What are some positive things about nepal

gulfport
thank you for your insight
do you have any accounts to tell

The Nepali can be a bit short sighted. However, I hope some of the other things you noticed were how kind and generous they are. Sometimes the boundaries in one culture is different from the next and sometimes the boundaries get blurred when one friend has more assets than the other.

It isn't fun being poor in any country and now the West has come here with all the cool toys; who wouldn't want them at any cost? Young people are short sighted, as well. Most people who interact with tourists are young people, as the older people do not always speak English.

This is an extremely safe country for tourists. I am a woman in my 60's and have never had reason to fear for my safety except for one time in 4 years. Even then, it was my own nativity that was at the root of it.

So, I think it's important to think back to a time in my own lifetime when Americans were throwing old refrigerators into the Hudson River. And now, look what we are doing with fracking. And that isn't even out of necessity or ignorance. It's so easy to judge.

Your post is absurd and disrespectful. I've just returned from my second visit to Nepal after volunteering in a rural community for three months in 2013. I stayed with my friend, a Nepali native who volunteered alongside me in 2013, and his family in Lalitpur, Kathmandu. Here are some of my observations about Nepal:
In general, they are completely selfless people, and share EVERYTHING without a second thought. So much so that I normally get laughed at when I say please (cripaya) and thank you (danyabhat) because it's considered unnecessary to sweeten a request with a display of gratitude; people will naturally help you out and give you anything you need automatically, regardless.
The importance of family to Nepalese people is admirable almost to a fault. Most families live together (grandma, mother, father, baby etc.) and I even visited my friend's Grandfather's home which housed 4 generations under one roof! They all support each other and share everything together, which in my opinion is a much healthier environment to grow up in than the individualistic, money-driven, sometimes selfish environment so conducive with western families.
The culture is the most relaxed and cheerful I've ever encountered, everyone is so laid-back and people just calmly enjoy life at a nice, relaxed pace. I see old men or families or even young groups of friends sitting outside a shop or a cafe for hours, just talking now and again, and nodding along harmoniously, never once checking their watches or hurrying around in a fluster and I can't help but draw contrasts to the people of London or New York, running from nowhere to nothing at a million miles an hour with a Starbucks cup in hand.
Another admirable quality I've noticed is their respect and adherence to religion. Most are Hindu but there are a few Muslims and even the odd Christian, and all observe their own traditions (no matter how silly they may seem to some, and even to themselves) respectfully without question.
A few other things are the diet (possibly the healthiest, cleanest diet in the world), the general English language proficiency, the respect for the elderly, the resourcefulness of the people to find a use for everything without being wasteful (reusing bottles, repairing clothes, medical remedies using plants, herbs or vinegar) and the general colourfulness of the country (from the mountain views to the colourful dresses and clothing). Oh, Buff momos are ridiculously tasty and the National flag's pretty cool as well

Hi there, yes I agree your post is little abrupt but I can agree with much of what you said. These are all many frustrating things in Nepal, which sometimes make me scream "Why? Why on earth this country has to be like this?" But there are some things to consider.
- I keep reminding myself that much of what we do is based on our education (at home, in schools). We know why we should recycle, why we shouldn't burn plastic etc. If nobody told us, where would we be? Nepali people are smart, but the education is often simply memorizing things - nobody teaches them to think. Hopefully that will change.
- Nepali people have distorted view of foreigners. They all think we have tons of money and our life is great. I once explained young lady that in US many people cannot afford proper health care because they don't have any insurance nor money. She was surprised.
- Foreigners have distorted view of Nepali people. It is difficult for us to get to know "real Nepali" because they behave differently around us and many are from the greedy tourist/trekking industry.
- "Primitive society that lives by mythologies?" Well, I was surprised when I saw so many busy "psychic" offices in Toronto, Canada. How different is it?

