Philippe Sagant is walking towards the Tibetan Tokpe valley in northeastern Nepal with Motta and Tarang, two Limbu friends from the village of Libang, where he has been conducting a study since We want to get to Dalaincha before nightfall. His older brother Motta and I pick up our pace to catch up with him. The path overlooks the river from a cliff about a hundred metres high. Forming stairs, it climbs across the rock. Two Sherpa appear, descending towards us in their black wool clothing wearing their red pearl around their necks.
Motta stops. All I can think of is reaching Dalaincha, drinking a tongba , 4 eating my rice and going to sleep. In the field you can have off-days, but I still feel guilty.
Even so, Shimbuk is the goal of the trip. I should have listened in. Why this? Why that? Ultimately you feel like you have rights over people. What do they have to talk about, the Sherpa and Motta?
They seem to know each other well. But what about him? Why does he keep working with me? He walks behind me in silence, at the same pace. When I stumble on a rock, he stumbles too. He knows I feel guilty for having missed something.
He ends up laughing, and speaks. He bought potatoes from Dorje Bhotiya. The prices rose a couple of weeks ago: one rupee for a pathi. His three sons are by his side. But there are no longer many people in the village. The men are carrying grain on the backs of yaks from the low valleys of Tokpe. Only the women are left. These lines are extracted from an unpublished manuscript on the life of a great Limbu chief in which Sagant, the ethnographer, reveals his relations with his informants, his inner questions, and how the subject of that book took shape.
