Brunch in Boudhanilkantha

Hello People!
Tapalai Casto Chha?
So, a mixed bag of stories, parties and other eventfulness... lets start from the top.
Pascal left yesterday morning and of course he couldn't finally depart without a final farewell from all his Kathamandu Kronies, old and new. I checked in at a small guesthouse next to the Snowman cafe on Freak street (perfectly situated for a day-after-drinking apple pie and coffee) and met him and a few others in a local mo:mo shack nearby, ordered some tea and after a long long long wait, we drank it... Pascal commented that they must have been inventing it before they could make it :)
The next stop was a lovely Nepali restaurant underneath an Israeli Vegetarian restaurant, where the atmosphere was smokey and asian with posters saying 'Aum sweet Aum' - lol, and dal baat for 100rps - I, however, opted for the buff chilly - with major recurring consequences... My first sick day was yesterday! That buff did not sit well with me, so from now on 1 rule - in a cheap restaurant, stay veggie or deep fried - end of. After an incredibly diverse conversation ranging from hepatitis B to stone henge to necromancy we headed to the shisha bar to catch the weekly live band, and true enough we entered to Billie Jean - it felt good, we felt special! The night was great, with such good people and tasty tasty watermelon shisha and red bull/vodkas. We, again, were kicked out because it was too late (midnight) and made the progressively familiar dusty walk to freak street for a midnight hash spliff to allow the conversation to become retardly funny - who knew you could talk about Spy Kids for half and hour! Needless to say, the morning apple pie was sensational... I am staying there tonight... its saturday and Jazz is calling so me and Yasmin, this lovely chick from the New Jersey are meeting for the Saturday night live jam - it feels like Greek Street up in here, almost home!
Getting back to the title, it is Saturday so the kids have their holiday... I was planning on making a campfire but left it too late to go into the wilderness to cut wood. So as plan B i rocked it over to the only supermarket (in my knowledge) to by the following; bacon, sausages, eggs, tomatoes, baked beans and real ketchup - a full english breakfast for everyone! And their first one at that! :) Of course they all eat with their hands so the baked beans were unsurprisingly comical - its definitely not finger food. But the poor dears have never had an egg cooked in the way we do (not that I eat them) so it took a lot of convincing to get them to trust me that just because the yolk was visible did not mean it was raw! But Anglos - thank what ever lord you have that we have kitchens to cook our high-fat breakfasts in, A full english with one gas hob was possibly the most incredible kitchen experiment since Mohinda Gandhi decided that rice and grain was callous to one's spirituality. I left the children with mutual smiles and shouts of 'Meetochha' (delicious).
I am leaving for my house-father's village, dolhaka, in a week or so. It will be nice to get out of the city and 1 or 2 ks higher into the clouds... I just hope my jacket has been dry cleaned by then - it is taking FOREVER! OOOh speaking of, the dry cleaners is in this real plush hotel near where Im staying ($60/night) and i have allowed myself to be conceived as a guest over the last few days by making appearances to those who matter, receptionists, security guards etc... now i have access to free english newspapers, western toilets, piping hot showers and maybe, just maybe (its in the pipeline) a gym! I don't even use the gym but the idea of a stolen work-out is too lush to pass down!
Ok, better fly, i have to check into the Yellow house ASAP, one big shout of to Gussy - G Hustling - Cross, Such sad news of Rocket, he was a lovely lovely dog and is barking his heart out and chasing all the rabbits of eternity in that big park in the sky, he will be sorely missed. RIP.
X

Just a quickie... i promise :)

