Samdo village empty as all move to lowlands to escape winter cold

By Gun Bahadur Roka,Sulikot, January. 4: With the arrival of the extremely cold season, all the people of Samdo, a remote village which lies around 165 kilometres away from the Gorkha district headquarters, near the Tibet border, have moved to lower areas to avoid the cold.  

The heavy snowfall on Saturday and Sunday last week blanketed the area and the temperatures dropped to minus 20 degrees Celsius. 

Unable to bear the biting cold after the snowfall, the people of the entire village have descended to the lowlands, said Ward Chairperson Karmasebang Lama of Chumnubri Rural Municipality, Ward No. 1.

According to him, the 43 households of Samdo have left the village and moved to places like Philim, Chhekampar, the Gorkha district headquarters and even Kathmandu. Among the eight hotels in Samdo, seven have already been closed and only one remains operational with a single staff member, said hotel entrepreneur Nima Lama.

The extreme cold has also led to a decrease in the number of tourists visiting the area. After walking for three hours from Samdo, one reaches the Dharamshala Hotel, which serves as a stopover for tourists heading to Larke Pass and eventually to Manang.

Currently, it is the off-season, so there has been a notable decline in the number of foreign tourists. A few tourists that do visit the area are being catered to by a single staff member at Dharamshala.

One local, Phalten Lama, said that horses and yaks are left to graze in the forest during the day but are brought to the sheds in the evening under the care of a herder.

Presently, Samdo is inhabited only by the personnel from the Armed Police Force's border outpost, a herder, one horse and one hotel staff member, according to Dharm Pandit, the head of the border outpost.

Businessman Nima Lama said that villagers will return to Samdo only during the tourist season, which begins in the second week of March, once the winter subsides. There is still one foot of snow in Samdo, and the water supply pipes have frozen, causing difficulties, Pandit said.

All 43 households have already moved to the lowlands, leaving the village deserted except for security personnel from the border outpost, Inspector Dharm Pandit added.