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After numerous delays due to the pandemic and illness, work on the TMLC and its surroundings is accelerating with a realistic goal of a soft-opening in April next year. Prior to the arrival of the project team from Norway in October and during our 4-week stay in Tamagi we are pleased and excited to highlight the following accomplishments. Until our next scheduled visit in March 2023, your comments and suggestions are appreciated!

The project team now includes two Norwegian museologists who we were fortunate to meet during our visit to The Midt-Troms Museum in Norway’s arctic region three years ago. Ms Ellen Width, a senior adviser with experience from similar initiatives in Norway and Russia, and Mr Arild Endal, a biologist specialising in plant physiology, have been instrumental in the design and construction of the TMLC exhibits. In addition, Mr Narendra Lama has been recruited to oversee ongoing construction and future operations of TMLC.

Initially, three exhibits will be unveiled in the main museum building and adjoining cafe area early next year: livelihood, local impact of Gurkha recruitment and development/change at village level. Supervised by Narendra locally and Ellen and Arild remotely, design, sourcing and production are in progress.

TMLC has actively sought out partners from Nepal’s academic community who have expressed interest in the preservation of our cultural heritage. Following up on this, Hem, Per and Dr. Sumitra M. Gurung were invited to Lumbini Buddhist University to explore areas of shared interest in April this year. In October this was followed up by a very fruitful meeting with LBU Vice-Chancellor Professor Hridaya Ratna Bajracharya in Tamagi. The following week the project team attended a workshop organised by LBU in Kathmandu where we were introduced to faculty members, notably LBU’s MA Museum & Gallery Practices staff Lecturer Swosti Rajbhandari Kayastha and Program Coordinator Karna Bahadur Maharjan. These discussions underscored our shared interests and commitments and resulted in a LOI (Letter of Intent) outlining collaboration in various ares within LBU’s MA programme in museology incl. provision of laboratory facilities for research and training of students in Tamagi.

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Significant progress has also been made on museum infrastructure in Tamagi. The office/storage annex next to the museum is nearing completion. Internet/Wi-Fi has been installed with coverage in the entire museum area. Initially, a diesel generator supplies power for construction and lighting, but sourcing of solar panels is ongoing. In addition, poles have recently been erected in the area and it is anticipated that Tamagi will once again be linked to the national power grid.

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Finishing touches on the teahouse have been completed making it suitable for not only visitors’ meals but also exhibits, seminars and hands-on demonstrations of arts and crafts. Since this is an open air facility, curtains have been added for special events such as seminars and video screenings. Work on staff quarters is ongoing with scheduled completion early 2023.

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The TMLC site is expanding to include points of interest within walking distance. Farming terraces located 100 metres from the main museum building have been prepared . Traditional farming practices such as intercropping, crop rotation, cover cropping and organic composting will be demonstrated in this area in the appropriate seasons. This area will be an integral part of TMLC’s livelihood focus, offering visitors displays and demonstrations of traditional agricultural products and practices.
In addition, a short satellite excursion route in the Tamagi area has been mapped out. Displays at selected locations (e.g. shrines, landscape vistas, botanical points of interest, etc.) will be erected in March 2023.

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In order to gain a basic understanding of local youth (one of TMLC’s main target groups), the team scheduled a visit to neighbouring Bahadure Secondary School (grade 9 and upward). Interaction with students and teachers gave team members a more ‘grounded’ understanding of schools’ curriculum and student engagement with their cultural heritage.

Finally, to familiarise team members with similar initiatives in Nepal, visits to several museums in and around Pokhara including The Gurkha Museum at British Camp in Pokhara, International Mountaineering Museum and The Regional Museum of Gandaki Province were scheduled. Of special interest was the Himalayan Cottage and Museum in the Gurung village of Tanchowk displaying a collection of artifacts from this and surrounding villages. The owner of the Tanchowk museum has expressed interest in collaboration with the TMLC/LBU project.

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Finally, after over two years in pandemic lockdown, we return to Tamagi to pick up where we left off. Arriving in Tamagi and experiencing the pre-monsoon atmosphere and leeches was invigorating! Thanks to the efforts of our resident custodians and recently recruited staff the buildings and their surroundings were intact but in need of minor maintenance, e.g. replacing prayer flags, cleaning & tidying up, etc. The TMLC team now includes two new members who will be responsible for local management, security, sourcing and coordination of all future construction. Krishna Maya Gurung and Suraj Sunar are both local residents and thus familiar with the resources that will be required to complete construction of the TMLC.

For some time it has been our intention to partner with like-minded academic institutions in Nepal that see the potential in a long range collaborative venture with TMLC. With that goal, three members of the TMLC team (Hem Gurung, Per Helmersen and Dr. Sumitra M. Gurung) journeyed to Lumbini where they received a very warm welcome and engaged in an open dialogue with the VC and several top level academics at Lumbini Buddhist University (LBU). This dialogue will continue in the days to come.

