Kathmandu, June 14 -- The Kusunda are among the last remaining hunter-gatherer communities left in Nepal, and it has only one fluent speaker left of a language that is not related to any other language group in South Asia.

The Kusunda call themselves the King of the Forests and used to have a nomadic lifestyle till recently. But decades of exclusion from mainstream society and modernity have forced the Kusunda to assimilate.

Today, most Kusunda live across Nepal's mid-hills and western plains, choosing to identify themselves as Thakuri and adopting names like Sen, Shahi, and Khan to avoid ostracisation. Over time, inter-ethnic marriages between the Kusunda and other communities became increasingly common.

However, the assimilation w...