On the Road

Arrival 

After months of not seeing each other, of messages, emails, broken Skype calls and the rest we finally came back together at the airport in Kathmandu. After some bare essentials such as local sim cards and money exchange we headed out to meet Ramjee- our first host- in Gokarna, our taxi breaking down twice along the way.

Gokarna

Ramjee and his family were extremely welcoming, and their home was in a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains, along a famous river used for cremation rituals. He is a man with fingers in many pies, but is mainly concerned with sustainable development in Nepal, which led to some engaging discussions during our stay.

The mornings were spent walking with Ramjee at 5:30am past a stunning local temple populated by monkeys (mostly on Saturdays, apparently even the monkeys go to temple on their day off), to play badminton with his friends by the river. Jenessa joined in and even managed to win a game by the time we left.

Ramjee took us to see some interesting sites. As well as a huge Krishna festival near the heart of Kathmandu at the largest Krishna temple, we danced with the local Nepalis at their temple, walked through the stunning scenery, and ate dinner with his whole family at his brother’s house. We were sad to leave.

Shankar

Next we moved slightly closer to the city, and stayed with Shankar, a wonderful tour guide and former mountaineer. His home was near Manamaiju, close to the Gongabu New Bus Park which serves not only the whole city but the whole country.

We were treated like royalty whilst staying with Shankar, the food was incredible and the room was bigger and nicer than the majority of hotel rooms we have stayed in. His family were great to be around, and all spoke excellent English (except for Anju, his wife, who we were all in love with by the time we left).

Despite the beauty of the view from Shankar’s house, which overlooked the town on one side and the national park and Monkey Temple on the other, most of our time there was business. We had messages to send, phone-calls to make, and even our trips into Kathmandu were to search for and haggle over tools and materials.

Although we didn’t expect it, we were even sadder to leave Shankar’s than we had been to leave Ramjee’s. But we knew we had to get to Surkhet and start laying the groundwork for the project.

Namaste.