INTRODUCTION
Dwarika's is a unique place in South Asia. It is a living example that tourism does not necessarily destroy cultural heritage and environment.
On the contrary it demonstrates that tourism through a proper blending of cultural restoration combined with the traditional Nepali hospitality can lead not only to the
preservation of historical monuments and artifacts, but also promote traditional skills and demonstrate to the modern Nepali people the great value of their culture. It generates income in those fields and for those people, which otherwise do not benefit much from tourism.
In fact, Dwarika's could be a living model for hotels and other institutions,
how to preserve the unique Nepali culture not only as a kind of museum,
but full of Nepali life. Bhaktapur, which started initially as a pure
architectural restoration project, has gone through a similar process
and has brought their cultural identity back to its people again, visible
in the revival of their colorful, thrilling and enrapturing Bhaktapur
festivals.
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HISTORY
In 1952. The late Dwarika Das Shrestha was out jogging when he came upon some carpenters sawing off the carved portion of an intricately engraved wooden pillar. It had been part of an old building which had been torn down to make room for a modern
structure, amidst the rubble, lay the bits and pieces of exquisitely carved woodwork several centuries old, ready to be carted off as firewood.
Dwarika was confronted with the visible signs of destruction of an ancient
culture which still lived in him as part of his heritage; The legacy of
Kathmandu comprises of exquisite wood carvings on it's houses. distinctive
temples, and sculptures, bronze and terracotta works, and the unique lifestyle
of its people and their colorful festivals derived from the mythology
of their religions. Less than half a century after opening, the country,
its culture and art have become one of the main attraction for the tourists.
Out of sheer impulse Dwarika gave the carpenters new lumber to be used as firewood and took the old carved pillar along with him. This impulse became progressively a hobby and soon a lifetime passion. As soon as he heard that an ancient building was going to be torn down in the process of
"modernizing" Kathmandu with concrete buildings, he would rush to the spot and buy as many wood carvings as he could.
In 1964 Dwarika decided to construct the first Nepali-style brick building with the collected wood carvings in his garden. This was the nucleus out of which later gradually grew Dwarika's Hotel and project.
In 1978 Dwarika started his own workshop, the "heritage workshop", to manufacture the missing wood carvings. He and his wood workers also had to re-examine the lore and rituals of ancient times so that the significance of the carved deities became apparent on each strut and lintel.
At present there are 33 carpenters and other craftsmen engaged in the
"heritage workshop". Two masons also work on Dwarika's account. The remaining
labours are engaged on a daily wage bases, according to requirements.
Likewise he re-introduced making to tapered glazed bricks, the production of which had disappeared from the Kathmandu valley in course of introduction of the "modern age".
In 1970 Dwarika Das started his own travel Agency in order to employ
Nepali people and help finance his steadily growing Village Hotel. The rooms were entirely Nepali, with Nepali-made
furniture, Nepali hand-made and hand-woven textiles and Nepali made terracotta potteries, like ash trays and terracotta sculptures. Crockery was until recently partly imported from India, but with the growing skill of the Nepali pottery producers the Indian-made crockery is gradually replaced by Nepal-made products.
In 1992 Dwarika Das Shrestha died amidst the build up of his pioneers work. Fortunately his wife Ambica and his daughter
Sangita possessed the same obsession for the cultural heritage of Nepal and the same competence and practical sense to continue the work of Dwarika Das.
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FROM DWARIKA'S VILLAGE HOTEL TO THE NEW DWARIKA'S
HOTEL
THE DWARIKA'S VILLAGE HOTEL up to 1998
Dwarika's Kathmandu Village Hotel had until opening of the two new luxury
wings in 1998 only 30 bedrooms, which however required a total of 150
employees: in the kitchen, procurement of Nepali food products, for servings
in the two restaurants, for rooms services, for cleaning and for gardening
and watchmen and the restoration and preservation workshop.
