If you ever want to stay in a family home in the hills near Pokhara, please let me know. I will put you in touch with the family we stayed with. It was a wonderful experience. They are are warm, friendly family and the living may be basic but it is clean and healthy, with fresh food that is grown by the family.
My friend, Melissa, and I stayed in Kathmandu for 9 days. We were going to go to Bhaktapur on Friday 12th Feb for a couple of days, but were both too ill to do that; we had eaten something that kept up very close to a toilet for a day or so. We missed seeing Bhaktapur because of this, but might get to see it on another trip to Nepal!
Instead we left Kathmandu early on 17th Feb,to go to Pokhara. It was a cold morning and we were facing a 7 hour bus ride, the roads in Nepal are very bad and that includes the main highways, there are potholes everywhere! The ride was cold and quite draining because of constantly being bounced around. After we arrived we waited for the son of the family that Melissa and I were going to stay with, to turn up. We had chosen to stay in a family home, in a village, in the hills, outside of Pokhara. We were told that there would be no loo paper in the toilet and no hot water for a shower and that there would be an hours bus ride on a very bumpy road, and then a half an hours walk, up a small hill.
The son, was in his mid 20's and he had an air of quiet calm and confidence about him, both Melissa and I liked him at first sight. The families name is Gurung, Nepalese people do not use their first names and I am going to respect that throughout this journal. We went to another bus station and the bus was full to overflowing, I said that I couldn't get into a bus that full and the young man, Saroj, from the agency we were doing the homestay through, said that he was going to go up onto the roof and ride there. Melissa and I both said that we wanted to ride that way as well. After a false start, with the Police making us get down and the bus driving around a corner and waiting for us to catch up, and get back on the roof, we were off. It was a wonderful feeling to be riding on the roof of a bus, even though it was a very bumpy ride, on a single track (not good enough to be called a road). The bus had to back up, several times, if there was another vehicle coming the other way. There always seemed to be bit of road that was a little wider, and the two vehicles could pass, considering there was a hill on one side and a steep drop on the other, they passed within centimeters of each other.
We arrived at the bottom of the hill, and the son showed us where his village was up on the hill. Ha! A half an hour walk!! I didn't, think that I would make it up that far! I have certainly never walked up a hill in my life, let alone that far up a hill! Local people only take half an hour to walk up the hill, with a heavy load on their backs. It took me 2 hours and I was exhausted!
We eventually arrived. We were shown around and brought a cup of sweetened tea, which was very gratefully received. Melissa and I were there to volunteer in the Resource Center, that had only been opened in Dec 09. A French couple and the husband's mother, had stayed for 2 and 1/2 months and had worked very hard, with the son of the family, to get an old store room ready, to be the Center. They had also raised funds prior to their stay and purchased a lot of materials for the children, who attended the local school.
There were 23 families in the village, but the children at the school came from 6 villages, some walking for more than an hour to get to school. The school had about 150 pupils, from 5 years to 16 years of age. They had no resources in the school, only the year book for each subject. No library, nothing!
Needless to say the children loved the resource center; it had books in Nepali and English, jigsaw puzzles, snakes and ladders, a memory card game and materials for drawing with. There were also balls, frisbees etc for use outside on the school grounds. The French couple had put a lot of hard work and thought into the equipment that they would bring with them. More is needed but it was a very good start.
The center is opened before and after school with Saturday being the only full day that the children have of, they also have the Friday afternoon of school.
We stayed on the Wed and Thursday nights and then was told that we could go back to Pokhara for the weekend if we wanted too. Neither of us wanted to climb the hill again, but we were in a bit of a shocked state due to the limited resources of the family. We had been told about the loo etc but that does not really register until you are there and confronted with the reality of what that exactly means. We went to Pokhara for the weekend. The son and his wive, of one year, both of whom spoke some English, came to Pokhara, they did this in order to show us around. They were all very kind and thoughtful people and we enjoyed our stay in the family home immensely.
Our bedroom was above the kitchen, so we were warm, which was a bonus after Kathmandu. The toilet bit did not worry us greatly, bathing from a large bucket with a smaller tin to pour the water over ourselves was a bit different because the water was not heated. We quickly learnt that if we waited until about 2 or 3 PM the water in the bucket would have heated a bit from the sun. At least it would have taken the chill of the water. I also learnt to only pour the water over one limb at a time. Brrrrr the water was cold!!!
The family had two buffalo that they kept for milk. They did have four hens running around the yard but killed one for our tea one night. We asked them not to kill another one because we liked watching them and listening to them. They had an ox to pull the plow. They grew everything they ate, except for noodles, sugar and tea. The mother would cook up a "wine" each week, it was quite a potent alcoholic brew. She would insist that we have a little of it each night before dinner. Nepali people eat two meals a day and they are the same meals for both meals. It is called Daal Baht. Baht is rice and Daal is the lentil soup that they pour over it, they also have between one and three curried vegetables, that adds the different tastes, and a hot, spicy chutney. I didn't, think that I would be able to eat the same thing every day but managed to get through the 10 days without any trouble at all.
They still have arranged marriages in Nepal and a cast system, where they marry within their own caste. But the son did tell me that in Kathmandu people are now having "love" marriages and marrying people from different castes. But not so in the hills, and I did see in the Kathmandu English language newspaper, an article about child marriages still going on, is some parts of Nepal. The reason was poverty, it was much cheaper to have marriages with children as the participants than wait until they were much older.
Nepal is such a poor country, power is only on 12 ours per day, following a schedule. Water is a huge problem, in Kathmandu homes get water delivered by truck, once a week, the water is poured into tanks that are under the house, the families then have a pump that send the water into a tank that is on the roof of the house, and that is how they get the water through pipes. But it is such a precious commodity. The sewerage system is antiquated and inadequate. It was much better in the hills. The roads are appalling, as I have said even the main highways are full of potholes and large areas are not sealed. Footpaths do not exist in the main, hence the place is full of dust and dirt flying around.
But it is a wonderful country to visit and it is full of interesting sights, sounds and smells.
