Teddy Bears' Picinic!

Coming up the steep steps to Melamchi Gyang, Kami, our guide, pointed out the terraced site where Purna's (our host and school headmaster) house and thier 'Eco Friendly Home and Lodge' had once stood. It was the first building you came across on walking into the village and had a sunny, uninterrupted south facing view right down the valley. Sadly, now, it and the ancient stupa on the other side of the path, was a jumbled pile of stones and collection of salvaged wood under sheets of tarpaulin. We were later told that every house in the village, made in the traditional way with dry stone walls and timber, had collapsed in less than a minute. Thinking of the beautiful old buildings that had originally lured Purna to the village and charmed trekkers for years disintegrating in less than 60 seconds was unbelievably tough. Amazingly, probably because the earthquake struck in the middle of the day, only one person in the village was killed.

A hundred meters up the hill was Purna's new temporary house. A racing green, homely and hotchpotch tin shed with a sunny veranda enjoying that same south facing view. We were welcomed into what would be our home with a hot, sweet tea by the crackling, smokey stove.

The following day was a Saturday and the one day off Nepali's get a week, this gave us a chance to do our washing and get to know the family. Purna lives with his wife, Zungmo and youngest son Karma as well as his 80 year old father in law Meme and 75 year old mother in law, Ibi, whose home was also destroyed. One of Karma's classmates, Karsang, who Purna is supporting through school, also lives with them. Zungmo and her family are local Buddhist Hylomo or Sherpa people that have lived in this mountainous area for centuries, unlike Purna who's from a Hindu family in the Kathmandu Valley. Purna is a great story teller and we soon were hearing snippets of the almost unbelievable tale that brought him from the valley bottom to the mountains to eventually become school headmaster, CAN (Community Action Nepal - our charity) chairman and local demigod. His story is like something out of a BBC documentary, we're only just getting the gist of the whole picture so we can't do it any sort of justice in this blog, but hopefully one day we'll be able to tell the whole intricate and utterly compelling story. What we can say is that at the age of 17 he left a promising career as a civil engineer behind and moved his whole life to the mountains to start a school after passing through Melamchi Gyang village on a trek with a friend. His first classes were open to all and his 19 pupils ranged from 5 to 15 years old, they spoke only the local language and were otherwise illiterate. His first lesson was held outside, the fascia board of the veranda under which they sat was the only place he could find to write out the alphabet.

Purna, aged 17, with his first class! Alphabet painted on the fascia board above!

30 years later he had established a school that had a country wide reputation, attracting children from the far west of Nepal and Kathmandu. It had grown continually, with hard earned charitable support, from those 19 children to over 250. As class sizes grew so too did the school buildings and it offered accommodation for over 150 boys and girls as well as class rooms from kindergarten to year 10. Unlike all government schools, Purna had also made the decision early on for it to be an English medium school, and as we've since found, the fluency of the childrens English is quite amazing as is the quality of teaching as a whole. As the school flourished, the village also began to buck the trend with people returning from work abroad and the city to get back to village life. A successful school and new health post were part of the attraction. The severe shortage of employment in Nepal meant that trying to work sustainably off old family land and living close to relatives became more appealing than struggling in Kathmandu where life is pricey and completely unsustainable.

 

End of term exams!

Polytunnel used after the earthquakes

Temporary Hostel

Recalimed stone from a collapsed building

All of this changed in less than one minute in April 2015. We've heard so many peoples accounts of that day and those that followed. As with all the other buildings in the village, the school and hostel also collapsed in under one minute. We spoke to one very bright girl Angma, in year 8, who told us about the immediate time after the earthquake. With no shelter and rain falling, dust and debris everywhere, the only standing shelter was a long polytunnel growing cauliflower for the school children. This soon became shelter for over 300 people over the next few weeks, both children and villagers, after each cauliflower, a bumper crop, was ripped out from the ground. Although the school is soon to be rebuilt, Purna explained that they would never take the polytunnel down because of the symbol it's become. It remains full of blankets and solar lights. The girls currently use it as a place to do homework.
The days and months that followed were impossibly hard as people attempted to try to put the shards of their lives back together. A process that is most definitely still happening. Amazingly, within a few months the local community had rebuilt a temporary school including hostel and soon, classes were up and running and all of the children had returned. As far as the rebuilding process is concerned, the health post was quickly rebuilt by CAN and there are signs that a small number of village people are soon to begin rebuilding their homes permanently. Purna explained very frankly, that only once the school is rebuilt and the children safe in warm hostels would he consider starting to rebuild his own home. Unsurprisingly, the beauaucracy, funding and logistics of rebuilding the school have been like wading through treacle but Purna's tenacity and irrepressible laugh have secured guarantees that the rebuild will begin later this year with the support of both CAN and a Swiss charity.