Just a super-chilled-ass day in Boudhanilkantha, no town, no nothing, no problem. Pascal left this morning but not before he showed me on the map where I can get some really good and utterly needed cheese in town. He invited me to his leaving dinner and drinks do on Thursday downtown in a late night jazz bar after eating some of the best dal baat in the city (apparently!) I wasn't due to go out till Saturday budget and all, but i will make an accept ion - he was a very nice guy and the friends of his that iv met i liked a lot also.
So after reading for a bit in the morning I decided that a film would be a perfect treat and bought the History Boys for 25rps. Wow, i had forgotten what a great movie it is - a British Dead Poets Society switching suicide with homosexuality :) What else to say....... Ummm iv been eating a hell of a lot of vegetable somosas recently in the neighbourhood, my god are they delicious - they just drop them into a stinkingly large vat of bubbling oil to warm them up and hand them to you in a newspaper and being English i know that the best food comes in newspapers. Crap having spoken about them I will have to go get some more after this, and at 5rps a piece there is no sense in self-restraint!
I got my bike back, awesome. I have grown really tired of the minibuses the last couple of days. In the morning they are fine as i get on at the start of the line, but by the afternoon (or even worse the evening) it is like being in a spicy sardines tin. If anyone has seen the videos of the Tokyo rail guards cramming people onto the subway then you can understand the gist of the buses here! Soooo, Austin (my american friend) has i think left his orphanage. I had a beer and some Thukpa (noodle soup - mitochha!) whith him last night and he has really understandable reasons for leaving. The kids are not as nice as our ones and the conditions they are housed in are crap. The real nail on the head was the Orphanage nanny moving some kids into Austin's room, which as he lives in the Orphanage (which i, thankfully, do not) has entirely robbed him of his personal space... poor dude. Because he felt so bad for leaving but all that he was doing was being constantly asked for money by the kids and the owners - I am very aware how lucky I am that nothing terrible has happened to me like this, Iv heard some really horror stories about RCDP (the NPO i organised this with) and would not recommend them in the slightest. Luckily I don't mind but there has been no communication with me.
But better dash, school's nearly out and i said id take some pictures with the kids to put on their bloodtype cards (a science experiment in school) Toodoolooo X

Rooftop Cafes with wifi - is there a heaven? Surely.

Why hello!
There comes a time in every journal/diary and now blog where I apologize for the lack of attention, but please hear my plee - it has not skipped my mind for one iota, I have merely been battling with the electricity. At the moment it has been coming on almost exclusively when I have been working and not in my free hours, however even the dullest can work out that today this is not the case.
The last few days have been, not in the least, uneventful. On thursday last I was quietly enjoying some Momo's when two girls I met in the first couple of days waltzed in serendipitously and told me that they had been placed in an orphanage just down the road (wowza!) So, yeh, people! They were with their friend, a lovely bloke from Mississippi and the last few days have been surprisingly and enjoyably sociable. We went into town for some chocolate cake the other day and organised an duo-orphanage-merge for the kids day off on Saturday.
We decided that due to us being in Nepal it was silly that we haven't gone for a little trek yet so Saturday was spent in the National park above Kathmandu with our walking boots on and picnic bags in our hands. We took a three hour, there and back trip, to the park's Buddhist monastery with just under 40 kids leading the way. What a lovely day we had, the views from the top (around 8,000 ft or for those Europeans 2.5km up) were obscenely beautiful and thanks to the week's earlier down pour, wonderfully clear. I have pictures and videos that i am trying to upload to today but so far with little success. Needless to say it was incredibly stressful, the kids wanted to go off and pick the rhododendron flowers presently blooming and due to the fact that it is a National park ( a big no no!) we spent a lot of the day chasing children through the overgrowth! After we came back down, we all decided (the chaperones) that a beer or two, or maybe four was in order and being a Saturday, there was nothing stopping us going into town to party Kathmandu style for the night.
We hit a shisha bar in town with the motive of just staying there for some dinner and then finding a dancey place, however this was not what fate had in store for us! In the bar I glimpsed at this girl who after 5 minutes of looking confusingly each other, we realised that we had met before. Maria from Mexico and her cousin Santiago then invited us over to them and the influx of people we had and hadn't already met was amazing. It ended up being an incredibly fun and alcohol filled night, my first one of its kind since landing so funnily 3 beers and a cocktail was enough to get me to my usual 6 beer and 2 cocktail standard ;) hey maybe its the altitude! One other that i met at the bar was the almost legendary Pascal, Pascal volunteered with the kids a few months prior to my arrival and also staying with Rustam and co. like me presently... All i have heard from the kids since arriving is 'when is Pascal coming back' and now i had an answer, the next day. So the last couple of nights I have had a good friend in my room and have been sharing the work with him, much to the kids endless satisfaction. He's very good with them and its a shame he's jetting back to Switzerland on Friday. So yeh, a great few days and I hope I've filled in the blanks somewhat.
Today after dropping the kids off at school I headed back to the house to encounter some rather inconvenient news my next door neighbour whom i have become quite friendly with asked to borrow my bike for a few hours yesterday, yes of course i said. Last night, no bike. This morning, no bike. I began to fear the worst. Fortunately nothing has happened to him, or the bike, well nothing major. He got pulled over by the police and they asked him for his license... no license! So the bike has been impounded and due to this being his second similar offense in a fortnight he has a hefty fine and a court appearance to make. I have been assured however that the bike will be back with me tomorrow, with no personal cost (and a full tank of petrol) Que Sera Sera, or as the Nepalis say.... something I can't at this moment remember... I will get back to you on that one! !! !! :)
My nepali is improving though and now I don't get hassled by shoe shiners/ hash dealers and trekking touts in Thamel, because I can say that I don't want anything and I live here. Its the script thats the bitch but after my first day of tackling it yesterday I can read the devangari vowels, only, but its a working progress. And i love the idea that if I master it I will be able to read Sanskrit and Hindi also. I will keep you all updated as best as I can!
Ok guys, nice chatting with you, the photos are up but not the videos... so check out facebook.
A big shout out to Max Carpanini or Ninibear, well done for getting into Chelsea for your BA (without an interview!) :) :) For the one who next see him, give him a huge fabbri hug :)
X

