“This is a place of conscience,” Ram always says of Bardiya.

It’s true.

Bardiya District, located in south western Nepal, just on the border with India, is quiet. People ride bicycles down dirt roads that wind past fields of rice. A group of cows find respite in the shade of a Sal tree. A dog bounds down the road, mountains stretch across the horizon. Everything is draped in soft hues of blue and green.

We’ve settled in quickly. Our first day was spent talking over dal bhat eaten in the garden, stuffing our faces with mangos ripe from the tree, and staying up late playing dhumbal, a popular Nepali card game.

There is peace, community, and joy, both for those who live here and those, like us, that visit. But, if you listen, you can feel the missing.

During the armed conflict, the state targeted Bardiya’s Tharu communities under the assumption that they were associated with Maoists. Over 250 people were disappeared. The loss, longing, and sense of cruel injustice linger, heavy like the hot air.

We drive through a stretch of forest on our way to a meeting. Signs warn of tigers and rhinos, and we gasp at the sight of wild elephants. But these are not the only residents of the national park. As Ram reminds us, this area was occupied by state security forces during the conflict and an enormous number of people are believed to have been disappeared here. The forest knows their stories.

Loss is familiar to me, but not like this. For families of the disappeared, loss brings a grief fraught by hope — one which leaves them waiting in that liminal space defined by longing for truth. This is not a loss that rolls over. Rather, it is one that fuels a quiet determination, anger sharp with love, a fight for justice. More than just its blue mountains or heavy air, Bardiya is a place of resistance.