It was not hard to settle into a daily routine here living with Purna and his family. After an early start and morning jog/ trudge (they think we're completely bonkers!) we sit around the stove for instant coffee with sugar and powdered milk and an amazing array of breakfasts from Roti (unleavened bread), to tsampa (salt tea and ground millet porridge), milk-less pancakes and peanut butter (a little addition of baking powder makes them unbelievably fluffy!), fried beans and jura (rice flakes) to good old daal bhat! All prepared on a fire with no running water and often no light. Clinic then starts mid morning, where we've spent our time observing how the clinic runs, teaching Durga, the CAN nurse, and looking at establishing some simple guidelines to help the nurses with clinical skills and diagnosis. There's almost no clinical support for these relatively junior nurses at 2500m in a remote valley in the Himalayas and they never know what might come to clinic. By UK GP practice standards, clinic isn't all that busy but the view of lofty snow capped mountians helps keen the mind occupied!

More daal bhat awaits for lunch before we head to the school to do some teaching. Our respect for Tom and other teachers out there has grown unbelievably, its bloody hard teaching 30 school kids anything! We've also found time to help around the house (when we're allowed!) as well as toiling in the terraced fields which they are now trying to re-establish following the earthquake to grow apples and kiwis!

As the sun drops over the mountians the temperature plummets and it gets dark pretty quickly. Our evenings are spent chatting, the sound of the telly in the background if there's power, huddled around the fire, eating another amazing aray of tibetan influenced food until eyes and backs (sitting on the floor is trying!) seek a soft warm place to rest!

Life in the mountains is no easy task and growing old here looks incredibly tough. Ibi and Meme (granny and grandpa) are quite amazingly tough having had their home, set up for an elderly couple, completely destroyed. Meme, who walks with a stick and has prosthetic leg, manages to sit beside the fire at night and make it to the outside temporary squat toilet over uneven ground with no grab rail in site and Jenny, their 16 year old aging mountain dog, an immovable obstical forever underfoot! Ibi puts most 30 year olds to shame and is constantly keeping the house in check, cooking meals, washing clothes and all while looking elegant in her Tibetan style traditional dress and fake North Face puffer jacket!

Although creating some clinical guidelines for the nurses does seem to be a good idea and will hopefully be helpful in the future, we have been thinking recently about the real value of us spending all our money coming here and volunteering versus staying at home, working hard and sending as much of our ill gotten games out as possible (minus a new surfboard or two along the way!). It's pretty hard to come to a good answer, but actually experiencing living here, seeing and talking to local people about their projects, hopes and problems as well as being amongst the devastation that still remains following the earthquake certainly creates a stronger connection which may mean we can help more in the future. We've also not forgotten the selfish nature of travel in that we've always wanted to see these places with our own eyes too. We chatted to Purna about this and he made us feel a bit better by saying that if he had the chance, he would visit the world too and plans to in the future.

View from clinic!

