A new shop on Main Street is redolent of an older Ann Arbor many people hold dear, whether it is the Ann Arbor of 1970s head shops or of the 1990s Jewel Heart: incense, singing bowls, silver jewelry, scarves, and other textiles.
“I want to either take you around the world or bring the world around to you,” says Heather O’Neal, one of the owners of the Himalayan Bazaar, who also runs trekking tours to Nepal, her favorite country in the world.
The Himalayan Bazaar isn’t exactly new. It has existed for a number of years in the garage of O’Neal’s small west side home, where she periodically staged exotic yard sales. Guests at her whimsical Eighth Street Trekkers Lodge Bed and Breakfast (i.e., that same west side home) also liked her merchandise. But in the last few years she’s acquired a dog, a husband, and a baby, and things were getting crowded. With her business partner, Pem Dorjee Sherpa, she made the leap to Main Street. The store will also function as the office for O’Neal’s tour business, Of Global Interest, and she hopes to host slideshows and lectures (“virtual treks”) there.
The Himalayan Bazaar is also a story about a deep cross-cultural friendship. O’Neal fell in love with Nepal in the late 1980s during her junior year abroad. She managed to return ten years later and decided that she could never again be away so long. She had a good feeling about the Sherpa guide who helped her reach Everest base camp. (She’s not a climber, but Everest base camp, at 17,000 feet, is a destination in its own right.) So she started her trekking business, and hired him.
Pem Dorjee Sherpa (Sherpa denotes an ethnic group, but many Sherpas use it as a surname), was only nineteen when he met O’Neal, spoke no English, and had never seen a city. In the decade that followed, he summited Everest twice; married his wife, Moni, on the summit; became fluent in English; traveled to quite a few cities; and eventually landed in Boulder, Colorado–all while remaining a close friend of O’Neal’s and advisor to her trekking business.
Boulder has a large Nepalese population, and Sherpa integrated easily into the climbing and trekking community, but it was hard to make a living there. “Here’s a two-time Everest climber washing dishes at a Boulder restaurant,” says O’Neal indignantly. So she proposed a new partnership, and Pem, Moni, and their four-year-old daughter, Pelzom, moved here this spring. Among the four of them, they keep the store staffed. The remarkable story of Pem and Moni’s wedding is recounted in several newspaper clippings posted on the wall.
The Himalayan Bazaar, 218 S. Main, 997-7229. Mon.-Sat. 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Sun. noon-7 p.m. thehimalayanbazaar.com.