And then the sun came out :)

Once more the tongue of fortune licks my sack of life: No Rain! It was an actual amazing sight that greeted me this morning when i levied my rested head off my yak wool pillow, the rain had gone, well at least there was no sound of it, but yet it still looked miserable outside. I felt cold and all I could see out the window was grey... wait, all I could see was grey - I couldn't even make out the walls of the front porch - there was no rain because the clouds had come down to apologize for the previous 3 day discrepancies in loveliness. I know to most the idea of 'fog' isn't exactly exciting, but I can assure you - this was fog like none other, you could barely make out your hand in front of your face, needless to say I thought it would be fun to slowly drive my moped around the country roads for a bit, it was very fun :)The clouds of course brought down frightful cold - beri jaroo as they say here and the kids were dressed accordingly. I swear there is something endearingly comical about little children dressed for the cold, almost as wide as they are tall, still no sense of design so scarfs shoved right down their jumpers and of course, the inability to balance due to their new-found weight! I got in early today, so we went to school early and they showed me around the place - I will never get tired of their friend's inquisitive expressions yet with the utmost politeness, its has aways been amusing to me to turn around and fix my gaze in another direction to which anyone in that line of view also changes the gaze, subtle - yes for one alone, but for 200 kids? No! I dropped off the children and walked back over to pick up my bike and head home for some needed Dal Baat. By this time the cloud had ascended (by the look of it to tarnish the smoggy city south, not that it needs any less visibility!) and the sun, my old friend, smiled down on the valley... I believe that one truly forgets the feel of the UV rays on the back of the neck given 2 days of heavy rain, at least i do, and it was a welcoming remembrance!
So the day has been lazy, with no Thamel meetings or motorbikings, but these days are always the finest. I am planning, once finished blabbering, to visit my neighbourhood temples on the hills. There is the famous 'lying Vishnu' temple very near here, and after that its a short hope to visit the local Buddhist Monestry which is a beautiful sight on the hill side horizon and I am glad I am finally going!
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank those reading - i didn't think i would receive this many views and it is a pleasure to talk to all of you :)

Ok where was I?...

