Myagdi. At the age of 18, Poorna Bahadur Jaisi of Dhawalagiri Rural Municipality-4 Khamla was given the responsibility of taking a herd of buffaloes and taking care of them.
Purna Bahadur was able to spend 57 years in the same buffalo herd, despite being selected as an Indian soldier because of his desire to be recruited with his friends. “After my grandfather and father told me that it would be better to raise buffaloes than to work in the army, I entered the forest because I could not refuse. People from the military board came to the house after three months to look for me. I did not want to go. The buffaloes were happy in the barn”, he said.
Her grandfather, who was a pundit and astrologer, advised Purna Bahadur that his business would flourish if he was put in charge of the buffalo, so she joined the Indian Gurkha army. As predicted by my grandfather, the number of buffaloes in the Ghumtigoth, which started from one pado, reached 36, Purna Bahadur says – “I ran the household business by selling buffaloes, ranga, padapadi and ghee, joined the farm, educated my four children, took them to the place.”
Purnaprasad, who started buffalo rearing in Ghumtigoth in 2025, has sold the buffaloes since last December due to health and old age and has started staying at his elder daughter Maya Sharma’s house in Malika Rural Municipality-7 Bim Khara.
Purnaprasad has the joys and sorrows of riding a camel with a buffalo in the foothills of the mountains in the dry season and riding a horse in the winter. Purna Bahadur also remembered the meeting with his family in three years when he had to be busy from morning till evening with milking, milking and making ghee from mustard seeds.
The incident of Purna Bahadur’s cattle attack and killing of 11 buffaloes once he reached Buki at the foothills of Dhawalagiri mountain through Jirwang, Simkosh, Dhurikhark, Hile, Bagar, was still not forgotten. “They used to keep at least two hungry dogs for the protection of the herd. Because the grazing area was divided according to the village, there were few meetings with other shepherds in the lake. The family members used to deliver the necessary food for the nomadic herd from time to time in the forest. Radio and mobile are friends”, Purna Bahadur narrated his past. P.O