Though she lives in Van Nuys, her heart is in the Himalayas

Joyce Tapper has an affair of the heart with Nepal. She loves many things about the country, including the way people greet each other in the street by touching their palms together and saying namaste.

“It means ‘the god in me reflects the god in you,’ ” Tapper says. “In Katmandu, people ‘namaste’ left and right.”

Spending the afternoon with Tapper, as I did recently, is almost as good as visiting Nepal, which the State Department discourages because of an increasingly violent guerrilla war waged by Maoist rebels. Tapper, a retiree in her 60s who lives in Van Nuys, has visited Nepal seven times since 1990 and is active in the America-Nepal Society of Southern California, which supports the people and culture.

Like many who keep returning to the tiny, troubled Himalayan nation, Tapper has made dear friends there, paid to put Nepali children through school, collected the country’s arts and crafts, and studied its religions.

We met at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, where she guided me through “Visions of Enlightenment: Understanding the Art of Buddhism,” a special exhibit with paintings (called thangkas), mandalas, prayer beads and statues from all over the Buddhist world, including Nepal. Though Tapper insists she is not an expert on Buddhist art, she brought the exhibit alive for me by relating the objects in it to her travels in Nepal.

Looking at a prayer wheel, which devotees use to send prayers to the deities without actually reciting the words, she recalled meeting the father of a Nepalese friend who was masterfully multi-tasking by watching a Hindi movie on a big-screen TV while turning his wheel. A small, pagoda-shaped sculpture known as a stupa reminded her of Boudhanath, a huge landmark Buddhist stupa in Katmandu, which, as one of the last things she sees when leaving Nepal by plane, brings tears to her eyes.

“I know about 50 people who went to Nepal and never left,” Tapper told me later in the museum’s Chinese courtyard.

She meant it figuratively; in a sense, she never left. On her first visit, in 1990, Tapper went trekking in the Khumbu region, a standard tourist adventure that was, for her, an overwhelming experience. She loved the mountains, of course, and the people -- their sense of humor, strong families and ability to be happy without American-style luxuries.

She also felt compelled to try to help the Nepalese, a common urge among visitors, who often set up funds to educate children they meet in Nepal. “It’s very easy to be tremendously charitable. Twenty dollars can make a big difference in a person’s life there,” Tapper says.

At a hotel in the town of Namche Bazaar, she saw a 7-year-old servant girl carrying a heavy tray up narrow steps and tried to help her. But the inn’s owner wouldn’t hear of it; Tapper was a guest, the girl a menial meant for heavy lifting. When Tapper learned that the child could not afford to go to school, she set up a bank account in Nepal to finance her education, which cost just $15 a month. “At home I dreamed of this little girl, feeling I was doing something wonderful,” Tapper says.

Later she learned the girl never benefited because the money was stolen. After that, Tapper gave through established charities, though she and a group of friends who went trekking there recently are putting the sister of their Sherpa guide through nursing school.

After touring the Buddhist art exhibit, Tapper and I went to the Tibet/Nepal House, a Pasadena restaurant, where we ate momos, or dumplings, and a goat meat stew. “It’s Dasain holiday time in Nepal now, when every family has a goat to sacrifice,” she told me. “So it’s a good time to be eating goat.”

I asked about her last visit to Nepal, in the fall of 2001. She and friends went on another trek, despite the political unrest. They had no problem, and the trails were almost empty, Tapper says. Still, she acknowledges that the situation in Nepal frightens her. “A lot of people e-mail me about whether to go trekking,” she says. “I wouldn’t suggest it. But a lot of people are going anyway.”

Earlier this year Tapper and her husband, Larry, went to Europe. The widely traveled couple had been there before; this time they visited Ireland and Iceland and loved both. “But going to Europe is no stretch,” she says. “There’s no mystery about how people think there. In Nepal people think differently.”

The couple is planning a trip to Cambodia and Vietnam in December. Tapper wants to see Angkor Wat but has an ulterior motive. When they get to Bangkok, they will phone friends in Nepal. If things seem calm, they will go to Katmandu, although not trekking in the countryside, where the rebels are most active.

“I just don’t want to go to Asia and not go to Katmandu,” she says.

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Pacific Asia Museum, 46 N. Los Robles Ave., Pasadena; (626) 449-2742, www.pacificasiamuseum.org. “Visions of Enlightenment: Understanding the Art of Buddhism” is on display until Jan. 12.

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Tibet/Nepal House, 36 E. Holly St., Pasadena; (626) 585-9955.