Alas the rain has not retreated... I ran over to the bus stop outside the house to get into town as this is my day off and I am not going to let a little H2O get in the way of it! The Funky Buddha is my salvation today, with a cosy inside area and a health juice on the way; ginger, coriander and Pineapple... it is supposably an aphrodisiac but we will have to see besides its not something I am in massive need of right now :) but the ingredients sounded tasty and now it is here I can confirm that it is truly tasty.
Aha, after checking the book of faces I have found out that I will meet with Rosie today at 3pm outside the Kathmandu guesthouse, exciting stuff! So they day of no plans but squelching has breathed the kiss of life and became a prosperous outing, no matter how many items i own becomes much more absorbent than the toilet paper available... maybe that's an idea.
After the electricity dissipated into the foggy night I cotched a little at the local bar/restaurant for a beer and a quite read (very english) but there were different plans in store for me. Just after I ordered a white couple entered the restaurant and sat behind me, we got talking and I got to know my neighbours over a couple of beers and a plate of momos. Lovely couple of social scientists from Scotland (Wayne) and The States (Charlotte) who have been living in Boudhanilkantha for 16 months teaching university level students the skill of transferring the basic English taught here into cognitive political and social English... Needless to say, it is a very tough job. I think I did mention the levels of English being taught here and just how truly terrible it is presented, so last night I picked their brains to find out why. The reason is just the depleting social level involved in the heart of this country... and its not getting better, its getting worse. An Neplali English teacher is considered the least intelligent of all teachers at a school, they are the dunce and that is why they teach english... and most do not even have a proper grasp of the language they are there to teach. This has led to an infatuation in passing examinations with or without permanent knowledge. Charlotte told me of situations she has been in where a student has asked her what the phrase 'Miss may I come in?' actually means, apparently all they know is that is what they say when they are waiting outside the classroom and the response is to allow them in, but why is beyond most, and even more keep quite about this. I have experienced hugely similar things, for example a very sweet girl at the age of 6 or 7 called Sarita yesterday finished her homework... It read 'list 5 words beginning with 'Y' so she had written, 'Yes', 'Yak', 'Yellow', 'Yesterday' and 'You'. Very Good Sarita! But then I asked her, 'Ok Sarita, can you tell me 5 words that begin with the letter 'Y'?' The poor girl didn't even know what the letter 'Y' was, and when I wrote down the letter or a piece of paper and asked her again... absolutely no idea, and she had just written the words down 3 times. !!!! Arggggg! This is a hard place to first try my hand at teaching that's for sure... but i spent half an hour with her and this problem and by the end she did know these words and also 5 words beginning with X (including the improper words such as Xmas tree and eXtremely' so that was good, but she is 6 or so, it isn't too late for her to learn, however it is for most or at least it will be incredibly hard for both them and the teacher. Apparently kids in Nepali school pick up dyslexic habits from their teachers by shape memory - i.e. due to the alien alphabet they begin to learn the shape of the word and not the actual word... very wrong but its seems common place even in the private schools in which subjects are taught 'through the English medium' which will inevitably lead on to what the 16yr old girl living in the house I am, Bulsha. Bulsha is studying Information Technology at College and yesterday confided in my with tears and stresses that she has 2 weeks to finish this big final assignment and... she cannot even type. !!!! Oh my sweet Jesus, Buddha, Vishnu, Mary, Allah. 1 year out of 2 into her International diploma that could potentially bring her to England or the states to study above someone who just didn't get quite enough As in their GSCEs or was one mark behind a B in one of their A-levels to study IT, without any knowledge or experience with a computer. There is nothing that is not outrageous about this, I have decided to tutor her (and not just do her work for her which i believe she wanted the result to be!) and to actually produce a creditable piece of work, if not to help her pass (as the pass-rate in Nepal is apparently fiendishly low and with markers with little english marking an English medium exam, well you can see where I'm going) but to give her a little pride of a good job done, something I can almost bet, that at 16, she has never had. We shall see...

Was clean, rain came, now dirty, children came.

