Longmont Nepali festival draws hundreds for music, dance, food

It was a festival of the senses for attendees of the Nepali Jatra at the Longmont Museum and Cultural Middle on Sunday afternoon.

The sound of a drum trio beckoned the hundreds of guests to the show hall, where by they were being greeted with smiles and soft spoken “Namastes” from kids at the doorway during the common Nepali competition.

The distinct aroma of Nepali meals catered at the again of the area saw a line queue up promptly.

Surendra Maharjan smiled as he looked at individuals ready even though he plated black beans, tricky boiled eggs, curried greens and conventional flat rice.

“This is so interesting,” Maharjan reported. Soon after living in Longmont for five years and doing the job in the know-how sector, he begun the Lyons Meals On Wheels food stuff truck two months ago as a way to present the common Nepali food he and his close friends ended up so made use of to cooking at property.

The group of people integrated quite a few from the Colorado Nepalese local community, as effectively as a lot of who were being intrigued in finding out a lot more about Nepal, or who, like Cynthia Adam, had sights set on visiting the modest Himalayan nation someday.

An avid traveler who tries to visit at the very least a person new region a year, the Longmont resident was savoring the foods while waiting around for a seat to open up in the auditorium.

“I imagined I’d arrive out and do some thing fully various now,” Adam claimed.

It was standing room only the moment the 200 seats in the museum’s theater had been loaded to view Nepali dance routines and a small film on Nepal’s tradition.

For 29-yr-aged Prakintee Sharma, the pageant meant the possibility to feast on the genuine food items the school university student was missing for the duration of her final semester at Ball Condition College.

“I’ve been binging on sandwiches for forever,” explained Sharma, who is traveling to Colorado for the summer time.

“This feels special,” she explained. She stated she skipped her mothers and fathers, who nonetheless live in Nepal.

“It feels great to see that we are continuing to share our tradition from era to era. Which is a fantastic issue. It offers a sense of identification to all of us.”

Sunanda Dangol, who dreamed up hosting the jatra, stated the project was a labor of really like.

“There are so many Nepalese right here in Colorado, I waited for many years considering anyone else would do it, and ultimately I considered it was large time I did it myself.”

Following approaching the Longmont Museum and Cultural Center with her idea, she got a greenlight.

“I’ve had this in my head for 4 a long time, and I have set it alongside one another in 4 months,” Dangol reported.

She obtained guidance and sponsorship from her employer and Nepalese community member Sunny Pathak.

Pathak owns a quantity of franchises and ranches in Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska.  He moved to Colorado 25 decades in the past and has watched the Nepalese neighborhood improve steadily to the thousands who now connect with the point out home.

Holding the lifestyle alive and available is a priority in the Nepalese local community, Pathak explained, and on any given weekend there’s a course becoming held in a church hall or a rec heart so that the dance and audio is handed on to the more youthful generations.

Keshav Thapa Magar and Kamala Saru Magar shared the phase to current a flirty, lively dance established to conventional new music.

Even though the pair moved to Colorado from Pokhara, Nepal, seven several years ago, it was the initial time they performed the dance on phase.

“We figured out the dance from our dad and mom,” Keshav, 33, said after the general performance. Sweaty and smiling, he reported his stage fright was gone.

“Was I nervous? Certainly, but I felt like I was dancing for loved ones,” he reported. “We are all in essence relatives now, correct? We test to keep in mind that we are household below, even you and I.”