The gentle people of Nepal

Press, 15 July 1978, Page 10

The gentle people of Nepal

By

MARGARET BUTLER

While on an eight-week visit to Nepal recently Miss Tina Troup, of Christchurch, was reminded of the first ascent of Mount Everest. While passing through the village of Namche Bazar, Miss Troup bought from the Post Office firstday covers marking the 25th anniversary of the victory by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. The first ascent was made on May 29, 1953. Tina Troup says she chose to visit Nepal because of the “aura” surrounding a country where people live in the mountains and move around on foot. Although she usually travelled alone, Miss Troup says she did not feel afraid. She found the Nepalese a very gentle people, and often walked with them as they carried goods from village to village to be sold. At night she would sleep in small shops which s<?ld rice and tea, “dossing down” in a corner. On her way to Namche Bazar Miss Troup met several young Sherpas who could speak some English, and who invited her to their homes to meet their families. Tina Troup says Nepal

is a beautiful country, and she hopes to return. She made this visit on her way back to New Zealand after living in France for several years. Three years of this was spent studying French at the Language and Arts University of Grenoble, from which she received diplomas in general studies and in linguistics and phonetics. At first, she says, it was difficult getting used to speaking French all the time, but as she had

studied the language before leaving New Zealand —her father, the late Gordon Troup, was a noted French scholar—she soon got used to it. Now, says Miss Troup, she is finding it hard to put together sentences in English again. She likened some aspects of her French university life to being back in high school, as in some classes students were asked to prepare exposes and read them out to fellow students. Tina Troup spent some leisure time climbing and ski-mountaineering near Grenoble where there are

rock cliffs, and snowy alps suitable for traversing on skis. After a four-month visit to New Zealand about 18 months ago, Miss Troup returned to France and embarked on a cycling tour from Grenoble to Greece, which took more than a month. As well as teaching English to a young girl in Athens, she also went sight-seeing in Crete. On her return to France she spent the summer months grape and walnut picking, and the winter

teaching ski-ing to schoolchildren near Grenoble. Tina Troup, who is 25, was educated at Christchurch Girls’ High School and spent two years at the University of Canterbury before deciding to go to France to study. She left for France in 1972, and on the way spent six months in California working at the Squaw Valley ski-field helping to load people on to ski-lifts and checking tickets. Although in the shortterm Miss Troup hopes to find some freelance work in New Zealand as an interpreter, she is undecided as to her long-term plans.