Newsletter

As Nepal’s final national parliamentary election results are confirmed, we’d like to report to you from our project office in Kathmandu. Many of you have accompanied Back to Life’s work for many years and know that Nepal’s history is shaped by great resilience. But this week’s events mark a political shift of a kind we have not experienced in this form before. […]

In the remoteness of the Himalayas, the line between life and death is often as thin as the mountain air itself. That is exactly the line we stand on at Back to Life – every single day. For the women fighting to survive childbirth. And for the babies who need a miracle to live to see their first sunrise. Today I would like to tell you about one such miracle, named Gaurab. […]

Dear friends, warm greetings on the fourth Sunday of Advent. Some life journeys change through a single event – not because it is extraordinary, but because help is missing. Such was the path of Dinesh Bista from the mountains of Mugu in western Nepal. Today I am glad to tell you what becomes possible when support remains reliable. […]

Khushi’s story begins in a remote mountain village in Mugu, in western Nepal. As a small child, she fell against a pot of boiling oil while playing. The burns were devastating: from the chin down, her shoulders, her entire upper body to the waist, and one arm were extensively burned. It is nothing short of a miracle that she survived, for there is no medical care in the mountains. Her mother nursed her alone for weeks, without painkillers or dressings and with no prospect of real healing. […]

I warmly greet you on the last full moon of 2025. Two little girls in the Himalayas – who themselves bear heavenly names, Star and Morning Star – are surely gazing at the bright moonlight today as well. They are on my mind right now. At the start of the 2017 monsoon, Chaiti Rawal gave birth to two tiny girls at the Back to Life birthing center in Gamtha, at over 2,000 m: Tara and Sitara, meaning Star and Morning Star. They were the first twins ever born in one of our birthing centers. […]

Warm greetings on the First Advent, with the powerful words of a man from the mountains of Nepal who has been tested by fate: ‘Today I know there is always a way – when someone believes in you.’ ‘Namaste, Dil dai!’ Bali laughs into the phone. It is a sunny day at 2,300 meters in the mountains of Mugu in western Nepal, where he sits in his little shop surrounded by soap, rice, oil and exercise books, fully in his element. Today is his 40th birthday. […]

Once again, two days of continuous rain at the end of the monsoon have caused dangerous landslides, and the direct route to our project area in eastern Nepal is partly cut off. We set out nonetheless, because we have something big planned for the end of this week. We will reach our destination, the project area in Sindhuli, by a 200 km detour through southern Nepal. We are leaving two days early, because we do not want to disappoint the villagers’ great hopes by postponing the start of the project. […]

Positive news like this from Nepal cannot wait: for 36,500 people in one of the poorest regions of eastern Nepal, medical care is finally becoming a reality. On September 21, 2025 we opened the new Golanjor Hospital – fully equipped and staffed with a large medical team of specialist doctors, midwives, nurses and lab technicians. […]

Far too often I hear and read in the Nepali newspapers of women and girls who lose their lives to Chhaupadi. They freeze to death in huts, die from snakebites or falling rocks, or bleed to death – because during childbirth and menstruation they are banished from the house. All that remains for them is the forest or the filthy cowshed. […]