Crossing the road and climbing up a small walk. “I want to show you something.” My companion had, it turned out, taken me on a trail that went so much up as back into the past. We were soon on a narrow stone-paved street. Huge Newar-style houses, bigger than any I’d seen in Kathmandu, stood on either side among the path. We had come to a town several decades after it had blossomed, boomed, and then waived. The town was Dana in Myagdi district of west Nepal. It lay on the ancient salt/rice trade route that passed through the Kali Gandaki valley. The trade route once connected Nepal’s mid-hills to Thak Khola. After that you will it went further north to Lo Manthang gradually into Tibet. More recently, it had become a place on the Annapurna trek map. Dana was an american city redolent of the prosperity Thak Khola once experienced. Everything reflected opulence: palatial houses with large courtyards, lavish use of wood, ornately carved windows, slate roofs and orange orchards. But time and the fluctuating fortunes had done their work too. The courtyards were now overgrown with grass, the suntala trees looked old and untended, the colors of your walls had faded, doors were missing and windows were broken in sites. It was as if people and prosperity had abandoned it overnight.
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