The rooms in the old part of the Hotel (before the new wings were opened
in October 1998) were large, comfortable and cozy, and all individually
designed. Not one room has the same shape and outfit as the other ones.
Sanitary installations are complete and modern.
Since the demand for good timber for carving was increasing and the cost of good Sal timber grew almost astronomically high, Dwarika Das had to find a way a replace expensive decorative wood works on the front walls of the buildings with accordingly designed terracotta bricks, so as to make it affordable to the common man and keep up the traditional designs and
motives. The necessary experiments led to a pilot development project, which finally enabled mass production on a commercial base.
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THE KRISHNARPAN RESTAURANT
The opening of the Krishnarpan restaurant in 1994 meant a great leap forward
towards perfection of combination of Nepali culture and services. The
menu card is printed individually for each guest in exquisite handmade
Nepali paper and bound like a thin booklet. The beautiful traditional
crockery is all made in Nepal. Each one of the many courses (up to 16)
of the Nepali dinner, is served in a different set of crockery's, each
one so beautiful in its special traditional design and colors. In spite
of the many courses the guest has never has uneasy feeling of having eaten
too much - which speaks for the excellent kitchen. Specialties amongst
others are the many types of gratinated vegetables - for which the French
Cuisine for its "au gratins" was so famous before meat and seafood dishes
took completely over. Indeed, the delicious dishes and specialities served
in the Krishnarpan restaurant may well be called the "French Cuisine of
the East". The festive atmosphere in the restaurant with the attractive
maid servants from various ethnic groups like the Newar, Chetris, Rais,
Limbus, Gurungs, Thakalis and others, all with their various colorful
fine traditional festive dresses and jewellery may give just a glimpse
of the extraordinary rich racial and cultural diversity of Nepal. The
ambiance in Krishnarpan restaurant is simply unique and now internationally
renown through visits of international dignitaries and other VIPs.
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THE NEW DWARIKA'S HOTEL (1998)
The philosophy, which has been guiding the creation of Dwarika's
Hotel has in the implementation of the two new wings with a total
of additional 39 bedrooms, been refined and brought to perfection
in purity of cultural taste, in shaping the new rooms individually,
in selection of the local building materials, in traditional handicraft
for internal equipment and furnishing, Every details like flower
pots, ash trays, mugs, flowers, textiles etc is taken care of with
outstanding taste and refined aesthetics and obviously with much
love.
The rooms are possibly larger than in almost any Five Star Hotel
in the World. While all the buildings are of course pure traditional
Newari style, the internal decorations in the rooms stem from the
culture of the Rais, the Limbus. the Sherpas, the Bhotayas, the
Tharus and other ethnic groups. Every room is individually shaped,
conceived, furnished and decorated. Walls and floors are partly
pure terracotta bricks, floors of the backyard ceramics covered,
because the functions are different.
The same extraordinary elegance and generosity are applied to the
bathrooms with stone plate floors which are furnished with Villeroy
and Boch bath tubs built into the stone floor and with the elegant
Jado armatures. Local stone plates are applied instead of imported
foreign marble, which has become fashionable in recent years. The
widely stone-plated floors with the descent dark greenish plates
from Dhading fit beautifully into the whole design.
And finally, the many niches in the wails contain beautiful terracotta
sculptures from the Hindu and Buddhist and other mythologies, and
other objects of art, like flower pots, vases, and animals serving
as flower pots. The electric lighting is made out of traditional
lamp designs from oil lamps in temples and rich Newar houses. Stands
of modern table lamps in the rooms are designed according to traditional
pots and cans, shaped out of terracotta.
The wooden furniture are produced in the own heritage workshop,
applying the Newari technique system in wood-locking, without using
iron nails. The textiles show a tremendous traditional diversity
in designs and colors. They are all hand woven from small producers.
The carpets are made in Sindupalchowk. But there is much more Nepalese
culture hidden in the rooms. Symbols (sign of Saraswati, Goddess
of wisdom) encarved into the desks, Mandalas in the terracotta floors,
Newari and Buddhist thanks (paintings on cloth) on the walls.
