Attn: Khukuri Experts!

Black Bear

Black Bear

Joined
Jun 25, 2001
Messages
246
Hello All, I'm trying to hone my Khukuri knowledge base. Two questions. (1) I have a HI WW II and understood it to be a replica of the kuks used in the Second World war, after buying it and hanging around the cantina I see thanks to John, that the original WW II kuks are different. So what is the source of design for the HI WW II? I'm not complaining, I LOVE my HI WW II. (2) What I thought was a Chainpuri I saw listed on the forum yesterday as a Dui Chirra Chitlangis, whats up with those handles. Thanks Much.
 
The BirGorkha kamis think they have improved on the design of the WWII model and maybe they have.
 
What about the Chainpuri/Dui Chirra Chitlangis. Are they the same kuk or is there a difference? Glad that your better half has you on supplements, I swear by them.
 
Not the same thing.

Yangdu has me on about 10 different vitamins per day. I think the COQ 10 may do some good but I'm not sure about the others. I drink a can of some kind of power drink most days which has about all the vitamins and minerals I can use and also do about 12 ounces of V-8 juice and eat a pretty healthy diet. But I think I get most benefit out of the 6 bottles of Heineken.
 
You Get All Those B Vitamins and Healthy Yeasts in the Heinie. I have a good friend who is 85 and has one of those small RV's has driven across the US about 5 times and Canada twice, up to Alaska and even down into Ole Mexico. All in the last two years. He swears by good dark beer and good dark chocolate.
 
Good to hear you are trying to eat right, Uncle.

Could you relieve a little of the suspense now? You've just confirmed that there is a difference between a chainpuri and a chitlangi, but how about enlightening us about what the difference is? A pointer to another thread would be ok if this was answered elsewhere.

While we're on the subject, you've mentioned before that the chainpuri style gets its name from the Chainpur region, which is down in the low-altitude rainforests and the vegetation is different from the higher-altitude regions in some way that makes the longer, thinner blades more suitable. Right? If so, in what way? Is the chitlangi style from a region named Chitlang? If so, where would that be? How about the sirupati? Is that also a regional name? Or did it come from something else? What? If there is a "Sirupat" region, where is it and what makes this style blade more suitable for that region, if anything?

If these questions should be directed to someone else (John Powell, ...) that's fine too.

Just (very) curious.

Paul
 
The differences between a Sirupati, Chainpuri, and Chitlangi are subtle. The Sirupati may be slightly beefier and therefore a slightly better performer when it comes to chopping but it would not be by much.

I don't know if there is such a place as Chitlang but there may be. Sirupati and Ang Khola are not named for villages or regions. Sirupati means leaf point and Ang Khola means "curved spine" so I'm told.

When Jag and Prem sent the first Chitlangi that's what they called it so that's what I call it. Most names of khukuris and a lot of other stuff I learned straight from the kamis and not from literature written by "experts."
 
Ahh, I have fond memories (well perhaps not so fond) of the night I drank a six pack of dark beer, a bag of dark chocolate and then switched to whiskey when the beer ran out! urrp!

I am rather fond of Beck's Dark.

Guy
 
"I don't know if there is such a place as Chitlang but there may be".
........................................
---Patting Myself on the Back------
I started life as a railroad clerk, and have been dependent on the use of maps ever since. I have several maps of Nepal (none of which show much - the Khukuri Rum site has the best so far) and found a list of 1,278 Nepali towns and cities which contained none of the places I've been interested in so far, including Chitlang. Many places in Nepal have two names, even the larger cities (Bhaktapur-Bhadgaon) and kamis and sarkis can have no names (even more confusing, three kamis can have just one no-name), but I'm all better, now
- I FOUND CHITLANG !!! It's here:

http://www.hetaudaonline.com/Pilgrims/ashok_chaitya.htm

Surya Benai is next, HEHEHEHEH
 
Truth is, I found a Google search for Nepal, and Chitlang (after all the other digging) popped right up :) Not so easy with "our town". Uncle Bill had given an alternate spelling, but both came up with this result:

"Taipele khojeko "Surya Banai" shabda haru kahi pani fela pari yena. Narisaunus hai", or something like that, there.

