Gatlang

These villages are due west and northwest of the town of Shyrubesi. Shyrubesi is the starting point for the popular trek into Langtang Valley, which is to the east. While thousands of tourists visit the Langtang Valley every year, few make their way to these traditional towns, though that is slowly beginning to change. While villages such as Gatlang and Thuman are old Tamang towns, their isolation has also led to poverty and few opportunities for the people who live there. In each town I inquired about deaf people, and there were always three or four working in the fields. In one town, I visited a deaf man's sister-in-law. Her husband had died and now the deaf man owned the house.

“Do you want him?” she asked us. “You can take him.” She couldn't understand how anyone could have any interest in the “limpia” who lived with her.

In these towns, deaf people have very few opportunities. I met none whom where married, and their families consider them burdens, though they seemed to put in an equal share of work in the fields. In another home, an old woman and mother of three deaf children showed us her paralyzed legs, which were covered with a skin disease. Clearly everyone has hardships here, though the children run laughing through the streets, chewing on stalks of sweet corn, climbing trees and watching us curiously.

Above the village of Gatlang, men and women in knee-high rubber boots hauled loads of grass fodder, firewood and ferns. The ferns are mixed with manure to make a natural fertilizer. In the terraced fields, dzo, a male cross between yak and cows, pulled plows through deep, muddy furrows, and I watched as the men struggled to keep the furrows straight and the dzos moving in a direct line. Here there were shelters covered with blue plastic tarps, or small stone huts with roofs of bamboo, temporary lodgings for farmers during the growing season, with the remnants of fires with blackened tea kettles resting on them. Dawn was rising over 24,000 foot Langtang Lirung at the head of the valley, and already, many of these farmers had probably been in the fields for several hours. Which of these men were deaf? In the village below me, how many men and women were struggling with illness and disability, like the paralyzed woman who could no longer move from her porch? Because of the smoky fires in each home, cataracts, blindness and respiratory illness are not uncommon.

I sat by a chorten as the sun rose. Chortens are stone structures, often with prayer flags strung from the top, and stones with Buddhist inscriptions line their sides. Our guide told us that communities would come together to build these structures in the belief that they would gain merit for future lifetimes. Sometimes the ashes of a revered lama are stored inside. Most of the chortens are older, though. Nowadays, it's hard for villagers to set aside the time to build them.