Monastery / Kathmandu

Our last morning teaching the kids was a little sad, I'm going to miss some of them!

Morning lessons finish at 12.00 midday and the guys from the office were due to pick us up after that but they arrived early - 11.30am so we had to finish up our class a bit early. It was so cute, the kids didn't want to finish! At the end of every lesson they sing a song to thank you for the learning they receive during that lesson. We listened to it for the last time then we were on our way. The kids came to the windows of the monastery to wave us off.

Tonight we are spending the night in Kathmandu before we catch the 6.30am bus to Chitwan tomorrow.

It was lovely chilling in the hotel room with no mosquitoes, a TV and a pot of Pringles.

I bought this amazing book in one of the bookshops here - 'Leaving Microsoft to Change The World' - it's about a guy who was fairly high up in Microsoft, who left to set up schools and send books to poor kids in Nepal.

Monastery / Kathmandu

Ad had a bit of a wobbly as he thought some of the monks had taken some of his clothes off the washing line today. All was ok in the end as they had just been moved!

He did start to say that he might like to do a different project for our last week in Nepal however and me and Kris thought this might be a good idea as we could get to try a few volunteer projects rather than just one.

As we were planning to go to Kathmandu today anyway we decided to pop into the office to see Salve and see what else she had available.

Salve had a few options for us but as we had all liked Chitwan we decided we would like to go back there and do some conservation work. BUT only as long as we could stay in the Park Side Hotel again, by this point we all know we couldn't handle a host family stay.

Luckily Park Side could fit us in so we decided to have one more night in the Monastery and one more morning of teaching before we left so that we could say bye to the kids.

Monastery

Saturday today and the kids have lessons until 12.00 midday so we had 3 classes this morning. The kids really are great and they so reading and drawing. Travis went into Kathmandu yesterday and bought a few more reading books so we let them have a look through these. The trouble is they are so eager they are getting through them so quickly and they really need alot more.

Tempo was telling us that the Monastery is nearly entirely funded by overseas investors, seem to be mainly from the US and Spain. They send enough money for the kids to have fruit twice a week and eggs twice a week along side their normal Dal Bhat and Monk Bread.

It breaks your heart to hear them say they have fruit twice a week when we are so used to stuffing down our 5 a day in the UK.

Yet in other areas the Monastery is clearly relatively rich compared with the surrounding villages. In fact there is some beef between the Monks and what they call 'the villagers' as, I guess the villagers see it as unfair that all that money has been spent on the Monastery. Tempo told us it cost $10 million to build and it only officially opened in June last year so still looks relatively new.

After dinner the kids have free time and straight away out came the football. It is amazing how much they love that game and I realised more than ever as I watched them kicking the ball about (with surprising skill) just how similar kids are inside, wherever they are from and even if they are being raised as Monks.

The game got fairly serious and Kris did take a ball to the eye at one point. It looked very painful!

The Monk kids seem to be super fit and spent hours kicking that ball around!

Suman came to visit today to check all was well. Cristina wants to go into Kathmandu tomorrow to try and extend her visa and change her flight so I think we are all going to go along, as it's a Sunday and so there are no classes at the Monastery.

Monastery / Pharping

I finally flipped yesterday and told Ad and Kris that one of them has to swap with me for a class or two.

Actually I did a few classes with them and a few on my own and really enjoyed it! You don't know what you can do until you try and with no lesson plan or anything I found I could teach a group of kids and have fun.

The Monks are so lovely and they really love their English classes. Some of the small one's especially love to draw and the passion of them all seems to be football!

In one of the classes I did on my own earlier the kids said ' teacher is mitro chaa' - meaning teacher is good :-) made me happy to think they liked my classes.

Tonight Tempo took us into Pharping again for dinner. We got the local bus and those things are a nightmare. There is a distinct smell on Nepali buses and I suspect it's BO!

To eat we had something called sharpalap which Tempo recommended and which seemed to be something like a Cornish pasty. They don't eat cow at all here as it's a sacred animal so the meat (shar means meat) was buffalow. They were really tasty.

Again we ended up walking back in the dark but it was quite nice to walk as I was so stuffed after the sharpalap.

Monastery

Worst day ever! I'm so fed up of teaching with Cristina as she never lets me do anything. I hate the bathroom and so much for Tempo telling us we could have it to ourselves, the Monks are constantly in there.

I feel really, really low today and Ad & Kris won't swap with me and do the odd class with Cristina to give me a break.

