Easy Dahl Baat in 3 hours: Cooking with Tharu tribal women

---

[youtube=Lq7zZuZAQe4][youtube=Lq7zZuZAQe4]

An unexpected but priceless experience. Mike and I decided to take up the offer to spend the evening in a Tharu Village and cook with the women. The Tharu are a primitive tribe living close to Chitwan. Walking through their villages is indescribable…..I felt like we landed in the middle of Princess Buttercup’s farm in Princess Bride. We were picked up at our lodge by an ox cart, driven by 2 oxen. We arrived in the village around 4:30, met the Tharu women and started cooking. All of this done with NO English, just hand signals and a lot of laughing from them. They don’t even speak Nepali - their language is a Tharu tribal language. The dish we prepared was traditional Dahl Baat, a combination of rice, lentils, tomatoes, potatoes and onion which they eat for EVERY meal, twice a day…it’s the only thing they ever eat. It took about an hour to prepare, all done over open fire pit inside a small mud/grass hut which was HOT. As hot as sitting in a car with closed windows in Phoenix. Mike, I believe, got fired from them after failing to be able to peel and slice the potatoes to their standard. All of this work done on the floor with some kind of machete knife that they held in place on the floor with their bare feet, they made me do the same but I kept shoes on. While the pots were cooking, the women and children started dancing outside in a circle and included us, though we looked a bit clumsy I’m sure. There again was a lot of laughter and Tharu speaking which I am quite sure translated to “For the love of God, these white people can’t cook OR dance”. They then kept yelling “Dance, Dance” to Mike and I, and we tried to teach them a bit of Hokey Pokey. After dinner, by now completely dark, the children took us around to show us everyone’s houses so we could see where they slept. All mud brick houses, one or two rooms only as the houses are only used for sleep. Every house had a large 5 foot tall cylinder, at least 4-5 feet diameter, full of their family’s stash of rice. The children wanted us to take pictures and video of everything - water buffalo, goats, their beds, their houses, and their grandfather who was in the center of the village telling a story of the Tharu history as part of a special festival. The last thing before leaving, my hair was combed by one of the women, both of us had red flowers placed in our hair and red paint made from berries put on our foreheads. I forgot to mention how strikingly beautiful these women are. …tiny (3 hours to prepare a meal has to be good for keeping the pounds off), wearing beautiful brightly colored dresses, and lots of jewelry. The evening will probably be one of the most memorable of my life.
Our final day in Chitwan… trip to the Elephant Breeding Center. This is a government supported center for breeding and training Asian elephants. Once again, we had to hop into a shaky tree-carved out canoe to cross a river to get to the center and once again… held my breath that we didn’t tip and drop all our cameras with no photos or video yet downloaded.
The elephants - as expected - were amazing. They are beautiful animals and adorable to watch. There was a set of 23 month old twins, which are extremely rare. About 25 elephants - adults and babies - to see. They spend their time training with their Mahouts in the breeding center and also spend a good bit of the day out in the jungle and villages for many hours a day to get used to sounds of vehicles and other things they need to get used to.
End of Chitwan…flight back to Kathmandu to meet up with friends Nancy from Dallas, Sue from Cincinnati and 496 other new friends.

---

Comments

[Janet]

WOW
what an experience....I can say nothing more