Nepal’s nomadic community Raute members say they prefer forest

CHITWAN: Members of the Raute community, a nomadic tribe in western Nepal, have said they prefer forest to towns.

They said they discarded the call of Prime Minister Khil Raj Regmi to live in homes instead of jungle.

They said, “We donot like towns.”

At a press meet organized by the Association of Nepalese Indigenous Nationalities Journalists (ANIJ), this morning in Chitwan, they said they do not like to live in the cities, the RSS reports.

Like our ancestors we will spend our lives in the jungle, said a member of the Raute community, Shivaram Shahi.

He said they will not discard their long standing traditions, but would take cooperation from the cities by begging.

They will visit various places here staying in Bharatpur. The visit was started to take them to various places for making them self employed by establishing in communities, said Secretariat’s Monitoring Officer Janak Pandey.

The team, which arrived in Chitwan on Tuesday, was happy when they saw the arrows and fishing equipment of Chepang were similar to theirs. They have come from Jahare of Surkhet in western Nepal.