Parallel to the bloodshed that has killed 10,000 people since 1996, a low-tech psychological war is ravaging Nepal as both the leftist guerrillas and military try to convince the lawless country they are in charge.
It is the war of perceptions that cost the cash-strapped country millions of dollars earlier this month when the Maoists, who enjoy free rein over much of the countryside, declared a blockade around the capital Kathmandu for a week, triggering panic.
At the country home here built by Bharat Dhaital, the Himalayan kingdom's former ambassador to Japan, a pet peacock remains in a coop next to the chickens.
However, it is not his family, but rather uneducated farmers who live on the estate.
Behind an intricately carved wooden door, the thatched chairs have been pushed aside to make room for a heap of grain the peasants have piled inside.
Several years ago the Maoists, who say they are fighting landowners on behalf of Nepal's impoverished majority, padlocked the gate. The Dhaital family called the police, who broke the lock.
A sickle in his hand and his blue T-shirt soiled from farmwork, Uma Kant Dhakal, who lives here with his wife and four children, said the Maoists gave the home to them.
Dhakal was landless and indebted when Dhaital hired his family to take care of his land. He said the Maoists expelled Dhaital and told him the land was his.
"Dr Dhaital was a kind man, but I don't feel sorry. They (Dhaital's family) can live in Kathmandu, they can live abroad, but what about us?" asked Dhakal, 53.
Looking out on another set of hills in Kathmandu, 150 kilometers (90 miles) east of here, on his rooftop spruced up with potted plants, the ambassador's son, Benoj Dhaital, said the house in the Gorkha district remained his family's.
His father died in a traffic accident after the incident with the Maoists, he said. Dhaital said his young family and his brother still occasionally visited the country house - a fact confirmed by Dhakal.
"We usually go in the morning and come back at night. There's no point taking a chance," said Dhaital, who added that his last visit to the villa was "about two months ago" before a trip to the United States.
"They might have the idea that they're in control. But we go there, we can open the door and we have a telephone there," Dhaital said.
A telephone as proof of ownership is unlikely to impress the Maoists, who have vowed to eradicate perceived "class enemies" in their strongholds.
The rebels, who want to abolish the monarchy, have said they took over the country home of a former pro-royal prime minister, Surya Bahadur Thapa, and distributed the land to the poor.
But much is opaque in the Maoist conflict.
The army has claimed to have inflicted triple-digit casualties on the rebels in a number of gunbattles, after which few bodies are ever recovered. And the Maoists claim to have established a de facto state in the mountains, although by independent accounts this peasant paradise consists of little more than leftist banners and kangaroo courts.
The war of perceptions dramatically escalated in the blockade of Kathmandu, in which the Maoists - armed chiefly with a press release - persuaded many truck drivers not to enter or leave the city of 1.5 million, sending food prices soaring.
"When the government is ineffective, even if you don't see Maoists anywhere they can spread rumours that make people afraid," said Lok Raj Baral, a political scientist at Kathmandu's Tribhuvan University.
Fellow professor Kapil Shrestha agreed that perceptions were crucial in the war in the country of Mount Everest, which has a limited communication and transport infrastructure.
"A big part of the conflict is psychological," Shrestha said. "The Maoists in particular have tried to exaggerate the perception of their strength in order to become even stronger."
Perhaps expectedly, the parties to the dispute over the villa hold highly partisan views of the insurgency.
Dhakal's wife, Durga Devi Dhakal, said she was so thankful to the Maoists she wanted her children to join their "People's Liberation Army" when they grew up.
"Back in our home village, some foreign tourists came once and gave clothes, but no one else did anything for the poor until the Maoists," she said.
"We would all wait for the Maoists to loot somewhere. We were happy when we heard there was an attack, because that meant we would all get something," she said.
But Benoj Daital, who runs a non-governmental organisation in Kathmandu that researches societal problems, has little sympathy for the rebels.
"The Maoists are formed by people with little education who come from poverty and want to get rich. But they are angry at the rich so they target the wealthy," he said.
"In words they say they're trying to help the poor. But they're destroying buildings and shutting down schools. It's survival of the fittest."