Rain Rain Rain, Hail. Almost the entire account of the day, very miserable and cold, the mountains are now nowhere to be seen and flash floods are proceeding to gallop down the steep, mountain roads leading to extremely non-moped friendly conditions :(
I am not bothered though, It was getting extremely muggy in the valley so the silver lining turned out to be the cloud itself and anyway I have taken to walking to the project before my afternoon shift. This way i can stay with the kids after dark (and also get a beer on the way home :) !
But life did exist today before the rain, I went to one of my Nepali friends, Subas' college this morning to meet with him and his friends... we had a couple of coffees and played some cricket - suprisingly I didn't completely suck at it! Then the rain started..... rain stops play, so we jumped on the bikes and headed home in the tropical rain/hail storm. I now would like to make a affadavit to the world; I fully understand why the car is a more practical thing that a motorbike, i fully understand this.
Apparentlty I am entitled to a free day soon (well technically since its volunteer work I am entitled to all free days but that wouldnt be as special!) so I think I might take that either today or tomorrow - Rosie Barnes is living on the opposite side of the Kathmandu valley and there is talk of us converging in the middle somewhere for a chin-wag english style, so we'll see if that happens anytime soon - would be great to see her, a friendly face would be the wrong phrase as everyone is so friendly here even Rosie will find it hard pushed to display a friendlier grin, my smiling muscles are getting a real work-out out here, completely serious; i have already split my top lip just by smiling too much! Luckily I realised that the reason I have been grinning like a indifferent simpleton so much before was the language barrier... The nepali people are taught english at a very young age extensively, all of them. However due to the method of teaching in place here (crap) most non-college graduates (most) nepalis have an extensive vocabulary but with no grammar and structure behind it, so conversation is bear and always will be (in English anyway) but pointing and shouting at things is extensive! So I have maturely started learning the lingo and it is going well, I can be understood in a lot of requests now and due to the crappiness of their English accent i do not feel any shame in regards to my evidently poor Nepali accent.


Oh no the electricity is about to die, will finish this asap!
Big love to mark thompson and harry williams, thanks for the message love u both. even a surfer :)

Turns out Nepalis Like To Party...

Once more, back in Thamel.... It's by no way my favourite place in the world but I am a sucker for free Wifi, and green tea :)
Yesterday was a great day, Saturday is the day the kids get off from school so i spent from 8 till 6 at the orphanage although we all sneaked out for some Momos and a beer when the kids where watching a movie! It was the American girl's last day yesterday so we went to the supermarket and bought pancake material. You should have seen what flour, eggs, milk and maple syrup do to children - it was chaotic, like 20 kids in the kitchen taking it in turns to flip the pancakes which of course resulted in the biggest mess since the concord accident! But it knackered them out (pancakes do that!) and they had a great day. So did I.
I'm actually recovering from quite a night... It was a boys night as the kids and the House mother were at one of the valley's weekly Hindu mash-ups! So for the first time I got to know the house father... it appears to be the same everywhere, the woman of the house leaves and the man of the house is lost in how to cook, we settled for some scrumptious instant noodles. To pay back his generosity in some way I offered him some of my scotch and we moved into the family room (all new to me) and sat cross legged on the carpet chatting and discussing the future of the orphanage. It looks bleak, due to the Maoist majority in the government there is no public funding for any orphanage, it has been built and maintained from 30 kids in two rooms to 20 in a house - this has only been possible due to the donations of volunteers who work there and a family tea shop in Thamel. The sad thing is that most of the volunteers do not even correspond after leaving the orphanage, let alone donate. For one child to go to school for a year here costs around £70 and it is tragic that even this seems unaffordable. I was shown the paper work for each child I know and love, and it broke my heart... Orphan, abandoned, dead father, helpless, lower caste. The latter seemed to be the best out of all the monstrosities. I wish I knew how to help them, but it appears to now be out of everyone's hands... some kids will have to go back home to helpless families, other lucky ones adopted by either Connor or another orphanage which is yet to present itself.
I think all of us are faithful to the same ideology; these children have possibly faced more suffering in their short years on this planet than most do in their lifetimes, so it is crucial we can provide them with the happiness that comes so easy to many kids but I tell you, the children don't seem damaged, they seem wonderfully happy but I know this is because they are wonderfully ignorant of all that is going on behind the scenes. To be honest I am surprised to know all of this so soon, I know they want a donation from me - they haven't asked but I know, I am white so that apparently means I am rich, I wish that were true. But I will actually keep up correspondence and I know that if any extra cash comes my way, they can share this.
So it was a strange talk, which was interrupted by the three next door neighbour brothers who came over for a drink, very funny guys, aged 17, 21 and 24. The eldest is a vice principal at a local school, the others are at school and college. They also enjoyed my whiskey! So much so that they brought over some Nepali 'wine'. This is why I am hungover, I didn't even get that drunk - it was just brutal moonshine. It kinda tastes like Saki but watered down, which for those who have tried saki isn't great as saki tastes pretty watery anyway! But it would have been rude not to accept their generosity and like in so many other asian cultures it is rude to fill your own glass, someone else must do it for you! So yeh, felt like I was going to die this morning! But it felt so nice to be not only given hospitality but also included in a local saturday night... I was the centre of attention as I was the first foreigner the brothers had ever talked to, so there was a lot to ask! 'In england can you marry a girl from any religion?' 'In england when do your movies come out?' 'You like Pink floyd!!!?? (YES!)' but also 'You like avril lavine?' ( I couldn't lie about that one!). Truth be told I feel that each day in this incredibly strange country brings me new light on the human conditions, be it poor or rich, sick or well, educated or illiterate - we are all the same, except for the Avril Lavine bit.

