One of the actions Awasuka started about a year ago is the awareness about the preservation of Bhimphedi’s historic buildings. In this place there are three different types of architecture: Rana, Newar and Tamang, all three very interesting in terms of their historical value and their earthquake-resistant features.
In this sense, last weekend, two special guests came to visit the village: Subodh Rana and Evangeline Neve.
Subodh is a descendant of the family of former Rana Ministers of Nepal. He is professionally dedicated to tourism but has a great liking for history, which he has portrayed for 10 years in his blog (History Lessons Nepal). From Awasuka we had consulted his blog on different occasions and in the end we decided to write to him. He had never been to Bhimphedi but, after getting to know us, he decided to come and visit the place where his ancestors had built so many buildings. During the town visit we found out that it was precisely his grandfather (Juddha Sumshere JBR) who built the rana palace which is currently inside the prison compound. We also discovered that our “our” Rana Palace at the orphanage is Bhimphedi’s oldest. It was built for King Surendra Bikram Shah, contemporary of Jung Bahadur Rana. It’s a pity that the NCO tore down the main building of the compound… Fortunately Amics del Nepal’s archives still have some photographs of this building from 1996.
After his visit, Subodh wrote a blog that you can read on this link: http://historylessonsnepal.blogspot.com/2019/10/rediscovering-bhimphedi.html
Evangeline is a Canadian writer living in Nepal since 1996. She currently works as an editor at ECS Magazine, a publication on tourism and heritage. Her magazine decided to publish an artcile about Bhimphedi, following the information Subodh gave them after meeting us. Seems our work on dissemination about Bhimphedi’s heritage buildings finds its way little by little. Evangeline was very surprised by the history of Bhimphedi village and its variety of architectural styles. Apart from the article she will write, she requested us an article on the architecture of Bhimphedi written by Awasuka, as specialists in this town.
We hope all these articles will gradually make people aware of the preservation of historic buildings and no longer pull them down.