Bhupi Sherchan, who died in 1989, was probably the most popular and widely read Nepali poet of the previous twenty years. The reasons for his popularity are easily identified: his poems are written in simple Nepali; they address issues crucial to all Nepalis, not just to the educated elite; and they are distinctive for their humor and anger.
Bhupendraman Sherchand was born in 1936 into a wealthy Thakali family of Tukuche, a settlement on the banks of the Kali Gandaki River in the remote district of Mustang. The Thakali are a distinct ethnic group in Nepal, and their cultural orientation is basically Tibetan. Because their main towns and villages are all situated on an historically important trade route leading to Tibet, they have become one of Nepal's most enterprising and prosperous communities and in recent years have sought to distance themselves from Tibetan culture and to identify more closely with the mainstream of Hindu Nepal.