Lockdown Initiative | Reviving Highland Agriculture, Cuisine & Lifestyle

Nepal is renown as a mostly agricultural country, and most remote communities still practice deep connection to the land and their people – living in peace with each other, with no ego, no competition, and with a sense of fulfilment that comes with an agrarian lifestyle. Tourism in areas like Manang brought immense change, some of it so rapid that there was a major disruption in this nature of life. It also brought rapid progressive change – roads, technology, electricity and education – changing lives forever.

Nepal has been hit in recent years by both man-made and natural calamities that have made local communities like those in Manang realize that this new lifestyle is not permanent, and is tremendously susceptible to these adverse conditions. The 15-year Maoist insurgency, the earthquake of 2015 and subsequent embargo from India, and more recently the pandemic has proven this over and over again. We had to sit down and rethink how we wanted more sustainable growth – not entirely moving away from tourism – the main bread earner, but also balancing this with a sustainable and peaceful lifestyle.

As the lockdown hit Manang in earnest, we decided to form a small voluntary group – mainly of Manangi women farmers – with a vision to promote highland agro-products of our area in cities nationally and internationally. This also had an ulterior motive to bring back Manangi cuisine and promote it to the world. This was our way to reconnect with our own culture and bring back the pride in being from Manang.

Being above 3,000 m, Manang has only a single plantation season, resulting in one big harvest somewhere in autumn. There used to be no fresh vegetables for the winter, except some potatoes and turnips, but nowadays with greenhouse technology, this has been surpassed. In old days, whatever we produced was stored through drying, so that we could use them during winter. All these dried ingredients then went into the cuisine that we ate during the winter until we had fresh produce again in the summer. This is what we decided to showcase to the world, possible now because of the hugely improved road access to the valley and the availability of platform and markets that appreciated this sort of initiatives. In Kathmandu now, we have kickstarted a small showroom in Thamel, and have entered the produce in this new world of farmers markets, online orders and deliveries. We have to, this is the way we can preserve our lifestyle, our produce, our agriculture and our cuisine. This we hope will also allow the farmers in Manang to sustain themselves through improved financial independence, and the viability of this initiative will draw more Manangi community members into this more sustainable lifestyle – reducing our reliance on tourism, which is so temperamental.

The new age Manangi youth have also joined in, helping out with their excellent skills in online marketing, as a first step towards the future of this initiative. The wonderful Manangi community that looks out for each other is still very much present, and this we are hoping to preserve also through this initiative.

Follow the initiative at @manangDirect or via the hashtag #manangDirect