Website design By BotEap.comLudmilla Tüting is a sturdy, cultured, emancipated and bespectacled Teutonic woman who makes no secret of the fact that she lives in a Berlin Hinterhof (backyard) in Kreuzberg (West Berlin) and yearns to see a horizon, especially with silhouettes of pagodas. In the distance. It almost sounds like Berlin is a city with a lost horizon.

Website design By BotEap.comShe oscillates between Kathmandu and Berlin, and is very active in the field of ‘sanfte’ (soft) tourism, which means insightful tourism. He spent his 50th birthday on May 27, 1996 with his Nepalese friends at Thangpoche Monastery. She is concerned about the negative aspects of tourism and writes 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 evident from her travel books.

Website design By BotEap.comI 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 ‘Nepalese Contemporary Painting’ to promote cultural and religious development in Nepal.

Website design By BotEap.comLudmilla Tüting spoke about ‘Fascinating Nepal, sunny and shady sides’ and sang slides and information and described Nepal as a wonderful country.

Website design By BotEap.comAnd the other topic was: ‘Insightful tourism is not in demand: Ecological damage through tourism in Nepal’, which was more or less what the interested Nepalese hobbyist 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 friend from university Kunda Dixit, a renowned Nepalese journalist, who has been the executive director of the International Press Service for a long time. decades and also the editor-in-chief and publisher of The Nepali Times.

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

Website design By BotEap.comIn the past there have been quite a number of transparency slideshows and talks under the auspices of the Badische Zeitung, Freiburger University and the Volkshochschule with jet-set gurus, rimpoches, meditations, ‘boksas and boksis’ experts, shamanism, tibetan lamaism, tai-chi, taoism, yen-oriented zen and whatever you have. It is a fact that every Hans-Rudi-y-Fritz who has been to Nepal or the Himalayas struts as an expert on matters relating to the Home of the Snows.

Website design By BotEap.comSome bother to do a little background research and some don’t, and the result is a series of howls. Like the guy who had written a thesis on traditions in Nepal and gave a slideshow in the auditorium of the University eye clinic. The images of the Nepalese countryside were, as usual, impressive. Pokhara, Kathmandu, Jomsom, Khumbu area and then a slide of the Bhimsen pillar was shown and our expert joked, ‘that’s the only mosque in Nepal’.

Website design By BotEap.comOr the time a Swabian expedition doctor from Stuttgart held a vortrag (talk) in the audi-max (maximum auditorium) of the university. A color slide of a large group of Nepalese porters appeared on the screen. The porters were shown watching the alpine expedition members eat their sumptuous dinner, with every imaginable European dish, and the comment was: ‘Nepalese are used to eating once a day, so they watched 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 Nepalese eat two large meals: lunch and dinner, with plenty of sandwiches in between. And when you visit a Nepalese home, they also offer you hot tea and snacks, depending on the wealth and status of the family.

Website design By BotEap.comEvery time I heard such nasty and thoughtless comments, I would groan and my blood pressure would skyrocket and my ECG would record tachycardia and I had probably developed ulcers. Oh my mucosa. The remedy would be to avoid such stressors in the form of slide shows, but I couldn’t. I had to say to myself: calm down, boy, the scenery is beautiful. And it is. If it weren’t for the dazzling beauty of rural Nepal and the artistic and cultural treasures of the Kathmandu Valley … You just had to wear earplugs (Oxopax) and take in views of Nepal’s splendor – its uniqueness, its smiling people always wearing 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.

Website design By BotEap.comOn 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 going to be. Published as an illustrated book on the temples of Nepal. Some experts, I thought. The couple resembled the Freak Street junkies in the early 1970s. Like the legendary Nepalese, you helped where you could, although I had to shake my head after they left.

Website design By BotEap.comLudmilla has been traveling to Nepal since 1974. However, when you remind her of her ‘globetrotting’ image in those days, she likes to forget everything, because apparently she had made some mistakes and has learned from past mistakes. And now ecology seems to be his passion. She wishes to ‘sensitize’ potential tourists through her slideshows, television appearances and drawing attention to Nepalese etiquette rules to feel at home in Nepal, despite the shock and cultural change.

Website design By BotEap.com“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, they receive a culture shock: the language barrier, the question of mentality, the customs of others, and as a result they return to their countries loaded with many prejudices. It then shows a bus full of tourists wandering around the Hanuman Dhoka Palace. She says some of the tourists got mad at her when she photographed them. Tourists seem to reserve the right to photograph each country and its people as normal, without bothering to ask their permission. “Wir haben schon bezahlt!” is his line of argument. Doesn’t it smell like cultural imperialism, following the motto: I 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 tourists have paid their travel agencies in Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart or Kathmandu, and not the people and objects they are photographing. The payment allows landing in a country, but how one behaves in a foreign country is another matter.

Website design By BotEap.com“Today it is possible to go around the world in 18 days,” he says, “and everywhere there are people in a great hurry.” It tells of globetrotters who travel alone and write books with secret tips on how to get the most out of a land with the least of your money. A poor porter appears with a mountain of cargo made up of kitchen utensils and that leads Ludmilla to talk about the successful ascent of a certain expedition leader to the top of a Himalayan peak, “we would have no losses. Only one goalkeeper died. ‘ He then reminds listeners that the porters do not have health insurance, accident insurance or pension in the German sense.

Website design By BotEap.com“The funeral pyres at Pashupatinath are an eternal theme for tourists,” Ludmilla says 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, right? Ludmilla asks.

Website design By BotEap.comIt was interesting to learn that there is a makeshift video hut in Tatopani along the Jomsom trail for the benefit of local Nepalese, trekking tourists and their porters. “I saw ‘Gandhi’ on this trip,” he said, referring to Sir Attenborough’s film. You can even get to see the latest Hollywood and Bollywood movies there. Pico Iyer’s ‘Kathmandu Video Night’ could be an interesting read for the Nepalophile, as he has ‘the ability to record every shimmy’. A poster advertising ‘Thrilling Animal Sacrifices at Dakshinkali’ apparently from ‘Bikas-Binas’ (development-destruction) had one wondering about the so-called ‘sizzling, romantic, exciting and action-packed’ box office cocktails produced on celluloid from Bollywood. DVD factories.

Website design By BotEap.com“If you want to meet people and get to know them, you have to travel slowly,” says Ludmilla Tüting. Then he talks about the wonders of the Polaroid camera at the Nepalese customs office. Toys rule men. She says: ‘If you take a snapshot of a customs officer and hand him the photograph, he will pass the barrier without difficulty.’

Website design By BotEap.comDoes tourism mean foreign exchange for Nepal? Apparently not, according to her, with imported food from Australia, lighting from Holland, whiskey from Scotland, air conditioning from Canada. It shows Pokhara in 1974. Corrugated iron sheets are transported on the backs of porters along the Jomsom trail for the construction of small mountain restaurants.

Website design By BotEap.comA Gurung woman appears in her traditional costume, frying tasty circular sel-rotis in her outdoor tea shop, and good old Ludmilla informs the public about the benefits of gaining or strengthening immunity with gamma globulin and the benefits of tetanus shots before from a trip to the Himalayas.

Website design By BotEap.comAfter the show I went with Ludmilla to a Freiburger 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 doctorate and was appointed to speak about the development of Nepal from 1950 to 1987 and the role of development cooperation. Toni Hagen was a celebrity in Nepal due to his pioneering work and publication in geology. Unfortunately, Hagen passed away at some point 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 art freedom in the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal, expressing her deep concern about the theft of Nepalese temples and ritual objects.

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