Dhading District Villages

Last time I wrote, I was about to head off on a week long trek to some Nepali villages. I didn't realize that I would spend a week essentially living in the Dark Ages, in one of the most remote areas that humans inhabit.

Here is a link to pictures of Nepal

To start off, many things that I wrote about last are no longer valid ... because I am no longer in Nepal. An emergency brought me home early and I am back in Ottawa. That said, while I'm not creating any kind of documentary or anything, I still have this facebook blog, and that week was still pretty cool :)

I was accompanying John and his sister Jayne on their trip to see and understand these remote places, and gain better understanding of some work being done by their late friend David with a local NGO. Also with us from the start is our 20-something guide Dhul, and our teenage porter Dil. Never in my life did I expect I'd hike with a porter, but I guess we had a lot of stuff to carry, it supports the local economy (there are a zillion guides and porters looking for work in Nepal), and even carrying 60 pounds this kid outpaced us all regularly.

First we bused for 4 hours to the small town of Dhading Besi. Here on can find chicken being cooked with a blow torch, eat in a 'restaurant' inside a garage, and see an inner city hay farm. From there we got a land rover to take us as far as a vehicle could go (another 4 hours). This gave me new perspective for the definition of road (anywhere that the driver has the balls to take the car). We made hairpin turns at the edges of cliffs, drove through rivers, all with no shock absorbers and definitely no seatbelts.

From there, the trek experience really starts. In some ways it all blurs together ... a big mix of walking 8 hours a day, and finding places to eat and sleep based on which farm house or mud hut is willing to put us up or feed us for money. For this, look at the pictures, maybe they tell it better. There is no such thing as a straight path in the Himalayas - 'following the river' still means constantly climbing and descending mountains, crossing landslides, skipping through waterfalls, and dealing with treacherous terrain. It was a lot of fun.

Meals were interesting. First, I should admit that it wasn't a totally authentic food experience, because we brought some muesli, cookies, and candy to fuel us for the walking, but still at least 2 meals a day were of local flavour. While I've come to love daal bhaat (the Nepali term for lentils and rice, commonly served with spinach too), it isn't the greatest fuel for a day of hiking. Other meals include dhido (maize- or millet-flour boiled in water, usually served with lentils), ramen noodles (strangely popular in rural nepal), and sometimes just boiled potatoes. I always loved the food though - cooked with great spices, served enthusiastically, and just part of the experience. There are some other cool stories that i'll have to share in person.

For many parts of it, still days later I'm having trouble really distilling what it was all about. When a young mother of 11 kids, desperately poor and living in a low caste village, tells me in Nepali of all the problems they have,
and how they hope that we foreigners (some of the few foreigners they'll see in their lives) can fix things, well shit, I don't really know what to do. I have no answer for that right now. There is a lot of debate that you could have on various issues pertaining to the situation, but nothing really captures the moment, the emotional saliency that doesn't care for your debate and just slaps you in the face with raw reality. And there were a few of those moments. I won't go into more detail about any of those stories, only to say that logic and wisdom are poor comfort in the moment.

I want to go off topic for a moment though and discuss roads. Let's be very generous and actually say that a road is anywhere that a vehicle (i'm not talking your nice Honda, I'm talking a tractor or Land Rover or something super-rugged) can go. What happens when you live beyond the reach of roads? For these people, everything that they have is either harvested directly from their immediate environment, or carried in by the long trek on someone's back. When you see books, or metal roofing, or anything made of cement, you realize that someone carried all that in on their back. It is common to see a skinny old 5foot tall Nepali woman carrying 100kg (~220lbs) for long treks, and really she has no other option.

What happens to development when roads can't go there? Forget foreign aid, even the Nepali government doesn't know how to help these people - and they don't give it much priority cause theyre all tiny local native groups with their local languages that are separate from Nepali culture. It is a society very much isolated from the modern world, and I can tell you that the idea of the happy native living his pastoral existence is a myth we have in the West. There are countless reasons why - healthcare, education, justice, and just the hard life that comes from having to scrape a living off the unforgiving Himalayan slopes. You might say "but their life is so simple and pure, free from the corruption and excess of our Western existence". If you go there, prefer their ways, and choose that life, go for it. You have the luxury of choice. But talk to anyone in those villages (especially the kids), you'll see that just about all of them would choose to escape that life if they had the choice. But they don't have the choice. And they live beyond the roads, so what development efforts can really help?

I'm having trouble writing about this even now. Looking back over the pictures and retracing my trekking steps in my mind is a disjointed experience ... it was so much, I couldn't take it all in, I couldn't have all the answers, and I don't have clear perspective on it now. I had lots of food for thought on the trip back to the city, and I guess an exciting highlight of that trip was that the land rover ride was a little more crowded than before. The 9-seater car had about 20 people inside, and so I ended up riding on the luggage rack up top with 5 other people. This driver drove a little faster than the previous one, and given the terrain, it was essentially like 4 hours of roller coaster without a safety harness. The scenery was beautiful, the others up top were fun conversationalists, I needed to pay attention and hold on to avoid tumbling off.

Of course I didn't have a lot of time or space to dwell on the trekking experience. Due to an emergency back home, immediately upon arriving back in Kathmandu I planned my departure and enjoyed 35 hours of airplanes and airports all the way back home. Now I have things to do and life is continuing. But there are certain things from that week - beautiful, or ridiculous, or frustrating, or just indescribable - that will stay with me for a long time. I don't know what the future holds for HEED Nepal, or for John's project, but I wish them both a lot of luck with the task before them.

What I'm Doing In Nepal

Originally posted 16 November 2010

People have asked, and I've had vague responses cause it's been a vague 10 days. Here is what's going on though.

I already mentioned that the clinical placement didn't work out, and even after a few days that story is still not interesting enough to share. But what's come since certainly is. That afternoon, when my placement didn't work out, I ran into John Burke, one of the heads of Basecamp International, who is here for three weeks on a personal passion project. It involves supporting this local NGO called HEED Nepal (they have a surprisingly put together website www.heednepal.org) in its goal of building schools in rural villages and promoting women's empowerment as well. What i'll be doing for the next two months is shadowing the organization, working and observing wherever I can, meeting and getting to know everyone involved, and creating a sort of documentary of it all with video, pictures, and written journalism. Having met some people involved, and knowing John's story too, I know that there is something miraculous here that hopefully I can help shed light on. This is isn't your average righteous do-gooder story, this is Three Cups of Tea in Nepal.

This isn't actually a 'placement', though I still based at the Basecamp residence. It's going to involve a fair bit of travel though. I just found that tomorrow morning we leave on a week long trek to Dhading District villages, north of Trisuli, for a first visit, and there will likely be more. While it's not a clinical placement, or what I signed up for, what it is, is AWESOME. I pitched myself doing this to John and basically said that my experience with FYBY and SAVE each uniquely help me be capable for this, and the fact that my Urdu/Gujrati background is helping me pick up Nepali was an asset.

So life is ridiculous. John is the man though, he is a mix of passion, experience, humor, and intelligence (he's been adventuring on and off regularly for the last 40 years) and I have a feeling I'm at the beginning of something amazing.

Naturally I will be away from a computer and out of cell phone reach for the duration of the trip. Will be in touch again in 8 or 9 days :) Wish me luck.