192.43 miles from Everest (Annapurna Base Camp)

It has been a while since we updated this blog and so much has happened, so forgive us if we try and condense it a little. We went away for 10 days over Easter to go trekking with some friends up to Annapurna base camp. 

It was great to get out of the city, and having climbed Kilimanjaro last year we thought we’d be OK.  We were, but it was a very different kind of trek. The Annapurnas have something that Killi lacks….steps and lots of them!!

To get through the valleys, up in to the Himalayas you must first conquer the hill country.  So we spent the first three days climbing the ultimate stair master’s to the crest of the hills (note that a Nepali hill is higher than anything Britain possesses) only to find that continuing meant descending almost to the valley floors again in order to go up the other side.  Any relief in the downhills was tainted by the knowledge that for every meter you walked down you would have to walk up again and some!! That said the peaks of the mountains get a little closer each day, and as their magnitude becomes more and more apparent, we realised there had to be more up to come……and there was. 

Annapurna base camp is shielded from view until the final day.  This is because as you approach it up the valley, what stands before you is the impressive stature of  the Annapurna South peak.  But on the last day instead of going straight up (finally no more steps!) you go around the side of this monster and find yourself behind it, at the base of an immense bowl in which the peaks of the Annapurnas surround you on 360degrees. They hem you in on every side, and on a clear day at sunrise as the peaks flame red and then turn golden with the sun as it peeks over the rim, you would climb all those steps and more just to get a glimpse of something that majestic.

Back in Kathmandu May the 10th has come and gone, there is still no agreement, so we are leaving at the end of the month and as yet we are not sure where to or how long for.  As we look back on our time here in Nepal so far it feels very much like our trek.  We have had some wonderful highs, meeting some amazing people, making precious new friends. The achievement of making yourself understood even if you are only asking for your groceries, the excitement of finding you have power when you are supposed to be in the middle of a 10hr cut.  But there have also been some lows, shocking and deeply painful family news, deaths of those dear to us, uncertainty with jobs and home and country.

Right now as we prepare to leave Nepal with no idea of a return date we are having to let go of a lot of our “highs” and carry with us on the uphill most of the “lows”.  But we trust that the sunrise God has in store for us at the top will be worth each step, even if we cant see where we are going until we get there. Until then when the next step feels more than we can bear we cling on to the knowledge that we may be hard pressed on every side, but we are not crushed. We may be perplexed but we are not overwhelmed. We may be struck down, but we are not destroyed.  The God who has gone before us has walked each step.

180.26 miles from Everest (Kaskikot)

We have just come back from two weeks staying in the village of Kaskikot, north of Pokhara near the Anapurna mountain range. It was the final step in our 10 week long language learning marathon! As such we thought we would take you through our time there using some of the new words we learnt.

Muso. This was the first word we learnt, it is Nepali for mouse but also, as we quickly discovered, for rat. Let us put it in context for you….

We arrived in the pitch black in the middle of some serious rain. After meeting our host Ama and Baa (Mum and Dad) we were shown by torch light up a ladder in the house to our room. As we climbed the ladder we were told “there may be muso’s up here at night”. The next morning and after no sleep Lucy was able to confidently say in Nepali “yes there are very big muso’s at night!”. Thankfully six days later we added the word Mareko to our vocabulary which means dead.

We would often help with some of the picking from the harvest first thing in the morning (7ish), most village houses have fields as agriculture is the main source of food and income.  Mainly we picked Kerau (peas) or Wah (Barley), which lead to hours of sitting in front of the house where we were often joined by kids from the village and could practice our latest phrases on them!

The kids adored Tom, and very quickly we added the word Gamble to our repertoire.  This is a street game that the kids played daily, involving a tower of rocks and two teams battling to either rebuild the knocked-down tower or “kill” the other team by hitting them with the sock-ball first.  We spent many happy hours playing with them all and some of the big kids of the village as well.  Tom soon became the local hero and we would wake up in the morning to calls of “Tomji Tomji…” from some excited little voices hoping to play before they went to school.

