Janakpur’s atmosphere is charged with an intense devotional zeal. New shrines are forever being inaugurated and idols installed, while loudspeakers broadcast religious discourses and the mesmerizing drone of bhajan. Pilgrimage is a year-round industry, marked by several highlights in the festival calendar:
Parikrama As many as 100,000 people join the annual one-day circumambulation of the city on the day of the February/March full moon, many performing prostrations along the entire 8km route. The pilgrimage coincides with the festival of Holi, when coloured water is thrown everywhere and on everyone.
Ram Navami Ram’s birthday, celebrated on the ninth day after the March/April full moon, attracts thousands of sadhus, who receive free room and board at temples.
Chhath Women bathe in Janakpur’s ponds and line them with elaborate offerings to the sun god Surya at dawn on the third day of Tihaar (Diwali) in October/November. Women in the villages surrounding Janakpur paint murals on the walls of their houses.
Biwaha Panchami The culmination of this five-day event – Janakpur’s most important festival – is a re-enactment of Ram and Sita’s wedding at the Janaki Mandir, which draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims on the fifth day after the new moon of November/December.
Kakarbhitta
Once-sleepy KAKARBHITTA is the municipal capital of Nepal’s easternmost district. It’s mainly a gateway, and most of those using it are Indians, hopping over from Darjeeling for some shopping, or heading to Biratnagar for business; the presence of thousands of Bhutanese refugees in camps west of here contributes to the flow. In addition, the villages situated on both sides of the border receive some perfectly legal migrants just passing by: wild elephants. Every year a few people are trampled to death and houses get destroyed by the furious pachyderms, who liberally help themselves to the grain stock.
If you have some time on your hands, you can hike out to the pleasantly green Satighata tea estate, just ten minutes’ walk south of Kakarbhitta; a Buddhist monastery run by Tamangs can be visited on the way. Don’t be afraid: the chances you’ll meet any marauding elephants are very slim.
Lhotshampas: Nepal’s other refugees
Every visitor to Nepal knows about Tibet. But few have heard of its Bhutanese refugees, who far outnumber Tibetans in Nepal. Some 107,000 ethnic Nepalis were forcibly expelled from Bhutan in 1991–92, and around 85,000 remain effectively interned in eastern Nepal, pawns in an obscure political stalemate.
Members of Nepali hill groups, notably Rais and Limbus, began migrating into Bhutan in significant numbers in the mid-nineteenth century, eventually accounting for at least a third of Bhutan’s population and earning the designation Lhotshampas (southerners). However, during the mid-1980s, the continued influx of ethnic Nepalis and a rise in Nepali militancy in neighbouring Darjeeling and Sikkim gave rise to a wave of Drukpa nationalism. The Drukpas were quick to make scapegoats of the Lhotshampas who, not coincidentally, controlled lands that were emerging as the economic powerhouse of Bhutan.
In 1988, after a national census, the government began a process of systematic discrimination against anyone who couldn’t provide written proof of residency in Bhutan in 1958. A campaign of ethnic cleansing gathered momentum, culminating in 1991 when “illegal” families were evicted from their lands. Opponents of the regime had their citizenship revoked, and they and their families were harassed, imprisoned, tortured and raped.
The refugees fled initially to India, but receiving little encouragement there, most continued on to Nepal. As their numbers swelled, the Nepalese government, wanting to keep the problem out of sight, established refugee camps at seven locations in the eastern lowlands. Since then, international and Nepali NGOs have built housing, schools, health posts and other essential facilities in the camps under the direction of the UN. Conditions are fairly liveable, but residents are desperately poor, dependent on aid or scarce labouring work.
The crisis shows little sign of being resolved. Since 2008 almost 50,000 refugees have left Nepal for Western countries, but the rest are still desperate to return to their homes in Bhutan. Preparing for a long haul, aid agencies have shifted their focus from relief work to income-generation projects to attempt to give the refugees some independence.
For more on the situation, visit w bhutaneserefugees.com.