The Nepali one day weekend is taking some getting used to, it feels very wrong going back to school on a Sunday! We spent our first Saturday off going on a sortie into the mountains, fully kitted out to catch a glimpse of the nearby Baden Powell Peak in Rich's honour. Along the way we walked through giant pine forests, snowy dark valleys and warm, sunny slopes covered in bamboo thicket and butterflies. After carrying a brand new Primus Titanium multifuel stove in its packaging 4600km across half of Asia, we finally used it in anger to make a nice cup of hot coffee, although only after several burnt fingers, many matches, a few choice swear words and nearly setting fire to the whole hillside! We pushed on upwards to an altitude of about 3000m at which point we came across a huge snowy landslide and frozen river that had obliterated the path. Another sign of the earthquake that can often be seen scarring the landscape. Thinking we could see footprints crossing the snow we attempted a sketchy traverse across the slippery ice. We congratulated ourselves on reaching the other side and pushed on for a little while longer. As the path became less well defined we stopped to take a closer look at the tracks we'd so happily been following. Kneeling in the snow we realised our tracking instincts had led us somewhat astray....The big padded print with five distinct claw marks and crisp fresh edges probably should have alerted us sooner that this was not somethjng we should hsve been following... we were literally walking into the bears den! 

Bear paw!

An unidentified crash above us had us turning on our heels and making a very hasty retreat, trying to remember what the Lonely Planet advised us to do when faced with a hungry bear! As we recrossed the now unstable, melting ice fall and looked down at the steep drop below, we began to question our wisdom..."we're in the f#%king Himalayas, no one knows where we are, crossing a frozen f$%king landslide, following the tracks of a f%*king bear!!!". Thankfully, the hungry bear never materialised and we made it back to a sunny clearing to cook up some noodles for lunch and to recover from the ordeal. We both kept one eye on the horizon just in case it was tempted by some chillie Maggie noodles! It was perfect preparation for the two week solo expedition we've planned in a few weeks!

 

 

It turns out teddy bears aren't the only ones who like a good picnic in the woods! As the end of term approached leading up to the Loshar Festival (Tibetan New Year), we'd been asked by each passing child whether we'd be going to the school picnic. When the day finally arrived, all 250 children stood in their neat rows, each a different house colour, ready to head off into the jungle to the famous picnic spot. A lorry load of food and supplies had arrived the previous night and the children had spent all evening peeling spuds, ginger and onions. As we all amassed on the playground, the older children were loaded with sacks of rice, cauliflower and potatoes as well as the huge stainless steel vats and kettles needed to cook for so many hungry mouths. It was a beautifully clear day and we all stomped off into the mountains, holding hands with tiny little people as tall as your knee, wearing rucksacks double their size in which they carried their plates and cups ready for the feast.

We arrived half an hour later into a small sunny clearing in the forest and all the teachers and helpers (including us) set off to build fires, prepare food and brew hot milky coffee which flowed for the children throughout the day. Within minutes, different groups were happily playing badminton, volleyball and football, running under a tattered multicoloured parachute, as well as dancing to Hindi music and jumping to Gangnam Style which must've played a thousand times, each greeted with wild screams! We sat in the sun with the teachers, peeling clove after clove of garlic, chopping hundreds of chillies and onions and finally peeling 500 boiled eggs! Kat often snuck off with various bunches of giggling girls to practice her Hindi moves while I surveyed the scene with Purna who sat regally from a rock on the hillside, shouting occasional instructions and soaking up the amazing atmosphere. Thinking about school days, we were never given the responsibility these kids have, watching ten year olds capably make and tend huge bonfires, while five year olds washed their own cups and plates. All without any prompting and only a cursory glance from teachers now and again. The older children also take great care looking out for the younger ones, making sure they didn't get too close to the fire. Purna laughed when we mentioned the health and safety craze back home. It was a great day and amazing to think that 32 years before, Purna had sat with 19 illiterate children and there he now sat, watching 250 bright students running riot at the end of a long school term.

Purna, bottom left, sitting drinking Roksi (homemade distilled millet brew) and overseeing the 'Picnic'!

