Local Girl Cooks Me Nepal’s Spiciest Noodles🇳🇵

The second video from the Barang homestay, and the one that names the village — an hour from Pokhara, eighty households stacked across the hillside. Where the first was a day in the life, this is four trades: distilling raksi, harvesting honey, ploughing corn, and cooking.

The still is the best of it. Millet is fermented for twelve to fifteen days, then boiled in a sealed pot with a pan of cold water sitting on top; the vapour condenses on the cold base and runs off as spirit, and the water has to be swapped out four times as it warms for the taste to come right. It is hours of work, and the woman doing it is a widow supporting three children who will be farming for the rest of the day.

That is the note underneath the whole video, and Harry states it directly: the village gets no help, buys almost nothing, and everyone including the fourteen-year-olds has a way of producing. The boys are down at the lake setting nets before school and selling the catch for about five dollars.

Key moments

• [00:30] Barang, a small village about an hour from Pokhara.
• [01:02] The village shares everything, which he’s said before and repeats here.
• [01:33] You are woken at six whether you plan to be or not.
• [02:16] Nearly every family has a buffalo and a goat.
• [04:49] The raksi starts as millet, fermented twelve to fifteen days.
• [06:33] The still: a huge sealed pot over a wood fire, with no chimney in the kitchen.
• [10:00] Cloth packed round the join so no vapour escapes.
• [12:26] How it works — heat below, cold water above, vapour condensing on the cold base and running off into a collector.
• [13:30] Drunk warm, straight off the still, with ginger.
• [14:01] The boys come up from the lake with the night’s net.
• [14:39] A fourteen-year-old with a homemade net he sets every single day.
• [17:57] He sells the catch for around 800 rupees, about five dollars, and does it before school.
• [16:20] Harry’s assessment, delivered flatly: no government help, they buy almost nothing, and the odds are against them — but they find a way.
• [18:27] The woman making the raksi is a widow supporting three children, and will be farming this afternoon like everyone else.
• [19:28] Kabi’s father, 72, ten metres up a tree cutting fodder with nobody to help him if he falls.
• [20:04] Land passes down the generations; encroaching on someone’s field is two hundred years out of date.
• [21:16] Eighty houses on stacked levels, with more villages visible across the valley. No hospital in the town below, but a primary school close by.
• [21:39] The village beekeeper. Every village has one.
• [22:21] Not the mad honey Nepal is known for — ordinary honey, from ordinary bees.
• [25:09] Comb and all, and he calls it the best honey he has had: far richer and stronger than the supermarket version, hard outside and soft inside.
• [26:15] Bee-sting therapy, offered locally for back and bone problems.
• [27:22] Back at the still, about two-thirds full.
• [28:31] The cold water has to be replaced four times as it heats, or the taste suffers.
• [30:16] The verdict: vodka, but stronger, and felt the whole way down.
• [30:50] The potatoes are being dug early because the monkeys keep taking them.
• [35:56] Ploughing corn behind two oxen with a wooden plough — no machinery anywhere.
• [38:53] Harry takes the plough and immediately puts a new line through the field.
• [39:27] Plots too small for the oxen are turned by hand with a hoe, which he finds satisfying for about five minutes.
• [40:41] A natural waterfall pool fifteen minutes’ walk away, free to swim in. His dad stays in the cold water long after everyone else gets out.
• [42:29] The noodles. Susmita, a cousin of his host, cooks.
• [42:53] Nepal, he’s told, eats more instant noodles per head than almost anywhere in the world.
• [45:40] Jimbu, a herb from the mountains, which goes in the dal rather than this.
• [49:03] The very spicy versions of these noodles are recent — about five years old. The plain white noodles have been eaten far longer.
• [51:57] The local antidote to chilli: sugar and butter. Harry says he wishes he had known this in Sri Lanka.
• [54:05] He is sweating, his throat is on fire, and he cannot understand why anyone would choose this.
• [56:54] He caves and takes the sugar. It works immediately.
• [57:30] Strawberries picked from below the house.

Extracted pages

• Places: Barang, Pokhara
• Country: Nepal
• Person: Harry’s dad