Village blues

It was with sad hearts that we left Kalikasthan this morning. We have been treated like royalty, as the only guests left. We were honored at one breakfast with omelette and eight slices of toast, the only toast served on the trip, but in abundance. A small campfire was lit each night after dinner, where family and we gathered for a chat.

Ray had made a connection with one student in particular, who is keen to learn programming. He came to visit each evening to learn more. His father was killed in the earthquake, and he boards in the horror school mentioned in an earlier post. We shared some soup with him, and the family have extended their hospitality to him for the future. He is already e-mailing Ray. When it came time to say good-bye, he needed Ray, the father, to give him a big hug.

On our last night, we shared a bottle of champagne, which Ratna had kindly arranged to send from Kathmandu with his brother Rabindra.  We were very busy finishing the repair work, so had to madly down tools and rush to watch the sunset. Subash roasted some peanuts and cooked some papadams for snacks.  As we were leaving early, we made our good-byes the previous night. Sunil, another brother asked us to come for a herbal tea at his mother's at 6.30am on our way to the car that would take us to Kathmandu.

Subash also got up early and helped us with our luggage. We were greeted with marigold garlands and anointed with the obligatory red paste on our foreheads. It was the end of our two week stay in Kalikasthan. The whole village were so welcoming, and Ratna,'s family (he does seem to be related to everyone there) were especially considerate.

We were prepared for the nightmare road trip back to Kathmandu, but were absolutely shocked when our driver got a ticket for driving on the wrong side of the road, on the outskirts of the city. Instead of five hours for the 82 km trip, it took six and a half, as the traffic was horrendous, just to match the state of the roads.

If they can do it on facebook and instagram, why can't we do it on the Strachan blog. We often had omlette for breakfast but seldom with toast. On this particular morning we had eight peices to choose from. I think they were trying extra hard to give us food they thought we would like. Some of our party who had left by this stage did not have one nepalese meal.

Before: Nepalese have next to no idea of building standards. Not sure if they don't know or don't care. It may be a bit of both. They certainly do not have the tools to effieciently do builidng jobs. All the crap on the floor is a combination of tile glue, excess grout and other building related dirt contained within the grout.

After: It took Brenda and I, with help from one of the brothers, the three days to clean up two of the four bathrooms, refit most of the doors and get some paint on some unpainted parts which was makiing them bow badly. I got over 1/2 kilo of excess grout and crap off the walls and floors of two of the four bathrooms.

Brenda's painting job was far better than anything else that had been previously done.

Me and Rabindra preparing ourselves for the Champagne.

We are joined by Subarsh and his wife to celebrate. It was the first time Subarsh had tasted champagne

Subarsh whipped up some poppadoms whilst we were drinking the champers. He came out with it  with a smile on his face and said "fast food"

Back in Kathmandu at the Glacier international college, Ratna with a good friend from his student days, Menissa.

One of Ratna's team building exercises which were a great hit: Building a Bridge. All of the participants were teachers.

Amanda,although never having built a bridge had the advantage of watching with sets of groups try and fail over the previous few days.

One of the more successful efforts.

A typical Napali road minus the rocks