The new hotel has three large new restaurants, in which a great variety of delicious dishes are served.
The stone plated wide garden with its many trees, bushes and plentiful beautiful flowers is a paradise of its own. Surrounded with the beautiful Newari architecture, it has a calm and very peaceful
atmosphere. The many groups of different chairs and table invite for a leisure rest
alone or with other guests.
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POTTERY
Dwarika's Management aims to purchase pottery locally as far as
possible. In this kind of manufacturing one can build up on the
famous traditional pottery and terracotta works of Thimi. The latter
cottage industry however has somehow missed the bus. Their quality
is not up to today's standards, due to lack of proper and efficient
furmaces. The author has already in the fifties mentioned the great
potential of the pottery industries in Thimi. But the aid agencies
did not show much interest - a missed chance indeed.
Through Dwarika Das Shrestha's pioneers work the pottery of Thimi has enjoyed
a revival whereby the weak points have clearly surfaced in this process. The experience of Dwarika may well lead to a modern professional manufacturing of potteries based on Nepali
Culture, surely not in the sense of mass production, but through labor-intensive techniques with high and lasting quality,
The problems are :-
The present Nepali ceramics break and chip very easily, 25% of what
they produce is broken due to improper burning and glazing at too
low temperatures. Thus, glazed Nepali ceramics chip and last one
year only, while Indian products last an average of four years.
Every four months expenditures of Dwarika's for broken and chipped
ceramics amount to about 100 000 NRs, or 300 000 NRs annually.
-- The glaze easily chips, and chipped glasses do not look well in a high standard hotel. Dwarika's management has overcome this problem. partially by not glazing the edges, which chip so easily. Without glazing, the edges do last longer without chipping and if it does, it looks not so ugly and can thus still be used for some time.
-- There are small dots of impurity occurring in the pottery. Because the manufactures do not know how to prevent dotting, Sangita Shrestha Einhaus decided to camouflage it by sprinkling the plates as a whole with dots, in order to hide them.
-- Every plate or cup looks slightly different with regard to color. But a minimum
standardization and purity of colors is required for a high standard luxury hotels. Of course the purity of Meissenor
Wedgwood porcelain is not desired, since the Nepal culture is a rustique medieval one. One should never be tempted to-attain refined European standard in every respect. The pottery would loose all its special flair which is so much liked by many affluent European tourists.
-- Lack of modern furnaces with capability of burning the raw products at temperatures of the required 1000 - 1100
centigrade is the main reason for the bad quality. This deficiency has been known since the
fifties, but the pottery industry in Thimi according to my knowledge never got technical assistance. No one, no development bank, be it local or international, stepped in with soft loans to purchase the necessary high temperature furnaces. Advice how to produce even and clean colors was not available.
Sangita Shrestha Einhaus purchases the pottery from small producers; mostly small family enterprises,
i.e., two brothers, or husband and wife with sons and daughters. Some traditional producers are still farmers, because they can not make their living out of pottery alone. One producer, Mr.
Lakshmi, started pottery by himself 10 years back. He has tried to learn all on his own, and never gave up. For the last two years he has been working for the Dwarika's Hotel, from which he now gets bulk orders. His wife, his brother and his brothers wife work in the small family enterprise, and additional 6 trained people from outside are engaged. Mr. Lakshmi for example made over 100 beautiful pottery bases for the new electric lights, designed by Sangita Shrestha Einhaus according to ancient design. So far, the traditional oil lamps for the temples and shrines, and also for private homes have been made out of brass and bronze. The raw material has in recent years become excessively expensive.
Sangita Shrestha Einhaus copied them for manufacturing in ceramics instead out of brass. The success is so outstanding, the patina so perfect, that one does not recognise that they are not made out of brass but in ceramics. There are many other objects or traditional Nepali art, i.e. deities, animals, flowers, flower pots, ornaments for houses etc which can be manufactured out of terracotta and ceramics.