Now we know - these Nepali are inscrutable. If Yangdu reads this, tell her it means something nice. Confusing, but nice. This is a plot by the Sherpa Guides Society to make sure no westerner can find his butt in bright sunlight, unless he hires a guide, or buys a 50,000 Rupia map. Our only hope is for Blues to find a friend at NASA, and get a satellite scan of the whole country. But, then, who will we find to put names on all the places on the scan ??? I KNOW - A SHERPA GUIDE :D
 
...Here ya go, Wal...

SAT.JPG
 
It's a wonder that people in Nepal don't have one leg shorter than the other like they do in the Apalachians.;) I know I butchered that spelling.:D

I understand that most of my relatives in Arkansas and Missouri had one leg shorter than the other and the mountains ain't nearly as high as Nepals'.:rolleyes::eek:;)
 
Yvsa you beat me to it. That is one HILLY place. It must take three or four times as long to walk a mile as the crow flies compared to any place else.
 
Thanks, Blues...I think :confused: The second shot looks like a closeup of the inside of my old sheepskin vest, and the first one has a geometric figure like shots of the Plains of Nazca in Peru.

Maybe the kamis are right, after all (down from the clouds, 10,000 years ago), which would make the Yeti a descendant of Star Wars Wookies. Gewi, "as the crow flies" doesn't work there - they have to hire a Daphne to show them to landing spots, and Bro, even the birds have one leg shorter, except those who have learned to only land uphill. I'm sooooo confoosed :(
 
Black Bear,

Years ago in the early 70's when I learned to technical climb in the Wind Rivers of Wyoming, the rule of thumb we used to use while plotting our course on topographic maps was that for every 300 feet of elevation gained, consider it another mile of hiking added to the horizontal distance.

So, if 2000 feet of elevation was gained, and the hike was 7 miles, it'd be the equivalent (roughly) of a 14 mile hike. Naturally, you'd have to adjust if you lost significant elevation that had to be regained.

(We were carrying packs between 60-90 lbs for five weeks in the field.)

I don't know if that "rule of thumb" has been modified in recent years, but at least it helped alert us to the difficulty that lay ahead.
 
It looks like there are at least two villages called Chainpur, according to this site, with one in eastern Nepal and one in the far west. According to Khukuri House it is the eastern Chainpur, along the Arun River, near Makalu, that is the source of the Chainpuri khukuris. This seems to conflict with Uncle Bill's sources, who, IIRC, said that Chainpur was in the Terai, the lowlands.

Chitlang appears to be either very close to Hetauda as Walosi's link seems to say or else pretty close to Kathmandu, to the Southwest, not far to the North of Marku, as shown on this map according to information about halfway down this page. These pages may refer to the same place, but it's hard to tell from the descriptions.

What strikes me as surprising is that at least the handles of the chainpuri and chitlangi styles seem to be pretty different from most other handles and pretty similar to each other. If the relevant Chainpur is the one on the Arun River, in Eastern Nepal and the relevant Chitlang is near Marku, it would be odd for the two styles to be so distinctively similar. OTOH, if the relevant Chainpur is neither of the two, mentioned on the calle.com page, but is in the Chitwan region, as this site suggests, this similarity would be far less surprising.

Paul
 
Well, now we know.

Surya Benai is a corrupted spelling of Surya Benaik -- I think! A lot of names I use came to me by listening to what the kamis or Nepali pals told me and then trying to spell what I heard in English. I am surprised that I came as close as I did.

And, most of the general information I have gathered came to me the same way. Word of mouth from old Gorkhas, Nepali pals, kamis, sarkis, etc. which may or may not be always accurate -- keeping in mind that many of these folks are illiterate.

Only stuff I'm really certain of is first hand info -- been there, done that.
 
Blues, That sounds like some serious climbing. Were you into some "Black bag" covert training (or would you have to kill me if you told) or were you just INTO climbing. I used to do a bit of rock climbing in the late '60's. This was east coast climbing nothing like you have out in Wyoming. I loved it but then I wasn't carrying 90 lbs.
 
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