Oh My Buddha- Cold Beer!

So its 11:50am my time and I found cold beer, find me the man who would wait till the appropriate time to drink this little gift from heaven! The beer here is actually pretty good - unsurprisingly its lager and unsurprisingly its called 'Everest'! It only seems to come in 650ml bottles, but I am not complaining - my first drink in days.
No need to guess - I am in Thamel (my original stay-place) for the day. Now i have transport its just a short half an hour jump to the narrow and noisy roads of the tourist centre. Mission for today: 1. Find a cold beer (done!), 2. Eat something besides Dal Baat (Ordered Pork Rollishpan - on its way!) 3. Find a nice hotel owner/ guest who can let me use a shower. Yes its been 4 days now since my last, Really not my fault as not only have we not had hot water at ma casa the last few days, there has also been no running water and apparently the owner of the house (and the orphanage) has run out of money! Seriously, I am told I may be the last volunteer at the orphanage as it probably has to close down within next 3 months. Super sad as the kids are pretty much like a family so it will be such a shame to see them all split up like this. But everything (even in Asia) comes down to economics and there just ain't any. Connor (have I mentioned him?) since he now has property out here is going to start his own orphanage down the road and take 5 or 6 of the kids, the most needy ones. Some do have parents and still see those parents but have been sent to stay with us so that they can go to school as otherwise the parents could not provide the means to send them themselves. So the few actual orphans will be taken by Connor. Connor is a real sweet American guy who has been living out here for 14 months now, he speaks great Nepali and hopefully he can teach me some as although I try, I seem to get more giggles from the kids than responses! So anyway Connor has effectively moved here for the next few years and since he is rather sick of teaching and the urgency of the problem, he very well may step up to the challenge. Upmost Respect.
Each day with the kids brings me new acceptance - a lot of the kids will hug and love anything that moves but some are really shy :) These are the kids I have to crack a little. Yesterday I brought in my binoculars and they were amazed! I have pictures now on facebook of the line they formed to use them, i taught them how to say binoculars and the whole afternoon was flooded with yells of 'Brother, it is my turn with the 'banocula', Yes?' 'Have you finished your homework?' 'Yes'.... 'Have u really?'....'No' etc... I spent a lot of the afternoon doing art with the girls in their rooms, they loved the felt tips I brought over for them and we spent a couple of hours drawing the mountains and the orphanage below with us standing outside with the word 'happy' drawn all over the page... Im sure most have guessed that it doesn't take a huge amount to make these kids smile, I think western kids could take a lesson or two from our ones. They are, of course, obsessed with my mobile and my sunglasses and sure enough a pecking order for both has been put in place... only when the homework is finished!

