धान: rice. In Nepal the word also means wealth. Scroll through one year on a hillside in Lamjung.
Dry terraces wait on the slope. Farmers repair the bunds and spread manure, and the seedbed is sown near the spring.
Clouds roll up the valley. Water is guided from terrace to terrace until each one becomes a mirror of the sky.
The whole village plants rice together, with mud fights, songs and dahi chiura. Every seedling is placed by hand.
The rice grows a hand's width a week. The hillside turns an impossible green.
After Dashain the grain hangs heavy. It is cut by sickle, threshed on the terrace, and carried home before Tihar.
Aromatic, long-grain, and prized for festival rice. The "old man" of Pokhara valley rice.
Grown at some of the highest altitudes in the world for rice. Nutty, red and cold-hardy.
Stone-ground for dhindo, the everyday staple of the middle hills.
Foxtail millet and buckwheat, the ancient grains of the trans-Himalaya, back on city plates.
1 kg each of all four, with a recipe card. NPR 1,450 (demo).