The Importance of Our Heritage: Changu Narayan Nepal 2020 Campaign

Published June 29, 2019 | By Sunapati Thangka School

Many people visiting our village walk happily along the small old streets around the ancient decorated buildings, the forest, the temples and shrines and houses, some still damaged like our art school, but the reconstruction works continues and we hope they will be finished soon.
We sometimes forget the importance and the value behind the beauty that we are surrounded with during our daily life but we know, as most of the people coming to visit our village realize, that we live in a very special place.
In fact behind the history of the first rocks that were posed in Changu Narayan there are beautiful Hindu and Buddhist stories and legends that belongs to the whole humanity.

Nepal 2020

Nepal is preparing to host an important international EXPO in 2020. An event about the importance of the world cultural heritage. As Nepali we feel like we are all part of it as we all have worked hard to support our communities recovering since the earthquakes of 2015.
The struggle and the effort that the people of Nepal with the contribution of many coming from all around the world, working together to rebuild our small and slowly developing country, will be finally rewarded.

Our team and community of artists did what we could with the little we had, collaborated and worked together with our villagers and organizations like Kay Garnay for Nepal and other like minded businesses like Changu Farm House and many many people coming from all around the world, visiting our beautiful place.
Together we financed and co-managed projects to build shelters, provide warm clothes to rural villagers, organized cleanups and several other activities to improve the quality of life of our lovely community, and showed to the world the little explored beauties and treasures that our unique heritage temple village has to offer.

Traditional Art of Nepal

Six years ago, we started this website with the intend to open the doors of our thangka art school and workshops to the digital world.
At the time we were already hosting and providing meals to 12 young artists coming from remote villages of Kavre and Sindhupalchok. Sixteen all together living and practicing in the thangka painting school and gallery so people walking by could admire both the artworks and the artists.

To understand what was our starting point please watch this beautiful video that Crystal Bell realized after visiting our art school.

Thangka: A Journey of Discovery

For us the idea to sell online our artworks was incredible, almost impossible at first, because we barely had 8 hours of electricity every day, sometimes none and the wifi was a luxury.
When the website was online we were a little concerned also because our English was not good but we had many great people helping and we were so exited even to receive and read a message coming from a visitor admiring our art on the screen of their computer.
When the first order arrived we were full of joy.
After two years the website started growing in traffic as we received more and more orders. It was very challenging but we where doing our best and thanks to the success we were able to host 6 young students more.

The Earthquakes of 2015

It is difficult to describe how deep was the shock that the earthquakes of 2015 provoked in all of us. The magnitude of this event is present in our lives still today.
It was Saturday morning, the rest day of the week in Nepal so most of the people were outside or doing puja and school is off as well.
In the drama we were lucky somehow. The death toll could have been worse.
Sadly we had few deaths in our village but way less than other villages nearby like Sankhu, or Bhaktapur the main city at the foothill of Changunarayan.
After dealing with the emergency and the confusion and fears of the first days we slowly adapted to the new reality.
It took us almost 6 weeks to be back online.
During this time we collaborated with many people helping of our community and villages around and thanks to volunteers and even friends that sent their messages through the website we also co-funded a local NGO.
However there were no tourists anymore and selling online was our last resource, also to gather money to finance the volunteering projects.
Plus the art school partially collapsed and the rest of the structure was severely damaged. The owner of the building had his house damaged as well so he could only afford to fix his own house. Also our families had damages or loss of structures so we were living in a difficult condition while the tremors of the aftershocks accompanied our daily life for more than one year since that Saturday.
During the monsoon season we placed few good orders so managed to find accommodation for the artists and helped building shelters for homeless families and elders.

The Long Winter

While the cold season was approaching we started collecting warm clothes and other donations in form of stationary items for school kids, water filters and whatever could help.
After the first few deliveries to Sindhupalchok the news came out that the import of all good coming from India where blocked at the border. We don’t want to enter in the political merit of the blockade but the consequences of this block were suddenly evident.
No gasoline, no cooking gas, even less electricity and higher prices basically for everything.
That winter was one of the longest winter we ever felt.

Bistari Bistari

Nepal is still today a country with many issues and many people lack basic needs however we have proven to have a strong temperament as we keep smiling at life.
We sincerely hope that the coming EXPO and campaign #VisitNepal2020 will help not only people coming to enjoy the beauty of our country but also to promote projects for a sustainable development of Nepal.

Here a short interview to our master artist Kamal Bhujel realized by an amazing organization called Girls Empowered by Travels that operates in Nepal.

Gratitude

The construction works of the art school started only last year and it should be completed soon.
We again want to thank you all the warm-hearthed people that that kept our hope high and helped us during these difficult years: our amazing customers, all the volunteers, the donors, the photographers and video makers, web designers and people that, bistari bistari (“slowly slowly” in Nepali language), contributed and keep working for what we believe are beautiful and important things in life.
Blessings.

To learn more about the historical importance of Changu Narayan check these beautiful videos: