Mugu, one of the poorest districts in Nepal, doesn’t have a single football stadium. But it does have a star football player as revered as Argentina’s famous son Lionel Messi – and she happens to be a girl.Sunakali and her team were welcomed home there after winning the women’s national football tournament as if they had won the World Cup in Brazil.
These young women left their mountainous district for the first time to compete in the tournament in Kailali, a journey of hundreds of kilometers. They walked two days to reach the airstrip, and travelled in a plane, rickshaw and bullock cart for the very first time in their lives. There are no direct roads between Kailali and Mugu, and the ones that do exist are in poor condition.