Sangita's imagination and sense for innovation found a wide open filed to implement her ideas.
Lately, other restaurants, realizing that those cultural handicrafts are liked by tourists now turn increasingly up with orders at Mr. Lakshmi's shop. But he would need starting capital to invest in more modern equipment in order to improve the quality.
Sangita Shrestha Einhaus rightly wants to stick to small producers and family enterprises. However, some
entrepreneurs with funds for investment in modern equipment, and foreign experts standing behind them, might be tempted to embark on mass production for easy and big short term profits. Those machine-made products would most probably be cheaper than the individually and
labor-intensive produced objects of art. They could well do a lot of harm to the traditional high quality cottage industry.
If the pottery project as initiated by the Shresthas with their new hotel will be successful, it might trigger Nepalese
specialty exports to other Asian countries, to Europe and America, similarly as it happened with the carpets.
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FOOD PROCUREMENT
It is a well known fact that most of the big Hotels in the Kathmandu
valley import their food stuff, especially vegetables and fruits,
from India. In view of the fact that farmers in the valley are very
poor and due to impoverishment of the farmers in rural areas, the
out immigration from rural areas into the towns has now reached
dangerous proportions. Those farmers in and within reach of the
Kathmandu valley could produce any amount of vegetables and fruits
for the local market, especially for the big Hotels. True, some
hotels have started to establish their own vegetable and fruit gardens,
which they run by salaried laborers. This solution is of course
better than imports of the food stuff from India. However, this
is no development towards self-reliance of the farmers' with their
small holdings. Thus, tourism in Nepal has - amongst others - also
in this field so far largely missed a chance for a general participative
development process with poverty alleviation.
Horticulture production has already expanded considerably in the
fertile Kathmandu valley. For example in the plains below Changunarayan
temple. Since the potential of horticulture and fruit production
as well as large markets are there it would be only a matter of
assisting and encouraging the farmers to organize themselves in
self-help groups for production and especially for marketing. In
this development process the farmers should be helped by local experts,
in making inputs available, like seeds, in getting mini credits
from local development banks, and - in the long term for - for example
for small irrigation projects. The farmers should get advice and
assistance for transport and marketing etc, in order not to become
dependent on reckless middle men.
Unfortunately there is not much time left to embark on such projects, for, poor but much alert Indians have about six years back discovered the market gap. Equipped with
bicycles or primitive small carts they obtain the vegetables and fruits from the farmers on commission and bring them to town for selling. Such Indian vegetable dealers with their bicycles and small carts now begin to change the scenic streets in the traditional shopping areas.
Marpha, in the Thakkhola, has become famous for producing high quality apples and
apricots and other fruits. By reasons difficult to understand (monopoly by "important" people ?), the farmers can not sell their products along the main trekking route, while on the local market vegetables and fruits imported from India dominate the scene. Tons of local fruits are
rottening.
Yet, the suggestion to produce and sell the vegetables locally, especially by big hotels, is not
utopic, since the author has closely followed such a project in Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in the world. Many small horticultural cooperatives have been created with the help of competent NGOs. The small production cooperatives are coordinated by one large semiautonomous storage- and marketing and export cooperative. The success was outstanding. Today vegetables are grown plentiful all over the country, where they were hardly known before. From the annual production about one third is consumed by the farmers themselves, one third is sold in the local markets and one third, after having passed a strict quality control through the central cooperative, is exported by air to Europe.
Naturally the farmers must get a fair price for their products. The problems of fair
farm gate prices do exist in the whole world. One means to improve income is through high quality products. In the Alps high quality products and especially introduction of a label for bio-farming is booming, because environmentally motivated consumers are willing to pay a higher price for products with
the
label (certificate) for "bio-farming". The consumers know by now that bio products are not only more healthy, but also better for protecting the environment. For many small and poor hill farmers in the Alps, bio farming has been the
savior of their small holdings and has thus contributed to poverty alleviation and to reduce out immigration.
