It is a chilly autumn afternoon in a herding camp above Langtang, a Tibetan community which lies at 11,500 ft. in Rasua District north of Kathmandu. Yak, Tibetan cattle and chauri (yak-cow crossbreeds) graze while Tibetan herdsmen busy themselves with evening-chores. Two lowland Nepalis, who work for a mountaineering expedition camped nearby, come over to buy some sheep. Pasang, a Langtang Tibetan ("Bhotiya"), bargains with them and a ram is sold for NRs500. The two lowlanders grab the sheep by the horns and drag it back to their camp, where it will be slaughtered for the mountaineers' evening meal.
Back in the herding camp, many Langtang Tibetan men are furious. One man, Lakpa Tenzing, tells me why. "We, everyone in Langtang, are Buddhists. And yet year after year, some Tibetans sells sheep to be slaughtered in the shadow of our sacred mountains. As a result the gods are angry and curse us. This is why so many of our children die, why there is so much disease in the village and why the crops fail."
Langtang Tibetans, one of the poorer ethnic groups in central Nepal, have little arable land and can grow only one crop of barley, potatoes and buckwheat a year. These crops are not enough to meet the basic requirements of the Langtang Tibetan community. To make up the deficit, they trade wool, spices and herbs and sell livestock and dairy products, and work as porters and guides for mountaineering expeditions. Despite these other sources, many Langtang families do not have adequate food or clothing.
Most Langtang Tibetans claim to respect traditional Buddhist values, such as that forbidding the taking of life. However, abject poverty forces some of them to sell livestock for slaughter. Langtang Tibetans believe that if they forbade the slaughter of livestock they would alienate mountaineering expeditions which pump much-needed cash in to the local economy. However, almost all Langtang Tibetans (including those who sell the livestock) also believe that by allowing animal slaughter they are cursed by the gods whose support is necessary to get rid of the disease, poverty, child mortality and crop failure.