Dalama Adventures Tale of two corporate types ditching their jobs and traveling the world for 14 months... check out all photos, blogs & interesting tid bits at http://www.dalama.net

Uma's sister Rama is another woman creating an exciting niche for her and her family. Her husband, Mr. Bishop Joshi from the Kanti Children's Hospital, has the opportunity of taking on foreign students at the Institute of Medicine and working residency terms in the hospital. Rama has converted the top flat in her property into a mini-United Nations guest house for young students and travelers. She's got a guest book larger than any B&B I've ever seen. Her guests are from all over the world, and stay months on end, even as many as 11 months. Rama has leveraged this opportunity to broaden her family's perspective on life, and opportunity. Her son is now studying Hospitality, and looking forward to the possibility to study abroad. Her daughter is fascinated by the individuals she has met, and undoubtedly has an open welcome anywhere in the world where she might like to visit or study, once she's decided what's next after high school and her volunteer work with the Children's Hospital. Spending the afternoon with their family, I was treated to local Nepali hospitality, and also given a very important lesson on how to eat daal bhaat with my hands. Rama prepared the most beautiful daal bhaat for lunch- rice, curry potatoes, spinach, lentils... and after many failed attempts at clumping the food into my fingers and getting any of it into my mouth, I was given the secret... scoop it up with first three fingers and thumb, then you use the thumb, from behind the mound, to push it into your mouth. Ah, it was like I learned the way to do a new card trick... I can finally eat properly with my hands, although I'm still not quite sure how to get the yellow curry stain out of my skin. Maybe they'll email me that trick along the way! We went shopping in the local markets for vegetables and along the way, for some Nepali sweets. Again, as in Australia and India... the power of female friendship really takes a new level when learning about a new culture, and navigating through. The overwhelming warmth I have encountered is something I will never forget, and seek to take with me as I meet others along the way. We've also had the opportunity to ride the local busses, visiting Bhaktapur. This city is well preserved, having been founded in the 12th century, and retains it's old traditional lifestyles as well as old buildings and intricately carved architecture. The city lies on the old trading route to Tibet and was a crossroad for trading and religious pilgrimage. There are 172 temples and monasteries, and many of the temple carvings are ecquisite not to mention that some are erotic Kamasutra involving people as well as animals. We took a bit of a wrong turn after being engrossed in all the temples and narrow, winding cobblestone back streets, and ended up walking on a foot bridge over the town dump- which was loaded with huge pigs and cows. Crossing the bridge we saw two men cooking up a headless dog over a fire. That was just about enough for us. We bee-lined it for the exit after spending the better part f the day in Bhaktapur.