The criteria of obtaining the label of "bio farming" are: no chemical fertilizers, no insecticides, no herbicides, no
antibiotics in the animal food, small holdings, working
labor-intensive, integrated and environment-compatible farming.
In Switzerland, the demand for bio products exceeds the production.
In the mountain and tourist canton (district) Graub0nden, which
has similar natural conditions as Nepal, about 30% of all the farmers-
all with small holdings in the mountains - have turned to bio farming
and improved thereby their living. Eighty percentage of the remaining
farmers have made some initial steps towards bio farming.
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THE SWISS MODEL WITH THE "BIO ALPINE"
LABEL
Innovative projects are in the mountains, everywhere in the world, a precondition for ensuring the local farmers their self-reliant and sustained living and to prevent the out immigration. In 1995 the Swiss Association for Development of the hill farmers has for the first time issued a competition for models for creating work places in the mountains. A
price of Sfrs 15000 was set by the municipalities of St. Moritz and Saanen/Gstaad, for commendable models to generate workplaces and income for the poor hill people. The two mentioned hill resorts are not from the "alternative" circles, but are very business-minded and belong to the most fashionable and most famous hill resorts in the Swiss Alps. Their guest lists show more affluent VIPs from the "jet set" from all over the
world than any other tourist centers in the world.
One of the winners in the July 1998 competition were a group of poor farmers, cheese makers and butchers from the canton
Schwyz, in the heart of Switzerland. Thirteen families have formed a cooperative for direct marketing of the their quality bio products to 23 very reputed gourmet restaurants in Zurich. They are assisted by the restaurant in marketing of their high quality meat, cheese and other dairy products, of vegetables and fruits, herbs and spices. The guests in the gourmet restaurants
receive in the menu cards the complete information about the producers. No official bureaucratic state quality control is required. The direct contact between the consumers and the chief cooks in the gourmet restaurants on one hand and the producers in the mountains on the other hand
guarantees the best quality control.
In July 1998 an association was founded for issuing the quality label
"Bio Alpine"
"direct from the producers"
The affluent European tourists in the higher class hotels would also in Nepal certainly be willing to pay a small extra price for products, if they know they are helping small farmers to an improved living.
Why not copy the above mentioned Swiss model with bio products as a model for the hotels in Nepal under the label
"Bio Himal"
"direct from the farmers"
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DWARIKA'S HOTEL AS A MODEL
Dwarika's may serve as model not only for preserving the cultural heritage, but, being a
labor-intensive enterprise, for creating more work places and income on a broad base. Already in the old hotel with only 30 rooms, before the 39 new rooms were added, about 150 people were engaged in the hotel and the heritage work. The improved pottery generates work places for local potters and other local made handicrafts and textiles generates income for locals besides the farmers local food sales.
Additional income will be generated, when once the sales shops for textiles, for wood carvings, improved potteries and other handicrafts will be operating. The latter industry might develop into a project for exports.
The Dwarika's Hotel has also made a start in the right direction, by buying their vegetables and fruits exclusively in the local markets, and also directly from small farmers. This produces income for farmers families.
THE DWARIKA'S AS AN EYE-OPENER FOR AFFLUENT NEPALI?
It is hoped, that the new Dwarika's will not only delight foreign tourists,
but also be an eye-opener for the affluent Nepali. One often hears the
saying that the rural and common people loose their cultural identity
if their country is swamped by tourists. It is true, that common people
may loose their cultural identity, but that it is mainly through poverty.
However, the thrilling folklore parade at the opening of the Visit Nepal
Year 1998 has shown again, how deeply rooted the many ethnic groups are
in their culture.
The author wishes Mrs. Ambica Shrestha and Mrs. Sangita Shrestha Einhaus every success also for their future pioneers work. |
