Indra Tamang was a teenage farmer in a Nepalese village without running water or electricity. He barely learned how to write and lived in a straw, mud and stone house with his parents before landing a hotel job in the capital of Kathmandu.
But after befriending a well-to-do hotel patron, the young man started travelling the world, meeting the likes of Andy Warhol, John Lennon and Patti Smith, and living in New York, Paris and the Greek island of Crete.
Almost four decades later, luck struck again: A Manhattan woman bequeathed Mr Tamang her entire estate — including two apartments in the famed Dakota building off Central Park and her Russian surrealist art collection.
After all, for 36 years, Ruth Ford and her brother relied on “Indra darling” — as she often called the now 57-year-old — to tend to their activities on three continents. He was ever present in the apartments he inherited, available around the clock as Ford’s health deteriorated.
She died in August at 98, leaving nothing to her estranged daughter and two grandchildren.
So how does a dirt-poor teenager who speaks only Nepalese turn into a globe-trotting sophisticate — and now, a multimillionaire. He started as a personable waiter whose fine table skills were noticed by a hotel guest — a Mississippi-born writer, photographer and gay cultural activist in his 60s named Charles Henri Ford.
He hired Mr Tamang in 1973, first to get groceries and the mail by bicycle to his Kathmandu house, then to cook too. Eventually, the bohemian artist taught Mr Tamang how to use a camera and made him his photo assistant.
He became a sort of surrogate son — a factotum who lived the adventures of Ford and his entourage.
At one point, Ford, Mr Tamang and a friend rode a Volkswagen minibus from Istanbul to Kathmandu via Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.