🇬🇧 Deputy Ambassador in 🇳🇵 AI PhD @UniofOxford Fan of books, history, embassies & Nepal
Kathmandu
Joined June 2011
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Nepal's Kusunda langauge is critically endangered. Only a handful of people speak it.
In 2004 a woman from the hills of mid-western Nepal came to Kathmandu to sort out some citizenship paperwork. Previously, linguists had been told that the language she spoke was already extinct.
To everyone's bafflement, she then started speaking it.
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ALT Relief map of Nepal with Kathmandu marked, and a box around the mid-western hill districts of Dang, Rolpa and Pyuthan, where Kusunda has been documented. Credit: NordNordWest, CC BY-SA 3.0 de (NIMA and SRTM3 data); labels added, via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nepal_rel_location_map.svg. Caveat: the box marks districts in which speakers have been found, not a precise language boundary.
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Newar carvers have used the same timber for temple struts, windows and doors for centuries 🪵 It's hard, heavy and shrugs off monsoon damp and termites. Which tree?
Look up at almost any Newar temple & many Newari buildings🇳🇵and you'll see carved wooden posts slanting out to hold up the heavy roofs. Nyatapola alone has about 180 of them. What are they called?
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Old Kathmandu 🇳🇵 began as two rival settlements, Yambu in the north and Yangal in the south. Tradition says King Gunakamadeva founded a new city between them and started a festival where dancers from both halves met on the road joining them. It's still one of the city's biggest festivals. What's it called?
Kathmandu has at least four names:
🌟 Kantipur, the city of light
🪵 Kasthamandap, after the wooden pavilion
🏘️ Yen, or Yen Dey, in Nepal Bhasa, from Yambu
🏛️ Koligram, in Licchavi times
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Places all over Nepal are named after PM Chandra Shamsher Rana, how many can you name?
I'll start - the🇬🇧🏴 1903 Chobar bridge's official name is "Shree 3 Chandra Bridge"
Kathmandu's first suspension bridges came from Aberdeen 🏴, the Granite City
🔩 Louis Harper designed them and Harpers Ltd made them at the Craiginches Ironworks
🌉 The Chandra Bridge over Chobhar Gorge went up in 1903
💧 Sundarighat's 300-foot bridge, built 1901 to 1903, still carried two water mains from Kirtipur to Patan in 2019
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The carved posts holding up Newar roofs are called tundal, or tunala 🪵
🙏 Most show a god linked to the temple's own deity
🦁 The corners carry more weight, so they get fierce lion-griffins, shardulas
🕰️ The oldest surviving ones date from around the 13th century
Look up at almost any Newar temple & many Newari buildings🇳🇵and you'll see carved wooden posts slanting out to hold up the heavy roofs. Nyatapola alone has about 180 of them. What are they called?
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Look up at almost any Newar temple & many Newari buildings🇳🇵and you'll see carved wooden posts slanting out to hold up the heavy roofs. Nyatapola alone has about 180 of them. What are they called?
Answer: tundal, or tunala 🪵, the carved roof struts of Newar temples
🙏 Most show a god linked to the temple's own deity
🦁 The corners carry more weight, so they get fierce lion-griffins, shardulas
🕰️ The oldest surviving ones date from around the 13th century
Thanks to @ImAashib17 for the first right answer, twaanaasin in Nepal Bhasa and tundal in Nepali
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Some of Kathmandu's first suspension bridges arrived around 1900 in kit form from one Scottish city 🏴, and the Nepal Army put them up. One still spans the Bagmati at Sundarighat. Which Scottish city? 🇳🇵🇬🇧
Answer: Aberdeen 🏴, the Granite City
🔩 Louis Harper designed them and Harpers Ltd made them at the Craiginches Ironworks
🌉 The Chandra Bridge over Chobhar Gorge went up in 1903
💧 Sundarighat's 300-foot bridge, built 1901 to 1903, still carried two water mains from Kirtipur to Patan in 2019
Thanks to @ImAashib17 for the first right answer, and to @Manoranjan86689, who crosses it, for pointing me to it
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Kathmandu's first suspension bridges came from Aberdeen 🏴, the Granite City
🔩 Louis Harper designed them and Harpers Ltd made them at the Craiginches Ironworks
🌉 The Chandra Bridge over Chobhar Gorge went up in 1903
💧 Sundarighat's 300-foot bridge, built 1901 to 1903, still carried two water mains from Kirtipur to Patan in 2019
Answer:
🌟 Kantipur, the city of light
🪵 Kasthamandap, after the wooden pavilion
🏘️ Yen, or Yen Dey, in Nepal Bhasa, from Yambu
🏛️ Koligram, in Licchavi times
Thanks to @KaushalGhimire2 for adding Lalitpur's three: Yala, Lalitpur and Patan
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AI to promote and preserve Nepali language (and the culture that comes with language)
We built a voice assistant for Nepali ⇄ Newari (नेपाल भाषा).
Speak one language, hear the other about 2 seconds later. Speech recognition, translation and voice all run in Mac Studio. No cloud API.
Read the blog here: ampixa.com/blog/newa-a-nepal…
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Britain's last Minister in Kathmandu became its first Ambassador in 1947 🇬🇧🇳🇵 He arrived in 1944 to run the Legation and stayed until 1951. Who was he?
Answer: a Residency, then a Legation 🇬🇧🇳🇵
🏛️ From 1816: the British Residency, headed by a Resident
📜 From the early 1920s: the British Legation, headed by an Envoy, and from 1934 a Minister
🤝 From 1947: an Embassy, headed by an Ambassador
Thanks to @Ram_A977 and @MShouler for getting there between you
Very cool
At the weekend the two current King's Gurkha Orderly Officers and eight Gurkhas from The First Battalion, The Royal Gurkha Rifles, were part of the military contingent at the festival of Remembrance at the Albert Hall.
#Gurkhas #Gurkha #FestivalofRemembrance #AlbertHall #Nepal #BritishArmy #RBL
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