Have found Internet :)

Hello,
thanks all for reading,
As this is the first day with internet for days i would like to make a few amendments to the last entry.. I have spent a few days since chatting to various other travelers and volunteers and have found out that my cheeky tourguide rava didnt really know anything. The square was made in the 17th/18th century and to receive a blessing in her courtyard is not a special thing needing to have connections. I felt like a dumbass when i found out! But all the same it was pretty cool, but i wont ever be taking a tour of anything ever again.
Its now my third day living out of the city in the north eastern part of the valley, the mountains tops are gone, dwarfed by the preceding hills - which by my standards are still mountains but are '1day trek' to the locals. Everything is so much more chilled out here, there are no taughts of any sort and the only people approaching u are those who are generally interested as to what I am doing here... im sure it does seem to be a weird place to stay. For anyone who has been here, im close to the Vishnu temple and the washer river. Im staying with a host family who are growing on me, the adults cannot speak english and im still limited to three of four things so i dont even know there names... i just smile and make polite hand gestures and we seem to get on. The kids of the host mother do speak english and have made this two month prospect appear optimistic, Bashla is 16 and she speaks almost perfect english, she goes to college at 4:30am and when she comes back is straight to doing everything around the house to do without acceptance of any tried help! So unsuprsingly i dont see her that much. The other kid is 11 year old and I call him chief, his real name is Ayush. He loves my laptop, my phone and my guitar and especially the cheap little scooter i hired yesterday, at $3/day, so a piece of crap but it goes, and fast enough to catch up with the crazy super bikes everyone seems to have as the traffic is max 30 anywhere, there are just too many people/cows/chickens and children in the road.
Yesterday was the first day i had at the project, I met the kids in the early morning to meet them and help them walk to school. From the first hour I was intrigued by them and by the time it came to my second shift 3:30 till dark, i was smitten. It will be really hard to learn all their names, a Chinese/American volunteer who is leaving in a couple of days told me it took her around a month, i think i may be able to do it a little faster as i have given a few of them nicknames (usually the little ones who dont really mind what the hell u call them) but a few real names have stuck, and of course they are all super cute. They all call me 'brother' and demand loads of attention, but iv got all the time in world out here so i can give it to them.
The food has been great, although iv only eaten meat twice since i got here, but the curries and dal make up for it. I can eat with a spoon like Ayush but the rest of the house chose their hands, they do have quite a knack for this but i think when i saw that Ayush used a spoon, i gratefully followed. Its not just Dal Baat here in Nepal, i have found amazing inter-meal thingies... Momos for a start, veg or meat steamed dumplings with a hot curry sauce covering them - the Tibetan ones are on another level as they also fry them. Crispy noodles and poprice curries and The bakery stuff here is awesome,no bread for my marmite :( but nepali doughnuts and cakes are a pretty good break to the Dal Baat monopoly. Dal Baat is literally rice with lentils and various spices and is eaten at breakfast lunch and dinner... breakfast is usuall about 3 hours after waking though and dinner just before bed. The dinners i guess are the same as in England, families talking, joking and preforming sometimes shouting. The house is very basic, but quite large, there is little to no furniture and of course no mattresses or hot water. Electricity seems to like to die its daily death at around 6 or 7 in this corner of the valley but i am enjoying the candles, i have made my room real homely and am not living out of a backpack for the moment, fantastic.I cannot not say that i am having the most incredible time, this is the most wonderful country, the people are fantastic (those who are not after ur rupees - but even these people are terribly likeable) and I am settling in... and now i know where i can get internet - next i will try and find a place where i can get some bread! :)

Confidence Trickery and Tour Guides

Ok, am fully in love with this place - i have pictures which i will try and upload later tonight or tomorrow. Already I have met many great people, i have found my Kathmandu Guru - a lovely woman called Helen from Toronto, she has been living here on and off since 2008, a mighty achievement due to the lack of hot water and electricity controlled exclusively by the Indian government - so we are in black out central, but everything seems to tick by.
Today i woke at around 2pm, which i guess is ok as I am still feeling 6 hours behind, so i only got the chance for 4 hours of getting lost... I finally found myself in Durbar Square, built in the 8th Century and housing architecture not only from the Hindu tradition but also from the Baghdad Enlightenment Missionaries, alas no Islamic culture remains albeit one beautiful building made of mud and plaster, still with a prayer tower. As the title suggests I took a tour from a bloke called Rava who showed me everything around including places no other unguided tourist could go, the price $7 for an hour of interest - not exactly expensive but I need to stop thinking in Western finance, so I do believe I was a little hustled especially as the price started at 1500rp ($20). He was very good at it though, with a booklet of recommendations of tourists who he had guided from everywhere in the world with incredible forgeries of stated prices below, I do unfortunately have a respect for tricksters of this nature so allowed myself, just this once to be tricked! Needless to say, I won't be telling Helen about this!

