NEPAL AT A GLANCE
The lifestyle of Nepalese villagers can be best described as subsistence within a very primitive living environment.

a Nepalese village children (boys)

 Nepalese village children with dokos Nepalese village children (girls)
The villager's daily activities focus entirely on household and agricultural chores. The daily chores include e villager's daily activities focus entirely on household and agricultural chores. The daily chores include cultivating fields, cutting fodder for the family cattle and collecting firewood. Access to education beyond the elementary grades also presents a problem for children of very poor families who account for more than 90% of the regions population. The reason is that education beyond grade five is not free in Nepal.

Nepalses villagers threshing millet Yellow fields at Hemja village A typical Nepali mud and straw house

 

The remote village population suffers from poverty, lack of safe water and health care facilities, a lack of income generating opportunities, difficult terrain, poor links of communication and a great distance from a motor able road and urban centers. The subsistence farming on low productivity land barely meets their food needs.

 

A Nepali woman with leaves in doko

A typical Nepalese kitchen

Nepalese way of threshing rice husks

 

In spite of the substantial external development assistance, Nepal remains one of the ten least developed countries. However Nepal has also become a favorite destination for mountaineers and mountain trekkers, and justly so among the ten world's highest mountains, eight are located within the boundaries of Nepal including Mt. Everest. Virtually all visitors to Nepal see only the small part of the country, the beautiful side but one only needs to step behind the backdrop of the beautiful mountain scenery into the remote regions of Nepal that the casual visitors never see, to learn that the majority of Nepal's population lives in abject poverty.