As Loshar approached we started learning more about the festival. Confusingly, Nepal has three New Years, ours which they pay no attention to, the Nepali New Year which falls in a few months and the Tibetan New Year which is celebrated in the mountains amongst Buddhists. Traditions involve a big old spring clean for a fresh start to the year, making hundreds (literally) of deep fried rice flour rotis (I was lucky enough to spend a happy afternoon with Kami Lama grinding rice into flour at the water mill... my new calling) while Kat made gallons of roksi (millet home brew cooked in an amazing condenser over an open fire) ready for the celebrations. On the Christmas Eve equivalent, we ate an amazing nine bean stew having made an offering to the gods to purify last year's ills and welcome in a clean slate. The village seems even more alive as families all return home. Before the earthquakes, Zungmo and Purna explained that they would have hosted large parties sharing food, music and roksi. Sadly, these days, they said people have little to celebrate as they struggle to rebuild their lives and homes.

As their family return home, so do I! Bloody missed the golden mark on my GP exam by 10 points so a quick trip home to the UK awaits for an interview in the South West and a flight back that evening, leaving Kat to fend for herself in the mountains bears and all for two weeks (she's said I'm only allowed back with offerings of hand moisturiser and FairTrade dark chocolate with raspberries in!). I'm sorry for not being in touch while I've been back, I'm trying not to break the spell!

Loads of love

Ed and Kat xxxx

Bikes for Boots!

The first few days in Kathmandu went by in a bit of a haze, being looked after by our amazing host Aabash and his family. We rested tired legs and ate great home cooked food again. We even managed to give our bikes one last clean, such trusty old steeds! Aabash is another incredible character we've been lucky enough to meet. At only 34 he's a shining example of how a boy, many years ago, had to take on the role of man of the house.

Since then, he somehow managed to work full time through school and university, established a small business designing websites and moved his whole family (6 adults and 3 children) into a house out of the city, which he designed and built with no previous experience, following an unimaginably traumatic ordeal after the earthquake where they spent days sheltering in huge concrete drain pipes. Unbelievably, he still managed to find time to help us settle in and have long fire side chats under the stars on New Years Eve while putting the world to rights! He also deserves a medal for his in-depth knowledge of Kathamndu's Customs department and its strange workings. To cut a very long storey short, it took me a whole day, 6000 rupees, some slightly dodgy deals and secret handshakes to finally pick up a parcel our Expedition Manager had kindly sent out to us. It was definitely an insight into the inner workings of Nepal's main airport. All the while, Kat sat at the entrance gate, silently weeping at the beating the bikes had just received while strapped on the roof of a taxi the size of Ford Ka. Finally, I escaped victorious, our parcel aloft on my shoulder only to find Kat in a state of great agitation, bladder close to rupture! After emergency wees, we found our little apartment in Samakosi, a small district of Kathmandu, which was to be home for the next 10 days.

It felt good to stop still for more than a few days. We were still pinching ourselves that we'd actually made it to Kathmandu. The flat was a little one bedroom studio apartment with a hot shower, sunny balcony and a perfect little kitchen for us to hone our chai making and paratha cooking skills. Our AirBnB host Raju, could not have been more attentive and quickly had us over at his house eating chicken and drinking cold beers! We practiced our limited but essential Nepali phrases with our local shopkeepers and became regulars, getting smiles and discounts (5 rupees... just less than a penny!) left, right and centre! I spent my time pottering around the museum like streets and endless shops of Kathmandu while Ed attempted to revise for his GP application exam. After 3 months of living in each other's panniers, he left for Dubai for a two day city break to ludicrously sit his exam, leaving me to explore the old city. I was a little lonely looser and followed the two walking tours in the guidebook to discover some of the secret squares, ancient shrines, temples and streets. Sadly, I often  came across the aftermath of the earthquake. Whole streets were in ruins, temples raized to the ground with huge cracks running up the sides of buildings but life continued busily among the rubble, as only life in Kathmandu can.

Dubai was certainly a contrast to both India and Nepal but a day spent looking at the World's tallest building and plodding around a soulless shopping centre eating frozen yoghurt was enough to know that this was not the place form me! With my exam done, I was happy to be heading back to Kathmandu and a country where I felt much more at home rather than a city devoted to making money in a desert where four millions human beings shouldn't really be. I did manage to test out my acquired knowledge on the flight home as a friendly Nepali collapsed in front of me on the plane! Remembering that I was actually a doctor after 3 months of playing cycling, I hauled him onto some empty seats and he slowly came to. Keen to get home and happy he was OK, I told the pilot we didn't need an emergency landing and happily drank free Starbucks coffee all the way to Kathmandu while tending the patient!

