Ludmilla Tüting is a robust, educated, emancipated, bespectacled Teutonic woman who does not hide who lives in a Berlin Hinterhof (backyard) in Kreuzberg (West Berlin) and longs to see a horizon, especially with pagoda silhouettes. In the distance. She almost sounds like Berlin is a city with a lost skyline.
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 to the information service ‘Tourism Watch’. For potential tourists in the German-speaking world, she is a specialist in Nepal, who cares about the cultural and natural heritage of Nepal, 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 Nepalese Painting’ to promote cultural and religious development in Nepal.
Ludmilla Tüting spoke on ‘Fascinating Nepal, the sunny and gloomy sides’ and presented slides and information and described Nepal as a wonderful country.
And the other topic was: ‘Tourism with knowledge is not in demand: the ecological damage caused by tourism in Nepal’, which was more or less what the interested Nepalese fan will find in ‘Bikas-Binas’, a book that Thought-provoking Ecological Aspects of Nepal, Especially Environmental Pollution in the Himalayas, published by Ms. Tüting and my college friend Kunda Dixit, a renowned Nepali journalist, who is the Executive Director of the International Press Service for decades and also the managing editor and publisher of The Nepali. times.
Ms. Tüting’s talk, delivered with what 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 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 shows and talks under the aegis of the Badische Zeitung, Freiburger University and the Volkshochschule with jet-setting gurus, rimpoches, meditations, experts on ‘boksas and boksis’, shamanism, Tibetan Lamaism, Thai -chi, taoism, yen-oriented zen and what have you. It is a fact that every Hans-Rudi-and-Fritz who has been to Nepal or the Himalayas struts as an expert on matters relating to the Home of the Snows.
Some bother to do a little background research and some don’t, and the result is a series of howlers. Like the guy who had written a thesis on the traditions in Nepal and had given a slide show in the highest auditorium of the University’s eye clinic. The images of the Nepalese countryside were, as always, impressive. Pokhara, Kathmandu, Jomsom, Khumbu area and then a slide of Bhimsen pillar was shown and our expert joked, “That’s the only mosque in Nepal.”
Or the time a doctor from the Swabian expedition from Stuttgart 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 European dish imaginable 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 big meals: 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 moaned and my blood pressure shot up and my EKG registered tachycardia and I probably developed 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 landscape is beautiful. Forks. If it wasn’t for the dazzling beauty of rural Nepal and the artistic and cultural treasures of the Kathmandu valley… I just had to wear earplugs (Oxopax) and savor the sights of the splendor of Nepal: its uniqueness, its always 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 Gods and Goddesses images and the ‘experts’ wanted me to identify what and where they had photographed in Nepal, because it was going to be published as an illustrated book about the temples of Nepal. Some experts, I thought. The couple looked like the drug addicts of Freak Street in the early seventies. Like the legendary Nepalese, one helped where he 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 ‘wanderer’ 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 Nepalese 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 cultural shock: the language barrier, the question of mentality, foreign customs, and as a result he returns to his country loaded with many prejudices. He then shows a bus full of tourists strolling through 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 normal, without bothering to ask permission. “Wir haben schon bezahlt!” is her line of argument. Doesn’t it smack of cultural imperialism, behind the slogan: I paid for the trip in dollars, marks, francs and yen, so you natives have to please me and pose for me. The point is that tourists have paid their travel agents 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 perpetually in a hurry. He talks about solo globetrotters who write books with insider tips on how to get the most out of a land with the least of your money. A poor porter shows up with a mountain of cargo including cooking utensils and that leads Ludmilla to speak about a certain expedition leader’s successful ascent to the top of a Himalayan peak, ‘we would have had no loss. Only one porter died.’ She then reminds listeners that porters do not have any health insurance or accident insurance or pension in the German sense.
“The funeral pyres at Pashupatinath are an everlasting topic for tourists,” says Ludmilla with a groan, describing tourists with video cameras on the ghats. ‘You wouldn’t want a foreign visitor to attend the burial ceremony of your loved ones, 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 Sir Attenborough’s film. You can even get to see 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 advertising ‘Thrilling Animal Sacrifices at Dakshinkali’ ostensibly 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 governed by toys. She says: ‘If you take a snapshot of a customs officer and give him the picture, 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. Corrugated iron sheets are carried on the backs of porters along the Jomsom trail for the construction of small mountain restaurants.
A Gurung woman in 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 tavern in Freiburg 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 doctorate 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 Thanka painters and the freedom of art in the Himalayan Kingdom of Nepal, and expressed deep concern about the theft of temples and ritual objects from Nepal. .
Ludmilla is a name to be reckoned 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 the deforestation, the 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 of 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 theater-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 get very old and are not bothered by gerontological problems. She wants to live at least 108 years on this planet. One can only admire her and wish her the best in her efforts and her pedagogical critique.
