Ludmilla Tueting: ‘My heart is Nepali’

Ludmilla Tüting is a stout, cultured, emancipated, bespectacled Teutonic woman who makes no secret that she lives in a Berlin Hinterhof (backyard) in Kreuzberg (West Berlin) and longs to see a horizon, especially one with silhouettes of pagodas. In the distance. She almost sounds like Berlin is a city with a lost horizon.

She oscillates between Kathmandu and Berlin, and is very active in the field of ‘sanfte’ (soft) tourism, which means tourism with insight. She spent her 50th birthday on May 27, 1996 with her Nepali friends at Thangpoche Monastery. She is concerned about the negative aspects of tourism and writes for the ‘Tourism Watch’ information service. For potential tourists in the German-speaking world, she is a Nepal specialist, who cares about Nepal’s cultural and natural heritage, as evidenced by her travel books.

I met her at the Volkerkunde Museum in Freiburg, the southwestern Black Forest metropolis, and the occasion was one of a series of talks held under the auspices of ‘Contemporary Nepali Painting’ to promote cultural and religious development in Nepal.

Ludmilla Tüting spoke about ‘Fascinating Nepal, the sunny and shady sides’ and presented slides and information and described Nepal as a wonderful country.

And the other topic was: ‘Insightful tourism is not in demand: Ecological damage caused by tourism in Nepal’, which was pretty much what the interested Nepali fan will find in ‘Bikas-Binas’, a book that It is thought-provoking about The Ecological Aspects of Nepal, Especially Environmental Pollution in the Himalayas, published by Mrs. Tüting and my university friend Kunda Dixit, a renowned Nepali journalist, CEO of the International Press Service for decades and also chief editor and publisher of The Nepali Times.

Ms. Tüting’s talk, delivered with what the Germans often call the Berlin-lip (Berlinerschnauze), has pedagogical and practical value, and tried not only to show what a foreign tourist does wrong in Nepal, but also to He suggested how a tourist should behave and dress in Nepal. All in all, it sounded like the German etiquette book called ‘Knigge’ for potential travelers to Nepal.

In the past there have been many slide presentations and talks under the aegis of the Badische Zeitung, the University of Freiburger and the Volkshochschule with jet-setting gurus, rimpoches, meditations, experts on ‘boksas and boksis’, shamanism, Tibetan lamaism, Thai -chi, taoism, yen-oriented zen and whatever. It is a fact that every Hans-Rudi-and-Fritz who has been to Nepal or the Himalayas struts himself as an expert on Snow Home matters.

Some bother to do a bit of vetting and some don’t, and the result is a series of howlers. Like the guy who had written a thesis on traditions in Nepal and had given a slide show in the top auditorium at the University eye clinic. The images of the Nepalese countryside were, as always, impressive. Pokhara, Kathmandu, Jomsom, Khumbu area and then a slide of the Bhimsen pillar was shown and our expert quipped, “That’s the only mosque in Nepal.”

Or the time a doctor from the Stuttgart Swabian expedition gave a vortrag (talk) in the university’s audi-max (maximum auditorium). A color slide of a large group of Nepalese porters appeared on the screen. The porters were shown watching the members of the alpine expedition eating their sumptuous dinner, with every imaginable European dish and the comment was: ‘Nepalis are used to eating once a day, so they just looked at us while we ate’ ( sic). A decent German sitting near me named Dr. Petersen, who was a professor of microbiology, commented, “Solche Geschmacklosigkeit!” (lack of taste or finesse), but it didn’t seem to bother our Himalayan Swabian hero. Most Nepalis eat two large meals: at lunch and dinner, with plenty of snacks in between. And when you visit a Nepalese home, you are also offered hot tea and snacks, depending on the wealth and status of the family.

Every time I heard such nasty and thoughtless comments I would moan and my blood pressure would skyrocket and my ECG would register tachycardia and I would probably develop ulcers. Oh my slime. The remedy would be to avoid those stressors in the form of slideshows, but I couldn’t. I had to tell myself: calm down, old man, the scenery is beautiful. Forks. If it weren’t for the dazzling beauty of rural Nepal and the artistic and cultural treasures of the Kathmandu Valley… All I had to do was wear earplugs (Oxopax) and savor the sights of Nepal’s splendor: its uniqueness, its ever-smiling people. with what the British call, a stiff upper lip, and what the Germans call ‘sich nie runter kriegen lassen’, despite the decade-long war between government troops and the Maoists in the past.

On another occasion, a European couple came to my apartment with a thick album full of photographs of images of Gods and Goddesses and the ‘experts’ wanted me to identify what and where they had photographed in Nepal, because it was to be published as an illustrated book on Nepalese temples. Some experts, I thought. The couple looked like Freak Street junkies in the early 1970s. Like the legendary Nepalese, one helped where one could, although I had to shake my head after they left.

Ludmilla has been going to Nepal since 1974. However, when you remind her of her ‘globe-trotting’ image in those days, she likes to forget it all, because apparently she made some mistakes and has learned from the mistakes of the past. And now ecology seems to be her passion. She wishes to ‘sensitize’ potential tourists through her slideshows, TV appearances and drawing attention to Nepali etiquette so that they feel at home in Nepal, despite the change and culture shock.

