Nepal storyteller uses photos and few lines to reveal lives

It started with a photograph of a smirking, young man wearing a heavy-metal band T-shirt and selling tea on the streets of Kathmandu. It has become a wildly popular blog chronicling street life in the Himalayan nation of Nepal.
Inspired by the similar project "Humans of New York ," Nepalese photographer Jay Poudyal has posted biographies and photographs for more than 800 Nepalis including villagers, bureaucrats, schoolchildren, housewives and students since launching his blog three years ago.
"Stories of Nepal ," with 270,000 followers and growing, has become a mission for the 37-year-old college dropout: to highlight the heroism of Nepal's common men and women as they struggle against widespread poverty, natural disasters and a government widely seen as corrupt.

"I was searching for purpose of life," Poudyal said in an interview with The Associated Press, admitting to past struggles with alcohol and drug abuse. "When I started doing this, it was like a calling for me."
Each morning, Poudyal takes to the streets of his native Kathmandu to chat with people, share jokes or heart-wrenching memories, and snap their photos. Occasionally, he'll drive his motorcycle to a nearby village, or take a bus to a community farther out along Nepal's mountain roads.
The blog has led to some freelance photography work, which he said gives him enough income to get by and still focus on the blog.

"I really love the freedom," he said. "When you plan something, you are limiting the possibilities. But when you are just walking, when you are keeping yourself very open, there is so much that comes in which you are not expecting."

Poudyal tries to make more than half of his stories about women. That's in line with his goal of giving a voice to the most marginalized in Nepal, a mostly patriarchal society best known as the home of Mount Everest.
For one story, posted last week, Poudyal photographed a man he came upon sitting alone in a crowded Kathmandu square surrounded by old palaces and temples. They spoke for an hour, with the photographer recording the man's tale of how he missed his wife, who had died three years earlier and left him to raise their four children.

Later, Poudyal met truck driver in a narrow stone-paved alley, and heard about how he had just been shopping for new clothes for his family. The man, smiling wide and holding up a bag of rice he had purchased, said he was heading home with the gifts before a Hindu festival celebration.
"When I am listening to the stories, I go into that emotional space, and the struggle, the pain, suffering or the happiness, hopes and aspirations, it sort of also becomes mine," Poudyal said. "Sometimes I am laughing with the person who is telling me a story, sometimes we are both crying.