Lyft Stories: Chhiring

How the CIA Changed a Remote Mountain Village

Chhiring was my Lyft driver to JFK. He is from Manang, a remote village located 3,500 meters (11,000 feet) in the Himalayas.

Because of the altitude, until the 1960s, his tribe of 7,000 people was isolated from most of the world. They spoke their own language and had their own customs.

Occasionally, someone would trek to the lowlands and return with stories of “moving houses” (busses) and “talking boxes” (radios), but otherwise the Mananga were left alone in their prehistory to tend their crops of buckwheat and potatoes.

In the 1960’s the CIA air-dropped weapons to tribes along the Tibetan border, including Chhiring’s, with the hope that the tribes would form a guerrilla army to fight for the Dali Lama. The King of Nepal was alarmed by this, and told the Mananga that if they gave up the CIA weapons, he would make them Nepalese citizens.