Onnuntis is another important word, this is 29, the number of dal bhats (lentils and rice) we ate in a row during our village stay.  Whilst all were meito cha (tasty) and had a surprising amount of variety for a meal that consists mainly of two things, we were day dreaming about something other than rice by the end.  Khana (food) is eaten twice a day, once around 10am and again at 8pm.  In between, cups of Nepali Chiya (milky sugary tea) are consumed and normally some Khadja (snacks) around 4:30 in the afternoon.

“Pani lyauchu” (I bring water) and Lucy did each day from the communal tap.  Women in the village work very very hard at home and in the fields from 6am to 9pm so it is difficult to get to know them if you are not working alongside them. Whilst we spent some time working with Ama at home, it was still difficult to infiltrate the world of the women in the village without our own house/field/children. So each afternoon the water was turned on for a couple of hours and all the women gathered at the local tap to fill up their tanks using water carriers. Lucy took on this responsibility for the two weeks we were there, and after a few days of bruised hips got the hang of things and happily sauntered back and forth with the 20litre water carrier until the tanks were full.

Garung gurung/melkano these are the words for thunder and lightening.  Early monsoons struck the village when we were there, with lightening so bright it blinded you for a few seconds when it struck. Each afternoon, just after the water was collected, the heavens opened and it would rain typically until late in the evening. This was made all the more spectacular by the tin roof which when combined with the rain played its own music to send you off to sleep!

Things you might see 100 miles from Everest....

214.953 miles from Everest

This weekend, after three weeks of intensive language study we took a couple of days off to spend some time with Lucy’s parents who were passing through on their way home from Singapore.  We decided to get out of the busyness of Kathmandu valley and head south to the Terai (the name given for the flat plains of Nepal that border with India).

In what felt a little like an MI5 style of travel arrangements we phoned a number given to us by a friend.  When the man answered at the other end we confirmed his identity then stated the name of our contact.  This eased the conversation and we were immediately given instructions to be outside a certain landmark on a certain day on a certain time and everything else would by then, we were assured, have been arranged.  So on the appropriate morning we were almost ready to leave when we got a phone call from an unknown number telling us “I am here.” After some frantic wracking of the brains and the subsequently cobbled together Nepali we realised that this was the person we were supposed to meet kindly just wanting to let us know that they were at the rendezvous. We met him with no further problems and were ushered unto the waiting vehicle where we were handed an envelope and the journey began!

Travelling in Nepal is more like a cross between a rollercoaster ride and being in a washing machine on spin cycle (well for your stomach at least!)  With no set rules that in practice apply one should not be surprised to find oneself playing chicken with an articulated lorry on a blind bend of an un-tarmaced road half way up what we might call a mountain (the Nepali’s would class as a hill) with a sheer drop beneath you leading to the dried up riverbed below, that is waiting for the monsoon rains, or you to fall, whichever comes first!  And so it was with incredible skill that our driver negotiated such roads that led us from Kathmandu valley in what would be classed as the middle hills with a backdrop of Himalayas to the flat lands of the Terai. Here the horizon stretched out as far as the eye can see in both directions uninterrupted by any kind on bump on the landscape, and the sky somehow seemed a whole lot bigger all of a sudden. The feel of the Terai is more tropical with the temperatures noticeably warmer at the lower altitude and miles of fields interspersed with traditional mud hut villages and the occasional bigger, more developed town. 

It was at one of these towns that we stopped without warning and another unknown man got into our vehicle and, after greeting us with a warm smile, asked if we had the paper. This we concluded must be the contents of the envelope we had received earlier. It appeared we were correct in our assumption and we drove on to our hotel and had a wonderful couple of days being introduced to some of the local culture and wildlife, which included a baby rhino and twin toddler elephants, before repeating the 4.5hr journey in reverse!

Still 100 miles but feeling more like 7,531.28 miles

Last weekend (5^th/6^{th Feb}) the PTA of one of the international schools here in Kathmandu held a fundraising basketball tournament. For the first few days after we arrived in Nepal we kept meeting people who would take one look at Tom and ask if we were free for the tournament.  So the weekend arrived and Tom was due to play and referee some of the other matches. Lucy who after too many years of netball finds it impossible to run with the ball was down to be a scorekeeper. Early on Saturday we made our way to one of the city’s private schools that has three courts, only to discover on arrival that we had somehow passed through an invisible magic portal and rather than being on the playing fields of a Kathmandu high school we were now in America!

