Nepali women bloom amid garland industry’s flowering prosperity

The flower fields of Nepal’s Gundu village glimmer yellow, orange and purple as women harvest blooms, a flourishing industry changing tough village lives by providing garlands for Hindu festivals.

Nestled on the rim of Kathmandu Valley, Gundu is renowned for supplying the brightly-coloured globe amaranth and marigold flowers, with demand surging for this week’s Tihar celebrations, also known as Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights.

At dawn, the village women gather in the fields to harvest the blooms, that will, by the day’s end, be woven into garlands to adorn homes and temples.

The women of Gundu have turned this seasonal bloom into a thriving industry, despite a labour-intensive process of picking and weaving them into garlands.

“This has provided more jobs for women of our village,” flower farmer Saraswoti Bista, 56, said.

“We don’t have to leave home, and by weaving garlands, we earn a good income,” she added.