On the up side, the Monastery dogs are wicked, look at them go.

Monastery

Cristina is starting to try my patience in class. Outside of class we get on great, but when we are teaching she keeps shooting down my idea's and stopping me from teaching the way I would like to. She is a great teacher but I'm here to help to and she needs to give me some space to use some of my idea's.

The bathroom situation is still a nightmare. Cold showers under a tap that at best is a dribble and at worst stops altogether is starting to get to me. Plus I'm drinking almost nothing from the afternoon onwards as I hate using the toilet after dark due to the no light in the bathroom situation. Kristy has resorted to peeing in a bottle and Cristina goes outside.

Evening - Pharping

Travis took us to a roof top resturant that he knew and Cristina and I braved the Nepali toilet. To be fair it is the cleanest I have come across so far and there was even a tap in the room next door that looked like it was used to wash clothes so we could wash our hands. As far as I know washing machines don't exist in Nepal.

The resturant was in fact one set of garden chairs and a table on the roof of a building. The chairs were mostly broken and the place was fairly dirty but we had a nice little atmosphere going on as there was such a large group of us.

Sophie, Jo and Karrem started telling us what they have been up to so far and I really started to realise what a smart guy Kareem is. He's on something like his 4th degree and is over here using his law degree to do some UN type work. He's also really interested in the issues of the countries he visits and really knew alot about the Nepal Government and the many issues Nepali people face.

I had something called Momo's to eat, basically seemed to be like chicken in pasta, was very nice and great to have a change from Dal Bhat!

By the time we finished dinner it was pretty dark and Tempo had warned us not to be outside the Monastery after dark. Apparently there are lots of gorilla gangs in the village and it's not safe to be out there at night. We walked back as quickly as we could but it still took about an hour. Apart from loosing Kareem for a short spell however it was without incident.

08.09.09 - Afternoon - Pharping

We caught a lift on the back of a truck into Pharping this afternoon, me, Kris, Ad, Travis, Cristina, Kareen, Jo and Sophie to get some dinner - not Dal Bhat, yahhhh!

The views around here are amazing! Lots of hills and miles and miles of rice fields. It was a bit hairy on the back of the van as there was so many squashed in and I had to keep a death grip on a bar to stay aboard.

08.09.09 - 12.00 am - Monastery

Our 1st lunch in the Monastery was to set a precedent for all future lunches and dinners. Dal Bhat is the local dish here and they eat it sometimes 3 times a day. Here at the Monastery you eat it twice - at 12 for lunch and at 6 for dinner. Dal Bhat can vary slightly from place to place and although it can be very nice, I was already finding it wearing, having to eat it so often.

Our last class of the day is 2.00pm - 3.30pm and afterwards a few more tourists turned up at the Monastery to stay for a night - Jo from the US, Sophie from Oz and Kareem from Canada.

08.09.09 - 6.00am - Monastery

Breakfast starts at 6.00am here but I wanted to have a quick shower beforehand.

It was terrible. The whole bathroom smells of pee and we couldn't get the showers to work, instead we had to use a tap and always here the water is cold.

The whole thing put me in a terrible mood and to top it off Tempo hadn't locked the joining door to the Monks dormitories and the risk of Monks coming in was high. To get back to our room from the bathroom you have to walk through a corridor which has a floor of dirt so we must always remember to wear our shoes.

Breakfast is monk bread and very sweet tea. The monk bread comes with butter and jam and tastes really nice. Apparently, Travis was telling us that it's a really simple recipe, just wheat flour and water but it's twice cooked, baked and grilled we think.

Our first class was at 8.00am today and Ad and Kris wanted to do one together so it left me and Cristina to do the other. Cristina was a trooper! Her parents are English teachers back in Spain and she teaches English also on the weekends so she had a real flair for it. She had also bought along a load of worksheets which I was so grateful for as I had no idea what we were going to do and you are given no guidelines, just told to teach what you like!

07.09.09 - Morning - Kathmandu / Monastery

We set off for the Monastery and our new home for the next 2 weeks at a fairly respectable hour today. It takes about an hour in a taxi and things get alot more rural as we climb higher into the mountains.

Our first glimpse of the Monastery is amazing, it's brightly coloured and looks lovely.

We arrive and are met by a guy called Tempo, who is sort of the administrator of the Monastery (not a Monk) and who calls himself a 'jack of all trades'.

Beds are set up for us in a small stone room, there is no other furniture and for the first time we are introduced to really basic accommodation.

