At five years old, Tanka Sapkota began walking 45 minutes to school.
There were no cars waiting for him, no easy shortcuts. School was simply another part of a childhood spent working.
Before and after classes, he and his siblings worked in the fields. At 11 or 12, he was raising chickens. A little later, he began keeping goats. During Maghe Sankranti fairs, he sold lemons.
At 13, he helped dig an irrigation canal from Thuldhunga to Pokhari, about a kilometre away, to bring water to his village.
It was a childhood shaped by necessity.
More than four decades later, the 51-year-old Sapkota has built a very different life.
He lives in Portugal, where he has become a prominent name in Italian cuisine. His four restaurants attract political leaders, footballers, artists and other international visitors. His cooking has earned international awards, while his experiments with pizza, gold ovens and truffles have made him a distinctive figure in Portugal’s food scene.
Yet Sapkota still traces much of what he has achieved back to those early years in Baglung.
“We worked in the fields from morning to evening while continuing our studies,” he recalls. “Life taught me to work hard and keep working.”
