Yak herding is vanishing in Upper Mustang. So are the yaks.

Where Kunga Sangpo and Yangchen Dolker live, there’s no electricity, no television, radio or telephone. Even in the height of summer, in July, night temperatures drop to below zero. The nearest village is an hour’s walk away and their closest friends are their 40 yaks.

And yet, Shayam—Sangpo and Dolker’s home for the summer in Upper Mustang at 4,300 metres—is a relatively easier place to live in than Khengyab, their winter destination, which is a two-day walk from Shayam. Set between a gorge, Khengyab’s winters are brutal, with heavy and frequent snowfall and strong winds. The nearest settlement is more than a two-day yak ride away.

“If you die in Khengyab, you don’t even get a monk to perform your death rituals,” said Sangpo. “You die like a dog.”

Sangpo and Dolker are nomadic yak herders, among the last who are practicing a dying way of life. At 46, this harsh lifestyle is the only one that Dolker has ever known, moving every season with her yak herds, living in tents made of yak wool for the winter and tarpaulin for the summer, and subsisting on roasted barley, rice, milk and yak meat. But Dolker’s son, 20-year-old Sangpo, wants a different life—he doesn’t see himself living as a nomad for long. Read more of the story here by Tsering Ngodup Lama.

In new pact, Nepal and China agree to increase weekly flights to 98

Nepal and China signed a revised bilateral air services agreement on Friday, which will allow 98 weekly flights between the two countries on a reciprocal basis, an increase from the existing 70 flights per week.

Of the increased 28 flights, Chinese carriers will have to operate 21 flights in and out of the two upcoming international airports—Gautam Buddha International Airport in Bhairahawa and Pokhara International Airport, according to Tourism Ministry officials who signed the agreement in Beijing.

The new deal means Nepal has allowed the addition of seven new flights to the severely congested Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu. Sangam Prasai with more on the story.

Things are improving at the Pashupati Home for the Elderly, but conditions remain bleak

At 86, Om Kumari Tiwari might be old but she hasn’t lost her penchant for colour. Even in the dark of the century-old room at the Pashupati Home for the Elderly, Tiwari is attired in a flower-printed red cholo and a bright red fariya with a patuki. But despite the colour of her clothes, Tiwari longs for colour in her life. She longs to return to her family, who left her at the Pashupati Home for the Elderly 15 years ago.

“Nobody will come for us. It’s just us for each other,” said Sannani Timilsina, who, at 89, is younger than Tiwari and helps takes care of the frail older lady with Bishnu Maya Tamang, who is 75.

The three share a room at the home for the Elderly, a government-run elder care home. There are 155 senior citizens at the home, and while they might still live in dark, cramped quarters with few modern amenities, things have gotten better in the last three years, according to residents. Long maligned for its filth and squalor and its treatment of the elderly, the Pashupati Briddhashram, as it is called colloquially, is making slow, incremental changes under a new leadership. More here by Alisha Sijapati.