We will be sharing a room (Kris & I) with a Spanish girl called Cristina, who is here with the same volunteering organisation as us and arrived on the same day also.

The only other volunteer at the monastery at this time is an American called Travis. He comes down to meet us but seems a bit distracted and doesn't want to leave his class for long so we are left to settle in.

We are told not to walk around with little clothes on and to make sure we take our clothes and change in the bathroom, not walk back to our room in only a towel.

Tempo tells us that one of the bathrooms will be closed off from the Monks and will just be a girls bathroom as all showers etc. are communal.

The first look at the bathroom, which is down the hall from our bedroom, confirms our worst fears - it has a Nepali toilet.

The bathroom situation will be one of the hardest for me. A Nepalese toilet is basically a hole in the floor and as a rule they don't use toilet paper, they use their left hand! then manually 'flush' the toilet by throwing a bucket of water down the hold. AHHHHH!

06.09.09 - 9.00am - Chitwan

Today we are going back to Kathmandu to start our placement. The bus journey will be about 6 hours so most of the day will be taken up with that.

As you drive along (in a tourist bus, much, much nicer than the local buses) it's so easy to remember both what a naturally beautiful and what a poor country Nepal is.

We spend a night back in the hotel in Kathmandu, ready to leave for our placement in the morning.

05.09.09 - Chitwan - 12.00 ish Midday

This was the elephants bath time and we watched the trainers taking them down to the river. Then one of the best things ever happened, they asked us if we wanted to ride them into the river!

It was amazing being on the elephants back while they squirted you with water from their trunks! It was lovely and cooling as it was such a hot day.

Later the elephants led down on their sides and we helped the trainers scrub them with flat stones. The stones looked really harsh but they assured us that the elephants skin was so tough that it wouldn't hurt them

We headed back to the hotel after this for a quick shower and change of clothes. The clothes situation was becoming desperate, as we only had one change with us and we were getting wet far more than we had imagined!

After lunch there was another elephant related activity - the elephant safari. This time the elephants had harnesses on so they could carry 4 tourists plus their trainer.

The safari was amazing but it was much more painful being in an elephant wearing a harness than it was bareback!

We trekked for about 2 hours through the jungle and managed to see a rhino and a deer. Apparently this is a slow day and we didn't get to see any Bengal Tigers (Nepal is the only place you ca see them) but to be honest just being on the elephant was so much fun that I didn't mind.

That night we had a Chinese for dinner! It was the first time in ages that we didn't have Dal Bhat and it was so lovely to have something different.

After dinner there was a culture show in a nearby building which had all kinds of Nepal tribal dancing. The dancing was all done by the men and mainly involved sticks but was so skilful that it was amazing to watch.

At the end of a very long day it was lovely to fall asleep with a fan on!

05.09.09 - 6.00am - Chitwan

Up early again today to do a morning canoe ride down the river. It was amazingly peaceful at that time of the morning and I could see I wasn't the only one feeling sleepy in the boat. We saw another crocodile and lots of varieties of birds, including a peacock (which I hadn't realised could fly!).

After the canoe ride we went to the elephant breeding part of the park. We saw loads more elephants here, including some babies and the first baby twin elephants born in Nepal, who were about 4 months old I think.

The babies were amazing and we fed them some biscuits out of our hands. The trunks were so gentle! They were allowed to roam around loose so you could really play with them.

04.09.09 - 12.00 Midday - Half Way Between Kathmandu & Chitwan

We stop at a shack to do our rafting. We get trussed up in all the gear and our instructor gives us some basic rafting instructions that we can barely hear as his Nepali accent is so strong.

We set off and immediately everything is amazing! We are rafting down a fairly slow river between mountains and the views are fantastic. Occasionally we hit a few rapids which is very exciting and we all get absolutely soaked!! I even enjoy the soakings as it takes the heat out of an otherwise boiling day.

At some points the instructor tells us to jump out of the raft and have a swim. The rapids feel much stronger in the river and its amazing how far from the boat you can float and it was really hard to swim back!

Getting back into the boat would have been a nightmare but the instructors assistant, despite looking a little skinny was surprisingly strong and hauled us back in.

After rafting for a few hours we finish and get back on the road to wait for a local bus to take us on to Chitwan.

The local bus was a revelation. There was no space inside so along with a fellow French and Canadian tourists we jump up on top. As you can see from the pic there is not much in the way of a safety railing and to the right just out of shot is a massive drop down into the river we had been rafting in!