Tom and team mate Nico preparing for battle!

There was a marquee, food stalls, game stands, printed t shirts with local sponsors logo’s on, and a make shift tannoy system had been set up using trees as speaker stands playing pop/rap music.  On closer inspection you realised that the marquee was not white but rather made of beautiful multi coloured local fabrics and the food stands whilst selling some traditional baked goods also sold local snacks such as momos (similar to dim sum but tastier!) and samosas.  It made the stereotypical English school fete look like a jumble sale.

There were over 50 teams from schools and clubs across Kathmandu valley all gathered to play what is one of the nations favourite sports. Despite the average height of the country’s population only being 5’7” many players far exceeded this average and all of them showed a phenomenal level of skill.

Over the two days we had a lot of fun getting to know people from the local community and further a field.  There are so many differences between the different nationalities represented here and amongst the Nepali’s themselves but for two days we all enjoyed the same spirit of teamwork, fun, excitement and anticipation, all be it with an American edge! 

100 miles from Everest, Finally!!

Only four short hours from the sunshine of the UAE, Nepal welcomes you with open if a little chilly arms!  On our descent we caught some amazing views of the Himalayas and our first glimpses of Kathmandu itself.

We didn’t have any problems getting on to the flight this time (UAE have a very generous luggage allowance) but arriving at Kathmandu airport was more like arriving in rural Africa and the rules that apply for nationals are often waived for ‘Bedeshi’s’ (foreigners). We were ushered through security checks, and totally skipped customs altogether!

Once we had met the person picking us up we drove through Kathmandu to the UMN head quarters and what will be our offices.  The city is dirty, highly polluted and the air hangs thick with smog, but this feeling is exaggerated by the low lying mist that descends into the Kathmandu Valley during winter and blocks the mountains from view. Once the sun has set, the temperature drops significantly and with houses designed to keep the heat out it is often colder inside than out.  It’s usually around three degrees inside and so layers keep getting added, and hot water bottles tucked down jumpers!  That said, warm food and a good duvet make it all ok.

We are living in a city called Patan, which is right next to Kathmandu, divided by a river, which makes the Thames look drinkable! It is probably more like living in South London and working in the North than changing from one city to another in the UK. We are beginning to get our bearings (although every street looks the same at the moment) after a guided walk around with our link host, showing us the stalls which were safe to buy fruit and vegetables at, and those which were not! There are some unlikely finds down back alleys if you know where to look, like a bakery in a back room of a house at the end of a dirt track making fresh bread, croissants and even pizza!

We are moving into our temporary flat on Saturday, which we will have until June, our freight arrives on Monday (we hope!) and we start language training on Wednesday. There are busy times ahead but we are grateful for the peace God has given us about being here and the friendship and hospitality of the people we have met.

Abu Dhabi, only 1,959.02 miles to go......

As we drove to the airport our worries about the weight of luggage were confirmed at Heathrow by the scales at check-in. However, after playing the volunteer worker card and a few glistening tears from Lucy the situation was resolved by the kind gentleman at the desk choosing to let us pass without paying a fine.

We arrived in Abu Dhabi bleary eyed and sleepless after a comfortable flight, but missing most of the night due to time changes. But, so wonderful to see one of our great friends with whom we spent the next couple of days.  After concluding quickly that all there is to do in the UAE is shop, sand and sea we went ahead and enjoyed just that.  Ok, so the shopping bit was more like window-shopping, but we compensated by enjoying both the beach and a trip into the desert. On our last day we drove up to Dubai for some fun at a water park on The Palm Island.

Jumping on sand dunes as part of desert safari with friends!

It was very relaxing and for most of the time we forgot that we were in the middle of emigrating to Nepal. That was until we were asked by someone, “Where are you from? Where do you live?”. We realised that the first answer seemed quite straight forward but the second one was not so easy! How could we say we lived in Kathmandu when we had yet to set foot in the country, but after all the goodbyes our heavy hearts were sure we did not live in London anymore.  So we live in the State of Limbo, do you know it?  The now, but not yet kind of life?  We had a great time there, saw some incredible things, spent time with precious people, but the real adventure begins about 1,959.02 miles from here in our new home!