Can't help but admire a perfectly stacked wood pile!

Once Kat and I were reunited in Kathmandu, we made arrangements to meet up with Murari, who is the Head of the Kathmandu Community Action Nepal (CAN) office, the small British charity we will be working with while we're here. CAN was founded in the mid 90's by Doug Scott, a famous British mountaineer. It was initially set up to protect Sherpa welfare, many of whom helped him summit some of the tallest mountains Nepal has to offer including Everest, where he spent the highest recorded bivouac after summitting late in the evening with no oxygen! CAN has now grown into an organisation that supports 40 projects in the remote mountainous areas of Nepal including schools and health posts. Sadly many of these were completely destroyed during the earthquakes in 2015. 

We met with Murari and talked about how we might fit into CAN's projects and planned the next phase of our adventure. He suggested heading into the Helambu region of Nepal, 70km north of Kathmandu in the Langtang National Park, an area close to the epicentre of the earthquakes and utterly devastated as a result. Trying to keep on our theme of minimising motors, we planned a four day trek to reach Melamchi Ghyang where we'd base ourselves for the next 7 weeks, aiming to visit two other CAN health posts nearby.

With Nepal in the midst of winter, our shorts and flipflops seemed a little inadequate. What followed was an outrageous shopping spree in Thamel's innumerable outdoor clothing shops. Each one, a cavern of bootleg climbing gear, down jackets, sleeping bags and shiny action trousers all with wonky North Face labels and even wonkier seams! We went town in the only ethical shop we could find, Sherpa, appeasing Kat's conscience for supporting horrible big brands. After buying their entire range we were a bit upset not to be offered sponsorship... maybe it was Ed's ridiculous attempt at a tragic gap year top knot that put them off!

Well aware I'm not going to live this down!

Snugly warm clothes packed and bikes safely stored (we hope!), we set off on foot into the mountains with our guide and friend Kami.

Setting off from Melamchi Bazaar, we crossed our first rickety suspension bridge, hanging worryingly high over the valley, to begin a steep four day climb up the Helambu valley into the Langtang National Park. 

It took a full day of sweating, moans and groans and hard breathing before our legs realised they were going to have to swap from cycling to walking. We were so used to our bikes working so efficiently, swapping panniers for rucksacks was a rude awakening. The practically unused juggling balls Ed insists on bringing everywhere seemed a little heavier!

Our guide Kami grew up in Melamchi Ghyang, our final destination, and was the brother in law of our host, Purna. He knew all the twists and turns of the path as well as the deeply spiritual connection the valley has with Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava - Indian Sage often called the second Buddha, who bought Buddhism to Tibet and the Himalaya in the 8th century) and its more recent history following the earthquakes. Kami had not actually walked the route for 15 years, so each collapsed stupa and flattened monastery was new to him and the sadness of their loss was clearly visible in his eyes. However, as we've seen time and time again, those worst off following the disaster remain positive, stoic and looking resolutely forward. As is the way in most remote, mountainous regions, Kami seemed to know or be related to everyone we met and after a long days walking we spent our evenings chatting away to our hosts sitting around a wood burning stove in the temporary shelters that people now call home. Almost every building in every village we passed was destroyed. People are now living in 'temporary shelters' which were hurriedly put together with whatever timber could be rescued and what little materials came from foreign aid. People are still using canvas tents, each sporting a different NGO logo (sorry Lux, no sign of ShelterBox yet).

Tents and temporary shelters likely to remain home for many years to come

Although the outside looks cobbled together, inside they are as homely, cared for and welcoming as the old homes they replace. Shelves of perfectly polished copper pots, china tea cups and cooking essentials surround the central wood burning stove that is the heart to every home. It offers warmth, light and the perfect place to cook a yummy Daal bhat. Everything happens at ground level here and our legs, even after months of daily yoga, are taking some time to adapt to hours sitting crossed legged but it'll come!

