They say that long ago, the Sunuwar Koits of Sanalu village used to hunt in the high forests of Chordam. Those were wild days. The mountains were quiet but alive, and men followed the deer into the clouds.

Among the hunters was a young Sunuwar Koits man, tall, quick with his bow, and fearless in the dark. One morning, while chasing a wounded stag, he lost his way and came down to a village called Dunge. There, smoke curled from the roofs, and a young Sherpa woman stood by the stream washing grain.

The hunter greeted her,

“Amaile, can you show me the path to the ridges of Chordam?”

The woman looked up, smiled faintly, and said,

“If you are lost once in these hills, stranger, the spirits will keep you here. Best you stay till dawn.”

So he stayed. Days passed, and the mountains forgot the sound of his bow. Before long, love grew between them, quiet and deep as the forest itself.

One season later, the Sherpa woman gave birth to a son. She waited for the hunter to return. Each dawn she lit a small fire and said softly,

“If he remembers me, the wind will bring him back.”

But the wind only carried silence.

When the time came to name her child, she gathered juniper branches, burned them, and bathed herself in their fragrant smoke.

“Let this smoke take away all that is unclean,” she whispered, “and may my son walk with clear heart and strong breath.”

She named him Nandare, after the wind that had once brushed her cheek when the hunter first spoke her name.

Years later, a Tibetan lama passed through the valley. He saw the boy playing by the stream and said,

“This child carries a light I have seen only in high places. Let me raise him; he will learn the words of the mountains.”

The mother bowed her head.

“If you take him, Lama-la, teach him to remember me, not by face, but by the smoke of juniper.”

The lama nodded and took Nandare to Jiri, where he grew into a wise and kind man. From his line, it is said, came the Nan Jirel clan, children of a Sunuwar father and a Sherpa mother, mountain-born, wind-named, and forever tied to the scent of juniper smoke.