I think Nepali people are just like people anywhere else just molded by the circumstances they live in - and which were not their choice. Just give them a chance :-)

These are astute observations and as a long term resident of Kathmandu I can't fault this characterization. I would warn pollyannaish and naive tourists who spend a few weeks and imagine they have made so many wonderful lifelong friends, Nepalis don't make friends with foreigners,  they stalk victims.  Wait until your second decade and you'll find out what those lovely 'friends' were really up to.

Those of us raised in market economies often mistake nonconsumerism for poverty.  Nepal is still largely a tribal or clan society where large extended family or village relationships mean that goods and services are borrowed or bartered rather than reduplicating purchases to furnish multiple single family residences. This type of economics is mistaken for generosity by foreigners from consumerist market economies.

If you attempt to participate in this society without clearly understanding that nothing is a free gift or a favour, they will eventually take everything from you because they believe themselves entitled, you have accrued debt. 

The Nepali attitude is to expect to be rewarded for not stealing rather than punished for it afterwards.  From their perspective since you failed to reward them for not stealing, they have a right to take your things as compensation. For foreigners this is stealing and we are shocked when people we trusted for years suddenly cheat and steal from us.

There are warnings in guide books about the idiosyncrasies of the Nepali mind. An example I think apt is asking directions to the post office. The Nepali will gladly give accurate directions but will not mention that the post office burnt down six months ago even though they are fully aware of this. In the English speaking world this would be lying but the Nepali believes themselves to be innocent of lying because you didn't ask whether the post office burnt down, they answered the question accurately,  they spared you the bad news. Foreigners will find this impossibly frustrating.

If a Nepali tells you 'don't worry', get out immediately you are in danger. Nepalis will tell you ' everybody's not the same,  like five figures. ' If you are hearing this you are being cheated, check your wallet. Under no circumstances make business deals unless you own a firearm and are trained to use it. Do not get involved in 'romantic' relationships,  do not touch anyone, not even with a ten foot pole, not even if wearing a space suit, not even if operating a pole deploying remote control drone...from mars.

Nepalis do not respond to criticism or exhibit any self reflectivity,  and this will seem like shamelessness and incorrigibility to others but actually foreigners just don't register as anything but a walking bag of money. 

They famously compromise in dispute resolution always seeking concensus, but when this fails there's a massacre. Periodically, expect massacres and never forget that life is very, very cheap. 15 yrs ago I wouldn't have said this, but now it's getting serious. 

People who come for a few weeks and are all moist eyed about the cute natives, learn from the experiences of those who have been around for a long time. But if we had taken this advice ourselves and listened to the warnings of those who'd been around 30 yrs before us, we wouldn't have had to go through these experiences either,  so I don't expect any better from others. All the above are common faults of people everywhere, but denying that Nepalis are also flawed is paternalistic and dehumanizing. Good characteristics however are self evident.

And there are unicorns that piss rainbows.

Leo, do you think we can apply these observations to Nepali people in general? I agree that this is a very real side of Nepal nowadays and many tourist don't want to see it. However I tend to think that this is what Nepali people have became after having gone through some turbulent times and started dealing with the influx of paying foreigners. Let's say many Nepalis got spoiled but I wouldn't say all of them. My friend has Nepali friends who live far away in a remote village. He promised to visit them and when he made it up there, the family was so excited he made the effort that they slept outside and left their bed for visitors. They didn't take anything from them. Our Nepali friend literally saved our cooking during the winter gas shortage when he managed to get us a gas which he delivered right to our home. We overpaid him by 30 rupees. When he found out about it, he wanted to give us 30 rupees back. I agree it may be extremely difficult for Western foreigners to get to know real and honest Nepali but it would be sad if we keep meeting only the "bad" ones and generalize it to the whole nation.