Being on top of a bus, racing along a mountainous dirt track was brilliant but much more painful than you would think! There were a series of bars on top of the bus and you really felt every bump in the road!

At some point it started to rain and they stopped the bus to let us inside. It was rammed with people and I must have spent about an hour standing in the isle facing the wrong way.

Arriving in Chitwan, Suman (our guide) was waiting for us with a 4X4 to take us to the hotel. Chitwan itself appeared to be very poor but we were to stay in the middle of a national park and it was an amazing place! So pretty and with all sorts of wonderful animals around.

The hotel we were to stay in (Park Side) looked lovely from the outside and didn't disappoint inside either. In each room there was one double bed and one single and had its own en-suite and fan!

Kris chose the single bed and so we set about settling in. We didn't have long as we were due to go on a sunset walk within the hour.

The guide took us all over the park and we saw some elephants (Hattie) for the first time. They were amazing and so big, but the guide actually told us that they are smaller than their African counterparts.

The walk ended down by the river and as we watched the sunset we were feet from a sleeping crocodile!

04.09.09 - 6.00am - Kathmandu / Chitwan

Up early today to catch the bus to Chitwan. We are only going there for 3 days so they told us not to take our backpacks and just to pack a change of clothes. This was a bit of a nightmare as I hadn't really bought a bag big enough to live out of for a few days, but I was at least in a better situation than Ad and Kris who had really tiny bags. Literally I think Ad took a pair of swimming trunks and a change of T-shirt.

The bus ride was long but we were taking a break half way through to do some rafting.

03.09.09 - Late Afternoon - Kathmandu

The festival of The Living Goddess was on today and the streets of Kathmandu were rammed. The pic shows just one of many stands that were jam packed with people hoping to get a glimpse of the Goddess.

The Living Goddess is a pretty child picked from the city, always a girl and she is the Goddess until she reaches puberty. After that she's in a bit of a sticky situation, she is given a large dowry for a future husband but no one really wants to marry her as it's considered unlucky to marry a Goddess.

03.09.09 - 10.00am - Kathmandu

This morning we did the monkey temple visit. The monkeys were absolutely brilliant and I saw a mother and baby which was so cute. Another monkey stole a bag of baby clothes off a woman and carried a pair of trousers up a tree!

The temple itself was up an absolutely massive hill and we were sweating and panting by the time we reached the top. The views were amazing though and you could see Kathmandu stretched out below us, as seen in the pic here.

02.09.09 - Kathmandu

The breakfast was very interesting, eggs, toast, salad (!?) and a banana with strong, sweet, black coffee. It was actually very nice.

Our guides took us site seeing today to a temple. For the first time in my life I saw a dead body. They have rituals whereby they wrap their dead in pretty cloths and build a fire besides the river. Once burning the body is placed in the fire and sent from what I can gather but im not 100% on this, they send the body into the river.

There were two 'funerals' going on today and although one body was totally wrapped up, the other had an exposed face. The lady looked peaceful, like she was sleeping and the only sign that she wasn't were the fly's that kept landing on her face.

There were alot of monkeys hanging around the river and the temple area and our guide told us to watch out as they like to steal tourist's cameras. To save my camera and to avoid provoking them therefore I abstained from taking their picture. Opting instead to wait for the monkey temple visit the next day as im told the monkeys there are much friendlier.

Our guide also warned us about looking the religious peeps in the eye. Since all the Nepalese people look the same to me this was a bit tricky but apparently they may curse you if you do. I wasn't sure if he was having us on but to be fair one white clothed dude did shake a stick and hiss at me as I went past. Although it was a bit difficult to know if he was actually hissing at me as I didn't look at him!

01.09.09 - Sometime In The Evening - Kathmandu

We arrived at the hotel fairly latish, after what seemed like a long taxi ride. It was a nice hotel - TV, own bathroom etc but it was soooo warm, it was warm in Kathmandu anyway but especially so in our rooms and the one fan they gave us didn't work.

That said we were pleasantly surprised as we had no idea what kind of places we would be staying in. We went in search of some dinner and this was where we first experienced just how cheap things in this country could be.

I had a curry and the whole thing along with an iced lemon tea came to about a pound! It was really nice as well and there were plenty of veggie options for Kris, probably more than at home in fact.

It was hard to sleep that night as Nepal is nearly 6 ahead of the UK and it was so hot!