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REVIEWS

A half century ago, four spirited souls with a unique blend of professional backgrounds converge in the remote Himalaya and realize, against all odds, their dream of designing and operating a rural health post. Working with Nepal’s first NGO, flying with intrepid bush pilot Emil Wick, sharing medical tips with shamans, planting orchards and vegetable gardens, they grow together, professionally and personally. But the plot of this frank and engaging account thickens as they are entangled in a web of bureaucracy and local and regional differences that gradually illuminate their vexing geopolitical context in the borderland between Nepal and Tibet. Hang onto your fox-fur hats!
—Broughton Coburn, New York Times bestselling author of Everest: Mountain without Mercy

I have known Stephen Bezruchka since 1991 when we were coinstructors on a field learning program in the remote mountains of Eastern Nepal. After reading the book Far from the Road: A Community Health Project in the Himalayas, I understand how he had gained his perspective to provide healthcare under difficult conditions with very little resources. Even though I was trained in Nepal to become a doctor for Nepali people and had been exposed to Nepali health conditions and challenges during my training, it was from Stephen that I learned to find alternatives or improvise solutions to our challenges. This book describes the effort of four Westerners who wanted to improve health in the region around Dhorpatan, which is still a remote Himalayan valley in Western Nepal. It is a tragedy that they could not complete what they set out to do. The book highlights their determination and distress.
—Dr. Shankar Man Rai, surgeon, humanitarian, founder of Nepal’s only dedicated burn hospital

It’s been five decades since the authors of this unique serial memoir came together in the mid-1970s to establish the meticulously planned Dhorpatan Health Project in a remote valley of the Nepal Himalayas. The team’s three former Peace Corps volunteers and one Canadian physician were used to trekking long distances and living under isolated conditions. Their project served a remote Tibetan refugee community and a seasonal enclave of Nepali high-altitude livestock herders. Their challenge, successfully met, was to establish and run a medical clinic and pursue small development projects—without electricity, running water, or radio communications with the outside world. Their combined stories about working to empower the villagers to address local needs and build capacity are told with passion. A compelling read—innovative, insightful, inspiring, and well illustrated.
—Don Messerschmidt, PhD, anthropologist, and writer on Himalayan studies

Three intrepid Americans and one Canadian set out in the 1970s to establish a health and development program in Dhorpatan, a remote village in a mountainous area of Nepal, one inhabited primarily by Tibetan refugees. Far from the Road tells about that effort in compelling detail, presenting what they encountered, what they learned, and what they accomplished. A wealth of photos from that time bring the people and activities to life (including oddities such as a thirty-foot-long tapeworm inhabiting a villager). These stories of the concrete, day-today issues that arose during the project give an honest look at how the process of working in another culture can be respectful of local realities as well as meeting the standards of “the industry.”
—Mary Anne Mercer, author of Beyond the Next Village: A Year of Magic and Medicine in Nepal

So what do you do after you’ve seen how the real world works in the Peace Corps? You double down, join forces with other former volunteers, and this time really make a difference. “It was a huge challenge, but we were young, energetic and determined dreamers,” writes Ross Anthony in this deeply engaging memoir of the Dhorpatan Health Project in Nepal. Anthony, Stephen Bezruchka, Mary Murphy, and Michael Payne lived as the locals and show, in lessons still relevant, how curative medicine creates community action for better nutrition, clean water and sanitation, and a better quality of life.
—Charles R. Bailey, Peace Corps Nepal 1967–1970; Ford Foundation in India, Egypt, Sudan, Bangladesh, Kenya, Vietnam; Ford Foundation and Aspen Institute: Agent Orange in Vietnam

Far from the Road transported me back to 1970s Nepal where, like several of the authors, I served as a Peace Corps volunteer. I had heard parts of the Dhorpatan Health Project story before from American, Tibetan, and Nepali friends who were involved but was not familiar with the finer details of how the project was conceived and carried out, nor how it prematurely ended. The book filled in the gaps while painting a nostalgic picture of a time and place that, in many ways, no longer exists. What I found most striking in reading the authors’ very personal accounts was their idealism and earnest approach to community development, something that was characteristic of the time but is less common in the data-driven development industry of today. They planned the project around a set of principles derived from their own prior work in Nepal with a strong focus on cultural sensitivity, appropriate technology, and sustainability. While the project was cut short by politics, its lessons remain relevant today and, as the authors describe, had a deep impact on each of their lives and professional careers.
—Nick Langton, executive director, U.S. Educational Foundation, Nepal