The doctor who became Khaptad Baba
Khaptad Baba was born Shivanath Dogra in 1880, into a Dogra family of Kashmir. He trained as a doctor, studying in Calcutta and later surgery in Britain, before giving up medicine and taking sannyas, the vows of a Hindu renunciate. He studied and taught Eastern philosophy at the Dakshinamurti Math in Kashi, then wandered the Himalaya, staying at places such as Ilam, Kalinchowk, Swargadwari and Chandannath in Jumla.
In the 1940s he settled on the Khaptad plateau, then known only to herders and pilgrims, and lived there in a simple hermitage for more than fifty years. He became known across Nepal as Khaptad Baba, a teacher of plain living and spiritual discipline, and visitors came from across Nepal to sit with him. His talks were later collected and published in Nepali.
It was on his advice that the government declared Khaptad a national park in 1984, protecting the meadows and forest that he loved. A buffer zone of 216 sq km was added in 2006. Today his hermitage is kept as a memorial within the park, and many Nepali visitors come here as much for him as for the scenery.
