The village of Thakurdwara on the edge of Bardia National Park is not the Nepal of common imagination. The mountains that are so emblematic of Nepal can be seen looming vague and ephemeral in the hazy distance but here, on the lower reaches of the Karnali river, the land is flat, sun-baked and lazy. This area in the west of Nepal, south of the Himalaya and north of the border with India, is known as the Terai. It is populated by the Tharu, a people ethnically distinct from both their northern brothers and their Indian sisters. They are the keepers and tenders, tillers and herders of this incredibly fertile land and live a life of pastoral simplicity that has hardly changed for centuries. The land is tilled by oxen, the crops gathered by hand, they live
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