Wild Earth Journeys

Thomas L. Kelly Publications

Fallen Angels

There may be more than two million prostitutes among South Asia's billion people--males, females and the "third gender", angels unwillingly tumbled into hell. The majority comes from low-caste and tribal communities, and the remainder is cast out, fleeing abuse, supporting their families or trafficked—for prostitution in South Asia is not a voluntary occupation.

In Fallen Angels, eight photographers, including Thomas Kelly, also is the executive producer and main photographer of the book, and fourteen writers explore the complex, hidden world of prostitution in South Asia. Through the personal voices of those who sell their bodies, this book confronts the powerful issues of trafficking, child prostitution, HIV/AIDS and sex workers' rights, and through profiles of the leading grassroots organizations working with the sex industry, it presents the struggles to address those issues.

Challenging the stereotypes of the "whore", "victim" and "fallen woman", Fallen Angels presents real people living their lives--unfortunate lives, but the only hand dealt by the gods. That there is often laughter in the brothels, that there is anger, hope, and in some cases a forceful demand for human rights, are all testament to the immense strength of those in the sex industry. That strength is the subject of this book.

This book is available at Thomas Kelly’s office @ Kathmandu, Nepal
Place your order at:
Email: tkelly@photo.wlink.com.np
Tele/Fax: 977-01-443-8883, 977-01-4431-954
Moblie: 977-98510-26738
P.O.B: 1406
Kathmandu, Nepal.

The Hidden Himalayas
Photography by Thomas L. Kelly
Text by Carroll Dunhan

Thomas Kelly and Carroll Dunham, two young Americas, a photographer and a writer-anthropologist, take you the strangest place in the world. Beautiful, bitter, joyous, and holy, it is Humla, an ancient territory at the edge of Nepal. Bordering Tibet, hidden in the Himalayas

The vistas captures in Kelly’s photographs are both limitless and intimate, here is a land of eternally snow-capped mountains and sweeping valleys, eerie, forbidding as the landscape of some distant moon, its people all but forgotten by the rest of the world. Their lives are struggle—the alpine soil metes out sustenance grudgingly; trade with distant neighbors means days of driving stubborn yaks over perilous mountain trails; disease is a constant companion (the average woman bears eight children, of whom six may live to adulthood); and the long winter threatens to banish the warmth of life forever.

Yet these lives yield untold riches. As if the splendid isolation and sheer altitude of the hidden Himalayas bring their inhabitants closer to the gods, the Hindu Chhetri and Thakuri and Buddhist Bhotia people of this land are possessed of spirituality few Westerners will ever know. In Humla, the gods are everywhere—in the clouds, in the mountains, in the very dung with which the soil is fertilized. Here is Lobsang Lama, who lives with wife, Eppi, in a rock-carved mountainside hermitage. His life of meditation and good works has been a preparation for the moment of death. Old, sick, he declares that he will die in five days and, on the fifth day, passes away in utter peace. And then there is Takha Bahadur, no less holy, but seeing herself slighted in worship, takes demonic possession of his wife. Indeed, a spiritual life of Humla is never entirely peaceful. Its many festivals of religious celebrations are marked by a joyous, raucous carnality: from the fantastic masked Mani carnival to the operatic wedding ceremony of the Bhotia, who practice a rare form of polyandrous marriage in which one wife is shared by any number of brothers.

Kelly’s extraordinary photographs are accompanied by Dunham’s evocative and lyrical account of life through four seasons in Humla: Fall, winter, spring and summer. In a world made easy, accessible, and all too familiar by supersonic travel, television and communication, and intimate, moving adventure in one of the last truly exotic places on earth.

This book is available at Thomas Kelly’s office @ Kathmandu, Nepal, at USD 60
Place your order at:
Email: tkelly@photo.wlink.com.np
Tele/Fax: 977-01-443-8883, 977-01-4431-954
Moblie: 977-98510-26738
P.O.B: 1406
Kathmandu, Nepal.

KATHAMNDU
City on the Edge of the World
Photography by Thomas L. Kelly
Text by Patricia Roberts

It is an illusion: there are places in the world where life is more intense. In Kathmndu,it is as if the gods had uprooted the mountain, leaving a valley lush with green and gold, thread wit rivers , patched with brown thatched house. Twenty-nine thousand feet above are the snow-capped Himalayas;15,000 feet below, Kathmandu—or, rather, the three village-cities that make up Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhaktapur.

Once holy and forbidden, walled from the world by the Himalayas, Kathmandu is today an exotic crossroads where diverse cultures and individuals meet: Lamas and Pilgrims, Westerners in quest of Eastern wisdom, American hippies from the 1960s, dealers in merchandise legal and illegal, peasants and urbanites tourists and curiosity seekers from the world over.

