The Himalayas!!

So here I am in rural Nepal, lying around waiting for the lights to come on. The government can't give the population electricity (because it's selling it to China), but it does generously publish a timetable (yes, there's an app for that) to tell them which 8 hours of the day they won't be able to do anything much....and then never sticks to the timetable!! 

I can see why so many international development campaigns focus on electricity, because it's just so hard to grow an economy without it.  Almost all the business' around here do things that don't need it; in the village I was staying in last month there was one shoe-maker and two tailors (all using the Singer treadle machines)...but the nearest internet cafe was 20 minutes away by bus! 

 I went to get some photos printed in Kathmandu last week and the owner of the store told me I could come back to pick them up in three hours, when the electricity came on! Imagine trying to run a business like that.

I spent a couple of weeks staying on the outskirts of Kathmandu and met some lovely people there. I ended up doing a visit to the local school with the girl in this photo and sitting in on a Nepali history class. It was all very raucaus; the class consisted of one student reading out loud from a textbook for 20 minutes while everyone else (including the teacher) talked over the top of her! 

After that, I went to stay for a few weeks at a homestay at the top of this hill and did some marketing for the owner.

The name of his guesthouse is pretty much a textbook example of what NOT to name your business when you have just a cold-water tap in the bathroom along with a very dirty bucket (like the one in this photo but much, much dirtier) which have to multitask as shower, toilet flusher, sink and toilet paper!! (Don't think too much about that last one.)

I think the Nepalese invented the concept of layering!

The name of the homestay is "Village Vil!a Chambre  d'Hote. I don't know what French nong came up with this ridiculous 5 star hotel name.  The last word, which you'd think would be "hotel" actually means breakfast in French! 

The homestay

I tried to explain to Dhruba, the owner, that apart from this being a name that no non-French speaker would ever remember, it was also misleading, because French words are used in English when we want to make a product sound luxurious. So, even though non-French-speakers wouldn't understand the words they were reading, it would signify "expensive," and turn off budget travellers! Unless he was going to call the place "Dirty Bucket Homestay" I actually can't think of a worse name.

With Karo, a volunteer from NZ

Anyway, as you can imagine, my suggestion to shorten the name to "Village Villa Homestay" was met with a lukewarm reception. Fair enough...it's a big ask, and I fully expected he would say no.  People are very attached to the name of their business, and also, he couldn't see what I was saying about French names being posh.

 So, no name shortening, but I did help out with bringing more volunteers to stay at his place. (They are helping on his farm and also in the village, which was affected by the earthquake). When I arrived the first time I was the only guest...and a few days ago he rang in a bit of a panic to say there were eleven people staying there (in three rooms!!). If I was still there I'd be holed up in one room like the neurotic sleep-Nazi I am, and 5.5 people would be in each of the other two, so I think he was pretty glad I was gone!

Here are a couple of village photos. 

View from the homestay

They are drying the corn to make flour from it.

The pace of life here probably hasn't changed much in hundreds of years. Apart from in the guest bathroom, there is no running water in the house; all the water is collected at the communal well, which also functions as a shower and laundry. There's no sink or even benches in the kitchen...all the cooking is done on the floor, and the dishes are done outside (with chickens taking advantage of the food scraps!).

This is Minuka, Dhruba's wife, using this cool curved knife that you hold down with your foot. 

Minuka with curved foot-knife

I went to a puja with the women of the family. A puja is kind of a Hindu gathering and this one was to celebrate the end of Taaj, a festival where women fast and pray for three days for a long life...for their husband!! (Insert feminist side-eye emoji).

About two weeks agoI left that village and came to a town called Dhulikel, which is 2 hours from Kathmandu, and famous for its vistas of the Himalayas. They are really stunning, but difficult to capture in a photo. Sometimes you only see the tops of the mountains, and they look like they are floating across the sky above the clouds. Some photos from here: 

View from my room in the first place I stayed in here.

I really like the place I'm at now. The people who run the guesthouse are from a village about 3 hours from here (1.5 hours by bus and 1.5 hours walking). They have a school there which was set up to educate girls for free, because they often weren't being sent to school. (There's a traditional here of not educating girls, because once they marry they belong to the husband's family so won't be of any economic benefit to their parents.) 

Nani getting me ready for winter!!

Nani, who used to teach at the school and now runs my guesthouse, want more volunteers, so I've been putting the on different volunteering websites. They've only been on them for a few days, and we've already had four queries from people interested in coming, so that's a good sign. The village was affected terribly by the earthquake; about 70% of people are living in corrugated iron shelters, waiting for rebuilding of houses to start. There's one US volunteer who wants to come who is a structural engineer, which would be really handy. 

I'm hoping to go up to the village next week, but India is pissed off with Nepal at the moment so is blocking all imports  at the border...so there is no petrol available, and I might not be going anywhere (along with the rest of the country). 

Check out this home-made dog collar...it is to stop leopards attacking the dog!!

Bonus crazy goat photo!!