Nepal, June 9 -- When Gabriele Tautscher was a young student at St Mary's School in Kathmandu, she became close to her family's household help from the Tamang community. That connection inspired her to return to Nepal in the 1980s to start work on her PhD on the Tamang people.

Tautscher could have decided to study the Tamang settlements at the periphery of Kathmandu Valley, but the Austrian student chose the remotest village:Chayarsaba on the northern tip of Dolakha district near the Chinese border.

In over three decades of anthropological research, Tautscher travelled across theTamanghomelandofTamsalingand her latest book Tamang Portraits was launched on Sunday at Taragaon Next (pictured below). It is an album of photographs she took ...