Koilabas: a town left behind

Koilabas: a town left behind Along the Nepal-India border lies a place where history runs deep, but the future is uncertain For many of us who live comfortable lives in cities, who don’t have to deal with the everyday drudgery of rural life, there is something romantic about remoteness. We seek out places seemingly at the edge of the world, either in person or virtually, such as in fiction or film. Similarly, there is something tantalizing about a place frozen in the past, distant in terms of space as well as time. In May, a friend and I stumbled upon a half-deserted town in the jungle on the Nepal-India border. We were on our way to Kathmandu from the Far West, and had decided to explore the southern part of Dang District along the way. With no particular destination in mind, we drove our motorbike south through the Deukhuri Valley, across the Rapti River, into the Churia Hills. In Dang, as in much of Nepal, the Churia are sparsely populated due to their po...