Watching the iridescent roller bird flash in the sun and take off, one might wonder where it is going. What would it encounter on its leisurely journey as it sweeps across ridges of rugged mountains, dips down into fields of paddy, past village ponds and thatched huts, resuming through inaccessible forests?

The distance between two places in Nepal could be measured in many ways. Going around the hairpin bends by road to the nearest town from a village could be 30 kilometres (km), which could take two to three hours. The same could be done by a Cessna in ten minutes. But ask a villager the distance and he will say: 8 hours. That's because this is walking country. People here don't think in terms of km, they think of the sheer hours it will take them to walk the distance. And these hours or days would be spent in traversing through the most spectacular, rugged terrain. Wading through streams, swinging across a gorge in a basket ropeway, finding footholds on craggy rocks, often carrying dokos (woven baskets) and taking well-worn walking paths through fields and woods. No wonder, one of the first phrases you pick up here might be