“Tourists are terrorists” flashes on the screen, and Ludmilla explains that she had photographed graffiti on the Berlin Wall in Kreuzberg. Every time a tourist visits another country, he suffers a culture shock: the language barrier, the question of mentality, foreign customs, and as a result he returns to his countries loaded with many prejudices. He then shows a busload of tourists walking past the Hanuman Dhoka Palace. She says that some of the tourists were angry with her when she photographed them. Tourists seem to reserve the right to photograph each country and its people as a matter of course, without bothering to ask their permission. “Wir haben schon bezahlt!” is her line of argument. Doesn’t it smack of cultural imperialism, after the motto: I have paid in dollars, marks, francs and yen for the trip, so you natives have to please me and pose for me. The point is that the tourists have paid their travel agencies in Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart or Kathmandu, and not the people and objects they are photographing. Payment allows landing in a country, but how one behaves in a foreign country is another matter.

‘Today it is possible to go around the world in 18 days,’ he says, ‘and everywhere you have people who are perpetually in a hurry. He talks about solo globetrotters writing books with insider insider tips on how to get the most out of a land for the least amount of money. A poor porter appears with a mountain of cargo including kitchen utensils and this leads Ludmilla to talk about a certain expedition leader’s successful ascent to the top of a Himalayan peak, ‘we would have had no losses. Only one porter died.’ She then reminds the listeners that the porters have no health insurance or accident insurance or pension in the German sense.

“The funeral pyres at Pashupatinath are a perennial topic for tourists,” Ludmilla says with a groan, describing the tourists with camcorders on the ghats. ‘You wouldn’t want a foreign visitor to attend your loved ones’ burial ceremony, would you?’ Ask Ludmila.

It was interesting to learn that there is a makeshift video hut at Tatopani along the Jomsom trail for the benefit of local Nepalis, trekking tourists and their porters. “I saw ‘Gandhi’ on this walk,” he said, referring to the Sir Attenborough film. You can even get to watch the latest Hollywood and Bollywood movies there. Pico Iyer’s ‘Video Night in Kathmandu’ could still be an interesting read for Nepalophiles, as he has ‘the knack of recording every shimmy’. A poster announcing ‘Exciting animal sacrifices in Dakshinkali’ apparently from ‘Bikas-Binas’ (development-destruction) made one wonder about the so-called ‘sizzling, romantic, exciting and action-packed’ box office cocktails produced in the Bollywood Celluloid, DVD Factories.

‘If you want to meet people and get to know them, you have to travel slowly,’ says Ludmilla Tüting. She then talks about the wonders of the polaroid camera at the Nepalese customs office. Men are ruled by toys. She says: ‘If you take a snapshot of a customs officer and give him the photograph, you will pass the barrier without difficulty.’

Does tourism mean foreign exchange for Nepal? Apparently not, according to her, with food imported from Australia, lighting from Holland, whiskey from Scotland, air conditioning from Canada. She shows Pokhara in 1974. Sheets of corrugated iron are carried on porters along the Jomsom trail for the construction of small mountain restaurants.

A Gurung woman in her traditional dress appears, frying tasty circular sel-rotis in her open-air tea room, and good Ludmilla warns the audience about the advantages of acquiring immunity or strengthening it with gamma-globulin and the advantages of vaccinations against tetanus before a trip to the Himalayas.

After the show I went with Ludmilla to a Freiburg tavern called Zum Störchen for a drink and a chat. We were also joined by Toni Hagen, a geologist turned development worker from Lenzerheide, who had a double PhD and was appointed to speak on the development of Nepal from 1950 to 1987 and the role of development cooperation. Toni Hagen was a celebrity in Nepal due to his work and his pioneering geological publication. Unfortunately, Hagen passed away some time ago after starring in an autobiographical film. Ingrid Kreide, who was in a hurry to return to Cologne, gave a lecture on the history of the Thanka painters and the freedom of art in the Himalayan Kingdom of Nepal, expressing deep concern about the theft of Nepalese temples and ritual objects. .

Ludmilla is a name to reckon with as a globetrotter, journalist, expert on Nepal in the German-speaking world, and critic of the alternative travel scene. And she still fights for the rights of the underdog in South Asia. She was in favor of the Chipko movement in India and described deforestation, ecological damage, she fought for the human rights of Tibetans and Nepalis alike, she wrote about the development and destruction of so-called Third World countries. She once told Edith Kresta, travel editor for the Tageszeitung (TAZ, Berlin): “My heart is Nepali, the rest is German.” Her base camp in Catmandu is the Vajra Hotel run by Sabine Lehmann, a theatrical style hotel, and this time she is working on a novel about climbing. She wants to emulate the characters in James Hilton’s novel The Lost Horizon, in which people grow old a lot and aren’t bothered by gerontological problems. She wants to live at least 108 years on this planet. One can only admire her and wish her well in her efforts and her pedagogical criticism.