591 Miles from Everest…….in India!

Over the Hindu festival of Dashain in Nepal everything shuts down as the equivilant of the Christmas holidays are upon us. With the office also closed we took the opportunity to spend a few days in neighbouring India playing tourist at some of its many monuments and sights.

So less than two hours after leaving Nepal we found ourselves in Delhi.  Living in Kathmandu we thought we would be prepared for the chaos that is the capital, and we probably were more so than if we had come from the UK, but it was still an assault on the senses.  In comparison, Kathmandu now appears calm, clean and almost traffic free at times!  Not something we thought we’d find ourselves saying!

But that aside our few days in the capital afforded us the chance to see some of the incredible heritage sights and monuments it has to offer.  For us two days was enough but the guide books could have you there for weeks seeing more and more of what is on offer!

So at 4:30am the next morning we headed off to Agra, a town most famous as the home of the Taj Mahal. By contrast Agra is calmer and a lot more relaxed than Delhi. Our hotel was within the environmental zone that surrounds the Taj, providing a lovely haven from the bustle of the street life.  Agra too had some beautiful sights, but the Taj Mahal as expected stole the show and having viewed it at sunset from across the river the day before we enjoyed a sunrise walk around its grounds and exploring the tomb itself before the crowds got too big or the sun got too hot. You have to take your shoes off and walk around on the tiled floor barefoot (unless you come with a swanky tour that is well prepared enough to give you shoe coverings, which we did not!)  so as the sun gets higher in the sky the floor gets hotter underfoot!

One of the oddest things about being in India was that although Hindi is not dissimilar to Nepali with some words shared, Nepali is not readily understood in this area of India. So whilst many aspects of the way things operated were very Nepali we found ourselves struggling to speak English in a context that seemed so much more familiar to the Nepali side of our brains!

It was great to have a few days out, but we were very glad to return to what we now think of as the calm of Kathmandu and home. 

100miles from everest……. and on Shaky ground

Last night the earthquake we now know emanated from India. At 6.8 on the richter scale the ripples reached Kathmandu, but most damage was done in the rural eastern region of the country.

It is a place of sporadic population, mainly agricultural, like most of Nepal with fields precariously perched on the slopes of the Himalayas.  The effects of the quake, were found in the landslides that washed away the years produce, the access roads to markets, and aid.

Sadly as more news trickles in it appears that a lot of the deaths caused in Nepal were not due to the quake itself but in the panic that ensued. Some jumped from third floor windows, some got caught in stampeding crowds. Despite being a country that has had seven quakes this year alone, it is not one that seems culturally or practically prepared.  There is little awareness of earthquake safety although there are organisations working hard to address this issue.  But as we have been told by more than one Nepali friend, “ We don’t have an earthquake kit, if we are meant to die, we will die. I don’t want to think about it, if I buy one I will have to think about it.” Whilst this is by no means the attitude of all, in a fatalistic society the idea of preparing for such an event in this way is hard to comprehend.  This attitude is hard for westerners to understand, but as the buildings swayed and the earth trembled, the bells rang out in fury as Hindus and Buddhists alike ran to their temples to appease the gods who had shaken the earth and offer a puja for safety. This is their version of an earthquake kit.

Whilst our “go bag” was checked and rechecked again this morning, and remains firmly under our bed in case of need, it did make us remember in whom our safety is found.  Not in stone carvings that need to be appeased so as to remain in their favour, but in the God whose love is unshakeable, and our firm foundation.

100 miles from Everest and Home..... Finally!!

Well we made it back to Nepal in one piece, sorry it has taken so long to publish this blog, it has been written for a while waiting to be uploaded. 

 

The journey to our home here in Nepal has been windy to say the least, but a little over a year, six moves and three spare rooms later we have made it! Our flat is on the first floor of a two storey building, with offices underneath and the landlord’s family living in the flat above.

The landlord’s share their flat with Clifford, a very amusing black Labrador. When the stairwell of the building was being repainted a rather bright salmon pink colour last week, he decided to help out the decorators, ending up with a pink paint splatter down his black head and back and not too much paint on the walls! Sadly he didn’t stay still long enough for a photo.

We are settling in well and have found adapting back to the practicalities of filtering our water, remembering the load shedding schedule and showering in a bucket, an easier transition than expected after the relative ease of the UK.

Our time back in the UK had some real highlights, and we so loved the unexpected joy of seeing so many of you again, long before we thought we would. We were able to attend weddings of great friends we thought we would miss and share in fun and fellowship with many.

That said, recovering from para-typhoid took a lot longer than we had hoped and it was not until the beginning of August that we finally got normal blood tests back for our livers and could start the task of regaining strength.  It was a trying time, in which we reluctantly learnt even more patience and whilst people and places we longed for were tantalisingly close, we were committed to returning to Nepal healthy as soon as possible and that meant refraining from some very tempting invitations!

Returning to Nepal brought with it some anxieties, it had been a hard place for us to be during our first six months with so much uncertainty and some heavy burdens to bear in the absence of close friends and fellowship. Not to mention the idea of being that sick again was not one we cherished!  But whilst we are maybe a little more paranoid about where we eat, some of the uncertainties we encountered have thankfully been answered and although we still feel the weight of some of the issues we face, we join David’s cry to God from the dessert “My heart is steadfast oh God, My heart is steadfast.”