So far, Mr.Leo has been the only one to give an intelligible and useful insight to this thread and i wish to see more of his contributions.  his analysis is priceless; but unfortunately it falls on deaf ears.

many typists here want to convince themselves, and falsely mislead others, that nepal is some kinda of Valhalla to justify their ignorant decision to move there - while others have no choice and are literally stuck in nepal living on a welfare paycheck based on their perception of convenience.

it really shows their lack of expatriatism, global knowledge and intercultural know-how.  sometimes its a real pain to read their asinine views; and they probably never left their home country before.

like Mr.Leo clearly pointed; what millions of people read about nepal are comments made by young hipsters trekking around Sarangkot, Mustang etc. and that they were probably cheated out of their money without even realizing it during their brief stays.

as an educated economist, serial expat and former corporate manager in the oil sector; i approached nepal with the idea of investment and long term stay - but a couple of months dealing with the locals, authorities, banks and lawyers were enough to realize that the place is a flop inhabited by vicious beings only interested in appeasing their shrines and pockets.  i will not be part of that or help them achieve their goals.

yes, poverty plays a big role in their condition but we can't blame it all on that.
they've received 55 years of donations from the west and they are still on square number one.  second, their country is very rich in natural resources and yet they do nothing about it except destroying it at an alarming rate and abusing the environment.  it shows how lazy they've become and prefer to live hand to mouth. 

where i come from;  we had NO WATER and that means people couldn't grow or raise anything - now that is poverty.  and what do they do to the wonderful Fewa lakes in Pokhara ? dump sewage water in it from the city.

ultimately it all goes back to a culture's beliefs; hindus don't believe in helping each other or helping "inferior casts" since they're subhumans and their condition is caused by a divine punishment ( reincarnation ).  yet they expect us to help them when they won't help each other.  and what do they do in return ? they laugh at our backs, when they can refrain from doing it public, for giving out free stuff since we are so filthy rich.

yes, unicorns do PP rainbows and poop cute chocolate puppets holding candy canes.

@ my realnepal: lol you remind of an american couple that paid $20 for cheap plate of dahl baht and felt bad when they were given back 10 cents in loose change. 

such people should be banned from traveling cause they make things harder for us - coming from the real world - by giving locals the impression that we're all so naive and gullible.

30 rupees won't even buy 2 bottles of water; he was probably insulted.

@gulfport. Well, that's really sad. You judge millions of people based on your limited experience from exploring business opportunities in the country. It is easy to choose only opinions that fit your experience. I agree there are many. I would never consider Nepal as a great country for doing business or investment for the reasons you and Leo mentioned. For the same reasons some countries even consider cutting down their financial aid now. They are right. But as for your generalizations... Well, I do feel like arguing but I think there is no point.

lol..i like to chat on the internet etc. and i like to learn from different point of views and share my own.

some people go on holiday and find love.  others might discover a new hobby or a best friend; others more might lose their passport and have a terrible time.

its called life.  and you can't blame nor praise each and everyone for their experiences and for sharing them. 

one might be tempted to blame the guy that lost his passport and how reckless he was etc. but someone else might learn from that experience on how to hold on to their passport properly and how to get a new one in case of lose.

Hello all,

This is quite a thorny subject, therefore I will keep an eye on it.
If there is any skid, I may have to close this topic.

Thank you for your comprehension,
Marjorie

Generalization, it has been argued, is the kernel of all scientific work, a basic attribute of scientific knowledge, the very aim of science. From single observations we try to draw inferences to more general formulations. Without generalization language based thought is impossible since each particular would require a unique designation. It is worth considering that generalization is an important tool in critical theory and qualitative evaluation.

What is interesting to me is that anthropologists, sociologists and indologists have been pointing out for years that the subcontinental mind, per Max Weber, is not accustomed to instrumental rationality and , per La Vallee Poussin,  does not clearly recognize the law of non-contradiction, that is Aristotle's second law of thought (Y cannot be both X and not X). Realizing that these features of our thought are culturally conditioned and not universal modes of thought or 'common sense' is crucial in appreciating otherness. I am not putting forward a normative or evaluative theory, but merely a description with some analysis which might explain why there are such distinctive cognitive patterns separating Nepalis and Westerners. Considering that genetics has revealed that even the ability to smell asparagus in our urine is determined by our genes, how radically different must our perceptions be?