This, unfortunately, was not where the contricks ended - I was literally attacked by two guys dressed as gurus who planted a tilak on my forehead (bare in mind an authentic tilak is done by yourself and not someone else) and tried to charge me 500rp for this service rape. I gave them 100 to be shot of them and left the square with tunnel hearing knowing that they had already told they're mates about me, who pestered me until I escaped into a little shop, then they left me alone. Service raping is epidemic everywhere in Asia, for those not familiar service raping is giving someone something that cannot be given back on the pretense that it is for free/ a gift/ a blessing then demanding money for that gift/blessing and normally adopting a 'no speaky english' when the bartering of how much they will steal off you comes into play!
I did witness, in person, the living goddess of Kathmandu - the kumari who gave me her blessing as Rava knew the priest who looked after her. The kumari is supposably present in a certain little girl. The girl is chosen by meeting the requirement of having 32 perfect characteristics, which as Rava told me includes her forehead, lips, eyes and "punani". She is then the reigning living deity untill the aforementioned 'blossoms into life' then she is sent back to her family, a new kumari is appointed and the ex-goddess teenager is forgotten alongside a myth that any man to marry her will be cursed with bad luck and a loveless life... some say Hinduism is cruel. I left her presence with a sense of sadness of her 'use' in Nepali culture, but an understanding that this is just how things have been done for certainly a thousand years. She does also receive 25% of the entry fee paid by every white/chinese to enter the square so hopefully the erstwhile deity has the sense to leave the country that made and enslaved her in search of a good fortuned, love filled life. I left back towards Thamel with a International football player for Cameron with such topics in debate, who said footballer's don't have brains?
My budget for the day has now been spent so I am back at the guesthouse enjoying an Everest beer and waiting for something else to happen, I doubt I will be waiting long.

Guesthouse Shindigs

As i hoped, everything was ridiculously easy after leaving the airport - although i did have to board the flight I had just left due to my incompetence in whiskey remembrance ( i left it on the plane :(.... but i got it back and am drinking it now :)
I'm staying in Thamel, central tourist Kathmandu in a guesthouse called 'The Pilgrim's Garden' - it lives up to its name ! Tranquil with monkey statues littering the courtyard, needless to say; I haven't left!
I made the same mistake Harry, Max and I made in Japan... I thought I ordered Nepali food for my first meal in Nepal but it turned out to be Indian, they spell 'jalfrezi' differently here! But super cheap and I have plenty of time, and i managed to wham myself facilities with a slightly warm shower - its only going to go down hill from here :)
But for all those back in the gland who are wondering - yes it is hot here. =)

Preliminary Blogging;

Preliminary Blogging;
It has all started! A tidy 8-hour flight for arrival into the smoggiest city on this fair world, landing was strange as we never appeared to be out of the cloud so touching down was a surprise for anyone face against the window. I was greeted into India by another display of gas – the bloke in front of me was either utterly socially unaware or unfortunately ill. As we left the plane so did the contents of his bowels in a lovely wet clap fashion, damp limping preceded this and ‘subtle’ hand gestures to his clearly dedicated wife. Welcome to the country of smell. The limbo of northern India was over before it started and after stocking up on duty-free whiskey and navigating around the walk way conveyer belts I spent the last 10 minutes fighting with a vending machine – never again will I take our currency for granted – at least we have coins, and with over a billion people in India the bills are just as fresh as the air so those things just spit them back out! But after battling with 3 different machines I am feeling refreshed and am writing my first entry before I’ve set up my site, dedication. Now there is little to do but wait, Kathmandu is a mere 90 minutes away and I’m hoping for my first view of the roof of the world before I land and then begin the dusty trail to Thamel - with tuk-tuk confidence trickery all the way I am sure.
Just in: First view of the Himalayas! It hardly seems like we’re up in the air at all, I cannot believe I am seeing these tera firma deities with my own eyes – They are truly beautiful – The trip is already worth every penny. ☺