It is a place of breathtaking sights, the work of nature and man: the Himalayas and the ancient temples whose glided copper pagodas magnificently echo the mountains in soaring shape; the intricate artwork of the shrines, carved wood and cast bronze incarnations of the thousands of deities in the Buddhist and Hindu pantheons; the farms and fields, terraced no less intricately into the walls of the Kathmandu Valley; the eerie drama of ritual cremations of the Bagmati River; the holy ascetics—sadhus—who perform feats of strength, faith, and endurance, and who bear the trident of Shiva; the Kumaris of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur—virgin girls worshipped as living goddesses.

Kathmandu is a Valley of festivals—about one very ten days, ranging from joyous celebrations to propitiate local deities, to charming symbolic “weddings” of Newari girls to a wood-apple tree god, to the black festival of Dashain, during which ten thousands animals are sacrificed in a riot of ritual slaughter.,

Kathmandu knows no halfway, but offers and infinite variety of extreme experience.

This book is available at Thomas Kelly’s office @ Kathmandu, Nepal, at USD 65
Place your order at:
Email: tkelly@photo.wlink.com.np
Tele/Fax: 977-01-443-8883, 977-01-4431-954
Moblie: 977-98510-26738
P.O.B: 1406
Kathmandu, Nepal.

MONGOLIA - THE LAND OF BLUE SKIES
Photography by Thomas L. Kelly
Text by Gauri Shankar Gupta

Located in the heart of Asia, Mongolia is an ancient civilization and a cradle of nomadism. This nomadic land is also the birthplace of some of the greatest military adventures, including the legendary Chinggis Khan, who ruled the largest ever land empire in the thirteenth century, stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Black sea and from the Volga to the Indus.

Mongolians call their country, “The Land of Blue Skies”. It is endowed with picturesque landscape in the north, vast steppes in the center and the east and the barren but starkly beautiful Gobi desert in the south. The book is a fascinating glimpse into Mongolia’s pristine landscape, its nomadic way of life, and the rich culture and religious traditions of its people.

This book is available at Thomas Kelly’s office @ Kathmandu, Nepal,
Place your order at:
Email: tkelly@photo.wlink.com.np
Tele/Fax: 977-01-443-8883, 977-01-4431-954
Moblie: 977-98510-26738
P.O.B: 1406
Kathmandu, Nepal.

SADHUS
THE GREAT RENOUNCERS

Sadhus are an enigma to me, living the mystery of ancient questions that have no answers. Tricksters, derelicts, madmen, charlatans, wanderers, mystics and yogis, their boldly painted bodies confront us with essential questions at the heart of existence. I found them wandering through crowded polluted urban centers begging, to villages and what is left of forest and mountain pilgrimage trails. Like walking mysteries of the human soul, for me, sadhus provoke the question, who am I? What do I need, what really is important, and the more ancient pre-settled desire to wander in search of god? Most importantly, they remind us that the answer for all things only lies within our own elusive hearts.

In my adopted home of Kathmandu, some sadhus survive primarily off alms made from allowing tourists to photograph them. They are a spectacle and love to play their assigned role in the illusion or drama of society. Their masks are thickly painted on their naked bodies. Sadhus have formally abandoned conventional time; their world is dense with its own complex politics, social hierarchy, taboos and customs, often making access challenging.

Volatile and unpredictable, spontaneous photography of sadhus can actually be dangerous. You can easily be trampled or attacked if you immerse yourself in a naga baba procession after a mass Khumba Mela bathing. Or, without permission from a Mahant to work inside an Akhara, be accused of being a spy and have to answer to a Sadhu tribunal. There’s no such thing as achieving photographic acceptance within the Sadhu mandala. For me, photographing at ritual time is always the most dynamic and fluid. Once rapport has been established, a camera is tolerated, often with a sense of lila, or maya, play and illusion. It took repeated visits over many seasons and melas, to occasionally reach this level.

My initial inexplicable attraction to the Sadhu world was mostly visual. As a photographer, I loved how they allowed their bodies to become symbols of the sacred- from walking around naked to remind us of our naked selves, to wearing ash to remind us what are bodies become, to dreadlocks to remind us of our natural wild natures devoid of social convention. Their bodies were texts, which spoke volumes regarding sacred symbolism.

A sadhu’s body is a map of the Hindu universe, for the body is a microcosm of the cosmos. Like a canvas, the colour and painted symbols aid in purification, inspire, and remind of the timeless divine beyond body and form. The body is used to tell stories. As the sadhus works towards an egoless state, he becomes the very symbols he’s painted whether it be Shiva, Vishnu, or Rama, the colors refer to esoteric inner visions and possible alchemical states of consciousness. The real goal of a Sadhu is to achieve an attitude of non-attachment and transcendence of the physical body.

