Word: himalayan
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...Nepal's King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Deva (see THE WORLD). Shepherd first encountered the elaborate ceremonies of the Hindu kingdom in 1956 at the coronation of Birendra's father, Mahendra. The correspondent arrived for that occasion aboard a rickety DC-3 that "slithered low over the Himalayan foothills, searching for the gap in the mountains through which we slipped into the Katmandu Valley." He has since reported on coronations of two other Himalayan monarchs, the Kings of Bhutan and Sikkim. Over the years, the Shangri-la quality of the mountain kingdoms has been diminished by the encroachment...
...three most recent coronation ceremonies. The coronation of King Tribhuvan in 1913-witnessed by only one foreigner, the resident British ambassador-required the services of 109 elephants. The crowning of King Mahendra in 1956, attended by representatives of 15 of the growing number of nations with which the Himalayan kingdom then exchanged diplomats, required 43. For last week's coronation of King Birendra, the streets of Katmandu were aswarm with hundreds of foreign guests representing the some 60 countries with which Nepal now has relations. But only 23 elephants took part...
...million subjects are literate). He emphasized that Nepal would continue to pursue a nonaligned foreign policy and remain scrupulously neutral in matters affecting its giant neighbors, India and China. By tradition the Nepalese have feared domination by India, and were greatly concerned when New Delhi absorbed their Himalayan neighbor, Sikkim, last year...
...best method of transportation. While the cost of having a car is prohibitive, used bikes can be purchased cheaply or rented for a couple rupees (20 cents) a day. In the foothills or mountains, however, the only way to get there is to walk. Most of the Himalayan area is cut off in summer as well as winter. This part of the country, still one of the remotest areas of the world, is about as hard to traverse today as it was for the early Tibetans on their way to the Valley of Nepal. Now as then there...
During the past two decades, for example, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh cleared Himalayan foothills to make more room for crops. Without the forests, which act as great sponges that sop up and hold rainfall, the water rapidly ran off the slopes. The accelerated runoff caused disastrous floods over the past year. In cleared jungles in Mexico, Guatemala and Brazil, heavy rains quickly leached the nutrients from the thin layer of topsoil, rendering the land infertile within a year or two. (The trees had both anchored and nourished the soil.) In other cleared jungles, the sun burned out the soil...