Building foundation work for a two-room administration annex on the TMLC site will start this Summer, scheduled completion by November. A flexible solution will ensure a more efficient working environment for TMLC staff during the initial construction phase of the museum and, after opening, serve as administrative headquarters. Finally, the main access roads leading to Tamagi are continuously being upgraded to accommodate small and large vehicles during the entire year. Locally, two days of intensive landscaping around the TMLC museum building has increased its ’visibility’ and made access by vehicles safer and more convenient.

As mentioned in our last post nearly a year ago, our scheduled TMLC activities at Tamagi, Kaski were disrupted and put on hold due to the global COVID-19 surge. Faced with changing travel restrictions and in order to ensure the health and safety of everyone involved, our scheduled project mission’s visit to Nepal in March/April 2020 from Norway was, regrettably,  postponed.

2020 has been a year of uncertainty and 2021 – although we see light at the end of the tunnel – promises to be equally unpredictable. We are, however, confident that containment strategies designed to limit spread of the Coronavirus and its mutated variants combined with the prospects of a (hopefully) equitable distribution of effective vaccines will enable us to resume work on the TMLC project at some point later this year or early 2022. Our commitment and strategy to give continuation of this unique village-based project remain unchanged and the required infrastructure is in place. As soon as the COVID-19 situation in Nepal and in Norway permit, project work will be resumed! In the interim updates will be posted on this web site so please check in occasionally. We also welcome your comments and suggestions.

While we all wait for our next visit to Tamagi, we hope this informal hand-held camera & drone ‘unguided tour’ of Tamagi will remind us of the cultural significance of the village as well as its breathtaking surroundings.

The Management Team    

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the much-anticipated visit of the Norwegian Mission to Nepal during the last two weeks of March and beginning of April has been postponed. Scheduled meetings with Norwegian Embassy staff and the TMLC management team in Nepal have been put on hold until travel restriction are lifted. We are monitoring the situation as it develops and are confident that this is only a temporary setback. In the meantime, we are fortunate to have coordination and communication tools via internet that allow us to make some progress, albeit in a less efficient manner than we had envisioned.

We hope to reschedule our trip in September, circumstances permitting, and encourage our team members, TMLC supporters and their families to follow WHO guidelines so we can all pick up where we left off as soon as this is advisable.  

Hem Gurung

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The main objective of this visit was surveying the TMLC site’s physical configuration and staking out the boundaries separating property owned and to be controlled by TMLC and adjacent land holdings in Tamagi. Stone fences have now been erected along the borders in order to clearly demarcate the TMLC land holdings for future reference. Access road, parking and maneuvering space for vehicles arriving at the TMLC site have also been expanded and upgraded. The foundation for a 1,60 x 1,00 meter marble stone displaying the names of supporters and contributors has also been erected next to the main museum building. The names will be engraved by stone masons in Patan at a later point.

Remaining work on the visitors’ toilet and mounting of iron railing in the multi-function café/tea house is currently nearing completion.

The legal process required to register TMLC as an independent non-profit organization under Nepali law is ongoing. Finding capable and committed individuals to fill the various organizational positions as specified by the legal framework has proved to be more time-consuming than anticipated. However, Basudha and our legal advisor are making good progress.

In March and April 2020 a team consisting of Hem, Per and two experts from Mid-Troms Museum in Bardufoss, Norway (a dynamic regional museum above the Arctic Circle – see previous posting) will arrive in Tamagi to start design and production of the museum’s main exhibits as well as conceptualization of the TMLC satellite sites along the path that will guide visitors to various points of interest in Tamagi.

On the occasion of the annual Tamagi ex-pat gathering in Farnborough outside of London on Saturday 27^th of July, TMLC representatives had an opportunity to update participants on the current status of the museum project. Hem, Per, Basudha and Madhu had various roles on this.

While Hem informed about the current financial status and future plans, Per stressed the importance of local participation and anchoring of the project. Basudha and Madhu gave Power Point presentations as a general introduction to the project including an overview of information collected so far in collaboration with Sustainable Mountain Architecture (SMA), a non-profit consultancy based in Kathmandu.

During the event, more cash contributions were collected and portraits of Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi rendered by Nikita Gurung (21), the very talented eldest daughter of Narendra Gurung (Mathemai Para) and a third generation girl of Tamagi origin living in UK, were presented to the project. At present Nikita is working towards a pharmacy degree in UK.

Before the gathering, Hem conducted two separate video interviews with Lt. Ram Bahadur Gurung (85) and Subedar Karna Bahadur Gurung (84). Both of these elderly gentlemen are from Tamagi and are now part of the large Gurung community in UK. Since few written accounts exist, their unique recollections will be extremely valuable additions to the TMLC permanent historical archive. The interviews focused on early life events in Tamagi, their army service where they fought for the British Empire as well as other cultural and social values with which the younger generation is, presumably, unfamiliar. Similar interviews will be scheduled in the future.

Hem