As a photographer, I sometimes like to hide behind my lens, become invisible. Yet for sadhus, it is their very outlandish visibility, the powerful symbols of the divine they paint on their bodies, which help them not to become invisible, but to transcend self. Disturbing, annoying, inspiring, exasperating, irrational, wise and powerful, photographing sadhus is like photographing a living question that people have forgotten to ask.

This book is available at Thomas Kelly’s office @ Kathmandu, Nepal. At:
Large US$222
Medium US$111
Small US$32
Unbinded large US$183

Place your order at:
Email: tkelly@photo.wlink.com.np
Tele/Fax: 977-01-443-8883, 977-01-4431-954
Moblie: 977-98510-26738
P.O.B: 1406
Kathmandu, Nepal.

TIBET
REFLECTION FROM THE WHEEL OF LIFE
Photography by Thomas L. Kelly
Text by Carroll Dunhan
Foreword by H.H. The 14th Dalai Lama

WITH AN ENLIGHTENING FORWRODE BY THE Dalai Lama, the return of this exquisitely illustrated volume presents an intimate portrait of Tibet and its people. According to Tibetan belief, existence is an endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, and authors Carroll Dunham and Ian Baker trace the course of this Tibetan wheel of life—from birth to childhood through adolescence and midlife, to old are and death—as they introduce us to the riches of the Tibetan way of life. From love, marriage, and glorious summer festivals to the harsh lives of nomadic traders and the ultimate release that death brings, every part of their experience is deeply coloured by their strong spiritual beliefs. These fascinating stories of diverse Tibetans include a woman who is married to four brothers and is pregnant by one; a ten-year-old god-child who bestows blessings on the faithful; and the three-year pilgrimage of a family to Lhasa for which they cover the entire distance by prostrating the length of their bodies across the earth.

Illuminated by Thomas Kelly’s more than 150 revealing color photographs, this unique exploration of the endangered Tibetan culture is at once lively, humorous, tragic, and inspiring. Set against Tibet’s staggeringly beautiful mountain landscapes, as well as against the ongoing struggle of the Tibetans to win independence from China, this celebrated volume portrays the many faces of an earthy yet devout people steeped in rich heritage.

SACRED LANDSCAPE AND PILGRIMAGE IN TIBET
IN SEARCH OF LOST KINGDOM OF BON
Photography by Thomas L. Kelly
Text by Geshe Gelek Jinpa, Charles Ramble and Carroll Dunhan

GESHE GELEK JINPA, a monk of the little known Bon faith, takes us on a fascinating pilgrimage, visually and spiritually, through the spectacular landscape of western Tibet in search of lost, sacred Bon homeland of Zhangzhung. This spiritual adventure is the first book to document the living traditions of Bon, whose origins predate Buddhism in Tibet by hundreds, if not thousands, of years. What makes this narrative so compelling is that it features the voiced and perspective of the monk Gelek, giving it and intimacy and knowledge of Bon not found in religious texts.

According to the Tibetan calendar, 2002 was a holy year for pilgrimages, and in the holiest month of that year, Gelek, set out from his monastery in Nepal with eleven hardy companions and photographer Thomas Kelly to travel to Kailash, a scared mountain in western Tibet. Gelek was also on a personal mission to seek out the long vanished kingdom of Zhangzhung. At the end of the journey, Gelek finds little that resembles that Bon Kingdom. He comes upon crumbling ruins that have all but reverted to their native dust and earth. From this experience Gelek understands that the essence of this faith is not built on theses shifting sands but on the bedrock of the changeless Bon teachings.

Gelek’s journal of this arduous trek and spiritual quests is portrayed with 160 stunningly beautiful color photographs of the snow-capped Himalayan peaks and sweeping valleys, pilgrims, nomads and local people, and religious objects. In addition, Tibetan authority Charles Ramble Bon in the 21st Century, and two Bon officials contribute forewords.

Included with this book is a fascinating DVD, which allows us to experience this exotic pilgrimage through one of the most remote places on earth.

Himalayan Pilgrimage Calender – 2009

Rising towards the heaven like a stepladder for the Gods, the snow-clad Himalayas separate the Indian sub-continent from the Indian Plateau. On the slopes and plains surrounding this lofty spires-highest mountain on earth-Buddhist and Hindu cultures carry on their centuries-old life style and traditions in the ace of rapidly spreading modernization and vagaries of Global hegemony.

Based in Kathmandu, Photographer Thomas L. Kelly first traveled to Nepal at 1978 as Peace Corps volunteer. Since then, he has worked as a photo-activist, documenting disappearing culture tradition and the struggles of marginalized people worldwide. This calendar presents twelve of Kelly's reveling portraits of Himalaya region and its inhabitants-from the lone horseman on the desolate grassland of Easter Tibet to a group of young monks blowing off steam in Bhutan.

This calendar can be ordered through Pomegranate Press
Catalogue No-D327
USD 13.99
ISBN# 978-0-7649-4386-7