Tamang culture: a traveller's guide to the hills

Look at a map of where the Tamang live and you see a ring around the Kathmandu valley: Rasuwa and Nuwakot to the north, Sindhupalchok and Kavrepalanchok to the east, Makwanpur to the south, Dhading to the west. The Tamang are one of Nepal's largest Janajati, or indigenous, peoples, and their villages fill the middle hills between about 1,500 and 3,000 m. Their language, also called Tamang, belongs to the Tibeto-Burman family and has several regional dialects.

One popular explanation of the name is that it comes from words meaning horse and trader or warrior, recalling a past as horsemen, though scholars debate this. What is clear is that the Tamang have lived close to the capital for centuries, and that closeness shaped their history. For generations Tamang men and women carried loads, cut timber and worked as labourers for Kathmandu. Today Tamang families are farmers, drivers, thangka painters, trekking guides, teachers and politicians, and many Tamang writers and activists are recording their own history.

Most Tamang are Buddhist, following the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Village lamas are often married householders who farm, raise families and perform rituals for births, deaths and festivals, rather than celibate monks living apart. The village temple is usually called a gompa or ghyang, and the path into almost every Tamang village passes chortens and long mani walls carved with the mantra om mani padme hum.

Alongside the lama there is often a bombo, a shaman who deals with spirits, sickness and the forces of the local landscape: mountain gods, forest spirits and the ancestors. Bombos drum, chant and sometimes enter trance. The two traditions are not rivals so much as specialists in different problems. At Gosaikunda during Janai Purnima, you will see many shamans from the hills, drumming through the night beside the sacred lake.

The biggest festival is Sonam Lhosar, the Tamang New Year, which falls on the first day of the bright half of the lunar month of Magh, usually in late January or February, and is a national holiday in Nepal. Families clean and decorate their houses, visit relatives, eat special foods and dance, and Tamang communities hold cultural programmes in Kathmandu and the hills. Buddha Jayanti in spring and the harvest season in autumn are also times of gathering.

Music is a point of pride. Tamang Selo is a folk song tradition sung to the beat of the damphu, a round frame drum, often with call-and-response verses between groups of men and women. Songs tease, flirt, mourn and tell stories of village life. On the Tamang Heritage Trail, villages sometimes arrange song and dance evenings for visitors; if you are invited, join the circle when asked. Nobody minds if you get the steps wrong.

The kitchen hearth is the centre of a Tamang home, and in many houses it is treated with respect: do not step over the fire, put your feet towards it or throw rubbish into it. Meals are built from what the hills grow. Expect dhido, a thick porridge of buckwheat, millet or maize flour eaten with the fingers; potatoes, boiled, fried or pounded; gundruk, fermented dried greens made into a sour soup; fresh greens from the garden; and dal and rice where rice is available.

Butter tea with salt is common in higher villages such as Briddim, while lower down sweet milk tea is the norm. Many households brew millet or rice beer and a stronger distilled spirit for festivals and guests. You are free to refuse politely; say you do not drink and your host will understand. Tibetan bread, a fried flat dough, is a breakfast favourite on the trails, eaten with honey or jam.

In the higher Tamang villages of Rasuwa, sheep's wool is still spun by hand and woven into blankets, rugs and jackets on simple looms set up outside the house. You will often see women in Gatlang or Thuman spinning with a drop spindle as they walk or talk, and finished blankets drying on the walls. The cloth is thick, rough and very warm, made for winter nights at 2,500 m rather than for the tourist shop, which is exactly its appeal. If you want to buy one, ask your homestay family; buying directly from the weaver keeps the whole price in the village.

In Kathmandu, Tamang artists are well known for thangka painting, the detailed Buddhist scroll paintings of deities, mandalas and the wheel of life. Many painters learned from older Tamang masters, and workshops around Boudhanath and Bhaktapur train young painters for years before they work on a full thangka. When you see a painter at work on fine gold lines with a single-hair brush, you are often watching a craft carried down from the same hills you have just walked through.

You meet Tamang people on almost every walk north of Kathmandu, from the farms above Sundarijal to the lodges of Syabrubesi. The Tamang Heritage Trail in Rasuwa is the best introduction, because it was set up by villagers to share their culture, and homestays put you inside the family.

Tamang villages are welcoming and relaxed, and most etiquette comes down to common sense and a little Buddhist custom. A few habits will make your hosts comfortable.

• Greet people with fyafulla, the Tamang greeting, or namaste, with palms together.
• Walk clockwise around chortens and gompas, and pass mani walls with the wall on your right.
• Take off your shoes before entering a gompa or a family's kitchen, and do not point your feet at altars or the fire.
• Accept tea or food with your right hand, or both hands, and try at least a little of what is offered.
• Ask before photographing people, especially elders, lamas and shamans during rituals.
• Dress modestly: shoulders and knees covered in villages and gompas.
• Give money for a gompa donation box, not to children; school pens and books are better given through a teacher.

The 2015 earthquake hit the Tamang heartland hard. Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Sindhupalchok and Dhading were among the worst-affected districts, and many Tamang villages lost most of their houses. Walk through Gatlang, Thuman or Briddim today and you see a mix of old stone homes that survived, rebuilt houses with lighter roofs and new concrete buildings near the roads.

Recovery is still uneven, and for many families tourism is one income among several, alongside farming, remittances from relatives abroad and work in Kathmandu. Staying in homestays, eating local food and buying weaving or other village crafts directly from the people who make them put money straight into households. Above all, take time. Tamang hospitality is generous, and the best evenings happen when nobody is in a hurry.