To Mary Slusser, it was “never-never” land: an unexplored world where beauty married the mundane. Slusser, a recently arrived wife of an attaché with the U.S State Department, wandered Kathmandu’s streets in awe, dipping in and out of ancient Buddhist monasteries and marveling at her luck in life to be posted in an “open-air museum.”Her love affair with Nepal morphed into a career of scholarship. Slusser became the pre-eminent translator of Nepal to the West, earning the equivalent of a knighthood from the Nepalese monarchy for “outstanding contributions” to the Himalayan mountain...…To Mary Slusser, it was “never-never” land: an unexplored world where beauty married the mundane. Slusser, a recently arrived wife of an attaché with the U.S State Department, wandered Kathmandu’s streets in awe, dipping in and out of ancient Buddhist monasteries and marveling at her luck in life to be posted in an “open-air museum.”Her love affair with Nepal morphed into a career of scholarship. Slusser became the pre-eminent translator of Nepal to the West, earning the equivalent of a knighthood from the Nepalese monarchy for “outstanding contributions” to the Himalayan mountain...WW…