Who Will Be a Gurkha

The Gurkhas began soldiering for the British colony in India 200 years ago, following a war in which the Nepalis tested British might in India.
Today’s potential recruits are not rustic hill boys but a new generation of urban based Nepalis with a school or higher education, lured by wages equaling British soldiers now, undergoing grueling tests. Selection also means partaking of the myth and glamour of the Gurkhas, adventure and danger, in spite of the very real prospect of dying in battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq.