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Himalaya: The Film

Karma Wangiel as Passang and Thilen Lhondup as Tinle.

By Justin Lowe

Enduring wintertime blizzards at elevations up to 15,000 feet must rank among the most severe hardships that any director can face while filming on location. Such extremes seem only to have energized Swiss filmmaker Eric Valli, however, inspiring him to create a strikingly authentic and poignant depiction of Nepal’s Tibetan culture in Himalaya, his feature debut, and the first Nepalese Oscar nominee.

When Valli began work on Himalaya (a.k.a. Caravan) in 1995, he’d already been living in Nepal for nearly 15 years, where he’d directed two documentaries on cultural issues (his Shadow Hunters received a 1992 Oscar nomination) and authored numerous books and magazine articles on Nepal’s native societies and traditions.

Even this experience didn’t quite prepare him for the demands of Himalaya, with its high-altitude locations, weeks of extreme weather and a nearly continuous nine-month shoot. “Several of us almost died for this film,” he told AsianWeek almost offhandedly during a wide-ranging conversation prior to the movie’s U.S. theatrical premiere.

A modern-day Tibetan western, Himalaya is a classic tale of “courage, tolerance and dignity,” says Valli, set in one of the most intriguing and isolated parts of the world. The Dolpo region of northwestern Nepal was popularized for many Westerners by Peter Matthiessen’s 1978 book, The Snow Leopard, an account of his personal quest for meaning and solace among the world’s highest peaks. Matthiessen related his encounters with an ethnically and culturally Tibetan society little-known to the outside world, proud of its ancient heritage and geographic isolation, and fiercely reliant on the traditional yak-caravan trade between Tibet and lowland Nepal that exchanges highland salt for lowland grain.

As Himalaya opens, yak herders are returning from the Tibetan Plateau to an isolated Dolpo village, leading the community’s annual salt caravan bearing the essential material that the highlanders will trade for grain in order to survive the bitter winter. But the villagers’ joy is quickly extinguished when they learn that Lhakpa, the eldest son of Thinley, the village chieftain, has died en route.

Rekindling a generations-old family feud, Thinley blames Karma, Lhakpa’s headstrong companion, for his son’s death, denouncing the younger man for trying to seize control as village leader. Although Karma describes Lhakpa’s death as an accident, he seems to confirm Thinley’s suspicions by declaring that he will lead the salt caravan to the lowlands in Lhakpa’s place. Concerned about the imminent onset of winter, Karma plans to depart with a contingent of villagers and 200 salt-bearing yaks before the ritual date designated by religious custom, provoking predictions of disaster.

His announcement divides the community when Thinley refuses to sanction Karma’s expedition, declaring that he will lead the caravan himself, but village sentiment turns against Thinley as the council of elders supports Karma’s plan, provoking an inter-generational conflict between age-old tradition and youthful ambition.

Meanwhile, Karma attempts to recruit Pema, his childhood sweetheart and Lhakpa’s widow, to join his caravan. She refuses, affirming her loyalty to Thinley, even if her son Tsering, charmed by Karma’s bravado, has taken to his father’s rival.

Four days behind Karma’s caravan, Thinley and a dozen cohorts, including Pema and young Tsering, the future village leader, prepare to leave on the appointed date, determined to catch up with Karma’s group. Ahead they will face treacherous trails, winter blizzards, deadly mountain passes and the greatest test of all: their faith in one another and in the endurance of their community’s way of life.

Having lived in Dolpo for two years and participated in 15 trans-Himalayan caravans, Valli was already familiar with the region and its Tibetan culture when Thinlen Lhondhup, a contemporary village chief and friend of 20 years, encouraged him to make a movie about Dolpo’s disappearing heritage, inspired by watching a video of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai at Valli’s Kathmandu home.

Lhondhup agreed to assist with the project, collaborating on the story and accepting the part of Thinley, while another of Valli’s friends, real-life Tibetan refugee lama Karma Tenzing Nyima, took the role of Thinley’s younger son, the monk Norbu.

Eric Valli and Thinlen Lhondup.

When Thinley asks Norbu midway through the film why he decided to undertake the perilous caravan journey, the monk observes, “I remembered what one of my masters said: ‘When two paths open in front of you, always take the hardest one.’ ”

This sentiment, Valli says, describes the emotional core of the film. “It’s only by confronting hardship that you learn something about life. If you always choose the easy way, you don’t know how far you can grow.”

Facing often arduous conditions, Himalaya certainly didn’t take the easy way out. Shooting began in the fall of 1997, and ran throughout most of the winter and into the next spring. The cast and crew had to trek into Dolpo during a three-week expedition, while all the motion picture equipment was carried by yaks and 200 porters. Throughout the production, Valli never had a chance to see the footage he was shooting — it was sent out of Dolpo by yak to the nearest airstrip and eventually arrived in Paris, where his producer reviewed the material and phoned Valli once a month with recommendations.

Turning his documentary experience to great advantage, Valli is a sympathetic and perceptive observer of Tibetan society, achieving an intimacy with his cast and a grasp of traditional culture unfamiliar to higher-budget features. The non-professional actors and small crew of 15 worked without movie lighting or special effects, relying on the authenticity of the cast and spectacular mountain locations to attain the film’s striking visual lyricism.

The script falters only briefly, with a rather superficial resolution of the romance between Karma and Pema, while the soundtrack of reinterpreted traditional music and ritual chanting occasionally borders on the saccharine.

Himalaya earned an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film in 2000 and received two of the French movie industry’s César awards. It has played to more than three million people in Europe and Asia since its release, screening for over a year in France and six months nonstop to Tibetan, Nepalese and expatriate audiences in Kathmandu. “It’s a great reward to see people’s reaction,” says Valli. “I never thought that such a film would be seen by so many people.”

With an appeal both culturally specific and universally accessible, Himalaya’s faithful portrayal of a rapidly vanishing way of life celebrates Tibetan tradition with a compassion and humanity all too rare in contemporary film, assuring that it will continue to attract enthusiastic new audiences.