I have pointed out in another post that the Nepali language lacks a formal future tense. Verbs ending in -ne are only colloquially future but really present continuous or adverbial and the -ne cha ending is just present continuous with simple present auxiliary.  This is quite different from Hindi  -oogaa ending or Sanskrit -ishya. Lack of a hard future tense I believe results in an inability of the Nepali mind to commit to events in the future.  Similarly,  the use of -le to qualify the gramatical subject of transitive verbs in a similar way to the Hindi ergative particle -ko is effectively a passive voice.  This distances the agent from the action in a way that averts taking responsibility,  eg. 'The bus crashed' not ' I crashed the bus because I was blind drunk'. Casual observers would not pick up on these features and be totally frustrated by miscommunication.

Another poster here pointed out the refusal of Nepalis to accept 'kripaya' (please) and 'dhanyavat' (thankyou) as a mark of their humility and kindness.  This amused me as these words were adapted from Sanskrit by the British when they standardized Hindi because they were unable to cope with the percieved lack of politeness. They then entered Nepali as lone words from Hindi but this is still a fairly alien concept reserved for extreme formality such as the automated telephone exchange.  Like Hindi, Nepali has upto 4 levels of honorific conjugation depending on whether one is addressing the king or a goat and politeness is reflected by how sycophantic you pretend to be.  Foreigners are invariably referred to behind their backs or even to their faces if not know to speak Nepali with the verbal conjugation used for addressing children or goats, u and ta.

One caution I can concede is that Nepal is a very ethnicly and linguistically diverse country.  The majority speak Nepali as a second language. Usually I limit my criticism to the Pahari bahun and chettri elite. The madhdeshi and newari ethnic groups are totally different in amazing ways but less studied and less open to being studied.

Leo, Thanks for the insights. In 4 years I have never heard the word you refer to as 'please.' I think it's really funny that the phrase, 'I'm sorry,' actually literally means 'Sorry 'bout that,' which translates into English is a bit rude (Muff garnu ho la').

What you said in the post is so true and explains a lot. I do get along with the Nepali, but I've heard them refer to me as 'boudhi manche,' 'old lady' by one family I had befriended. They never got over my white skin and even the children continued to treat me rudely, thinking that if they said things in Nepali it would be even more fun to insult me and watch me smile like an idiot. This was two families only. The vast majority call me 'Ama,' which is short for my name and also means mother. You can learn a lot about what the parents talk about by listening to the kids.

I think the problem is that we get our friends from the tourism industry. No one like tourists anywhere in the world, especially those who work with them.

Hi Leo, thank you for such a thorough comment. I enjoy studies on how language defines/affects our thinking so I think your thoughts are really interesting. I look forward to learning more about this.
I believe the foreigners are usually the most polite people in the neighborhood because we tend to use high forms for everyone including children and of course use thank you and please all the time.
I agree generalization is a useful tool but so is the counterexample method used in testing general statements. If the statements are too generalized like "all" and "always", even one counterexample can prove them wrong. I don't meet many Nepali people from the local elite nor many from the tourist industry. The Nepalis I meet may often think differently than we do (or have their own distinct cognitive patterns as you put it) but there are all kinds of them - some are rude, some polite, some honest, some cheat whenever they can - just like people in other countries. As you pointed out Nepal is a very diverse country. Even in other countries I found it hard to answer when people asked me, "What are Americans like", " What are Germans like" etc. I like to use words like "many"  "often" or "people I met". The generalized picture I was objecting was painting ALL Nepalis as some kind of vicious creatures that need to be avoided altogether. May be it wasn't meant this way and I got a wrong impression. But I think we have come to some kind of consensus here; that's good. Thank you.