It took some time to escape from the haze that hung in the Kathmandu Valley. Winter time, when there is very little rainfall, can be incredibly dusty. People told us that they called the city 'Dustmandu' these days! Huge road improvement projects, which look decades from ever being finished, certainly don't help this. As we climbed the steep, dusty hill from Melamchi Bazaar, the road disintegrated into a brown fine snow drift of dust as deep as your boots. Trucks and jeeps would occasionally pass in a cloud of dust so fine it would enter every crack and crevasse! Fortunately, with our local knowledge, we found a steep cut through that took us away from the road and dust. Eventually we left the road behind altogether and from then on the path led us up through ancient oak and rhododendron forests, many of the shaded valleys crunchy with frost.

Another flattened Tea House along our way

Every now and again you'd pop round a bend in the valley side or reach a clearing in the gnarled ancient forest and see snow capped mountains looming up above. Those moments even took Kami by surprise and he was taking as many photos as us! 

The scale of the valleys and mountains is hard to comprehend at times, with peaks breaking through clouds towering into the sky and valleys plunging thousands of feet below. We tried not to think about that too much as we crossed landslides and scars from the previous monsoon and earthquakes as the path clung onto the hillside at impossible angles.

Mantra painted on boulders from recent landslides following the earthquakes... Om mane padme hum

The weather gave us beautiful clear days with cobalt blue skies and the warm winter Sun had us in shorts and t-shirts but the minute the sun set or you passed into a shaded valley, the cold was intense. At night, we wore every layer of clothing available and three pairs of socks as a minimum and we were still chilly. Cups of tato pani (hot water) helped stave off the chill but there was the ever present grave concern of midnight wees in outside long drop loos that increased with every warm beverage! We often woke to find our bags and clothes frozen which wasn't really surprising given the holes and cracks between the wooden planks and tin roofing that often made our little perfect rooms. One thing we still can't understand is that once a room is finally snugly and warm someone will inevitably walk out and leave the door wide open, letting in the icy night air. While everyone sits shivering, it's inevitably one of us that stands and closes the door! Our Kathmandu purchases are definitely being put to the test!

Melamchi Ghyang village... small plateau bottom leftish!

After three days walking, we reached a village on the opposite side of the valley over looking Melamchi Ghyang. Again, every building was destroyed. Unlike some of the villages we had passed, there were no signs of organised piles of reclaimed stone and wood. Houses lay in rubble untouched since the earthquakes. We walked through the village to the site of one of the oldest schools in the valley and also found it eerily deserted. When we looked more closely the fields, normally so perfectly tended and terraced, were overgrown and no smoke was seen rising from tin chimneys. Kami explained that this sad state actually proceeded the earthquakes and local people had gradually been trickling down the mountainside to the hope of work in the overcrowded Kathmandu valley for years. Now with their homes destroyed and almost no support from the government to rebuild, there was no reason for them to return. There was a small $3000 grant for rebuilding but that was almost impossible to access and covered so little of the rebuild costs that few people have as yet  claimed it. Posters from Oxfam and other NGOs showed examples of how to rebuild your home safely but there has been no support on the ground from engineers and architects to actually enable people to translate a nice picture of a traditional house into a future proof home. Although we did pass some sign of rebuilding, its easy to imagine that without more support and guidance, people will be living in temporary shelters or building homes that are unlikely to withstand another earthquake for years to come.

Rebuilding process starts with reclamation

As night fell, we saw the twinkling lights of homes in Melamchi Ghyang, perched on small plateau at the head of the valley. From everything we'd heard, this community was fighting the trend of heading to the city with a school of 250 children, a health post, two shops, a once daily bus to Kathmandu down a twisting valley road  (only passable outside of monsoon) and the promise of patchy wifi! We woke the next day for a steep drop to the valley floor before an even steeper climb to the village that we would call home for the next 6 weeks where our hosts Purna (Headmaster, CAN chairman and all round pretty inspiring guy) and his wife Zungma (Kami's sister) awaited our arrival.

More soon!

Loads of love 

Ed and Kat xxxxx

Dawn from Melamchi Ghyang looking down towards the Kathmandu Valley