Nepal: people, mostly photographed unawares

Before I end my Nepal trip posts, here's one last big one that is simply pictures of people we encountered, many of them children or older people. As with the post showing Nepalese working, I've divided these into those from the Everest region trek and those from Kathmandu.

In the highlands

She seemed to enjoy watching the world go by.


I think she was on her way to school.


Maybe this should have gone up among the pictures of people working, but I couldn't be sure who was herding who.


A Sherpa (I think) in Khumjung village.


This helpful gentleman was always nearby during the trek, though I never figured out how he fit in. I thought of him as the "shadow Sherpa." Here he sits in front of the Sherpa hospital in Kunde.

Slideshow with more people pictures here.

In Kathmandu

I'm afraid she was unhappy to realize I'd caught her on camera. That's a dilemma for travel photography. Obviously people don't go about their lives for you to snap pictures of them. But if you alert them to fact you are shooting, you risk that people will pose and cease to look as they really do. I sometimes ask politely, but more often just try to be unobtrusive.


One solution is to take your pictures while people are posing for others. These Indian pilgrims at Swayambhunath were being recorded by their relatives ...


... as were these Tibetan women. I hope some of them snapped our group of out-of-place North Americans!


Some children love to pose.


And some people are just too busy with the morning dishes to much care about a bevy of passing tourists.

More pictures of people here.