Bringing Progress to Paradise: What I Got from Giving to a Mountain Village in Nepal

Jeff Rasley
Conari Press (2010)
ISBN 9781573244824
Reviewed by Joseph Yurt for Reader Views (1/11)


For author Jeff Rasley, the heart of the matter in his new book, “Bringing Progress to Paradise: What I Got from Giving to a Mountain Village in Nepal,” is clearly the two sides to progress.

The book is actually two separate yet inseparable stories. One sensitively captures Mr. Rasley’s love affair with the magnificent beauty and magnetism of Mt. Everest and the mountainous region of Nepal, and with the physical, mental and spiritual challenges and rewards of mountain climbing and trekking. The other more compelling story, for most readers, is Rasley’s warm, admiring portrait of Nepal’s intriguing Sherpa and Rai peoples and their cultures.

The book begins slowly, providing the reader with detailed background on Western civilization’s impact on global, native cultures, a bit of the developmental and political history of Nepal, and the author’s affection for distant places that provide the opportunity for reflection, regeneration and pause from his legal practice in Indiana. The pace quickens when Rasley and a small group of friends and supporters begin a trek to the small Nepalese, Rai village of Basa, a community virtually untouched by Western civilization. The group’s goal is to meet the villagers and determine how they can help them to improve their appallingly ill-equipped school.

Each member of the group is touched in many diverse ways, in one case, mystically, as are the lives of every Rai villager. But in the end, the same question remains – what will be the price of the progress the group is committed to bring to this unspoiled place?

Mr. Rasley vividly retells the experience of one of the trekkers with “the magnetism of Basa,” a powerful mental and physical force compelling her not to leave the village. As I finished the last page of “Bringing Progress to Paradise,” I too had a strong urge - to join the group on their next trip to Basa and continue the exploration of the two sides to progress.

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