perhaps these two small countries, nepal and bhutan, one to the immideate north and the other a bit northeast, from india, are fortunate. the less trump knows of their existence, hopefully the less chance of their being victimized by his ignorance. each has its unique problems, yet each has also, much to love and cheer about them. both have great potential to develop each in their own ways, hopefully without the dirty fingers of international investment muddinging further their admittedly muddy waters.
Fascinating. Nepal has a thriving tourism sector, does it not? When I think of it, it has this spiritual quality about it. Like it's sort of a spiritual retreat of sorts for those who can afford travel. Doesn't it also have Mount Everest? Yeah. That pretty much sums up my knowledge of Nepal. I know nothing about Bhutan though. Perhaps I should study more.
Last news I heard from Nepal Mother and two boys suffocate in Nepal's latest 'period hut' tragedy It's a shame people still do that. Illegal, but fuck people.
That's totally unacceptable. It's outlandish and primitive. Even hard to believe, but there it is in black and white. For a country with so much spiritual dignity the gender politics apparently aren't necessarily egalitarian. I still find the place fascinating, but I feel for those poor women. How is that supposed to be impure?! I imagine it's my own ethnocentrism speaking, but I find that particular practice abhorrent.
I seem to remember Nepal at least hates Muslims...discriminates against them and deny them entry. Why they have such problems, I don't know? They seem like very nice people, like most Buddhists. Burma and India has had some similar ethnic problems. Hope they get things worked out.
The majority religion in Nepal is actually hinduism. And the more I learn about Hinduism, or the people who practice it rather, the less I like it. Such misogony for a religion with so many beautiful female deities. And don't get me started on the caste system
Unpopular opinion: when one looks at how women tend to be treated in religions, the position of women in the Catholic Church is.....not so bad
I want to apologize for being ethnocentric in this thread. I may not be congruent with the beliefs of the people of Nepal, but it's a different culture. Just because it's not the one I'm accustomed to doesn't mean that it's wrong or that it should be disparaged by anyone. I guess I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed.... I'm sorry to Nepal and everyone who had to read my post and wonder how I can consider myself a free thinking entity whilst being so judgmental of something simply because it is foreign. I don't agree with chhaupadi but I can accept that it is only different than what I'm used to seeing.
No, the oppression of women is always wrong. I dont think cultural relativism applies when we're talking about women being forced to sleep in sheds like livestock for simply being women. Your snap judgement was the right one.
bhutan has a national happiness product as a measurement, at least according to its king. nepal as mentioned is eco-tourism and spirit tourism. it has narrow twisting roads and many substantial towns and villages that can only be reached on foot. and as others have noted, they do have problems of course. nepal is also the home in exile of tibetan budhism. both have both a royalty and a legislature, which aren't always at peace with each other. both are buffer states between india and a p.r.c. dominatated tibetan 'autonimous' region. impoverished by much of the worlds standards, with india to the south and tibet to the north. well actually to the south of bhutan is bangaldesh, but there's a bit of india between them too. there was another country between nepal and bhutan called sikkim, which was absorbed by india, the details of how that came about i've either forgotten or never learned. nepal's monarachy had once upon a time, not too many decades ago, been very accessable, but a bit hide bound about intermerrage, which somehow the cia, or somebody, got their messy fingers mixed up in and there ended up being an internal palace shooting personal kind of semi-war. this was about a decade or so back. bhutan i don't know too much about outside of its own propiganda, other then that they had a community of nepali's living there, most of whom the expelled for whatever reason in whatever way. a couple of decades ago i was following events there because for a number of reasons. these past five or six years i haven't been.
while this is absolutely true, it also tends to get a bit oversimplified when viewed through the lense of someone else's culture.
Yeah, Nepal still does the Kumari thing, pre pubescant girls worshipped as living gods....until they get their first period Retarded
