Mountain heights to City lights!

I walked with Ed to where the path split to take him off to Kathmandu and beyond and we said our fond farewells! I returned up the path ready to begin my solo adventure in Melamchi Ghyang, an odd prospect after 4 months in each others pockets! The two weeks passed amazingly quickly. I filled my time with mornings spent in the clinic, usually quite a quiet affair, and then pootling to the school to work on the guidelines we're trying to make. Everyday I went on little walks around the village, finding some beautifully secret spots. The only people I ever bumped into were the wood cutters returning from their days work or the local shepherd herding his unruly goats. They always greeted me with a quizzical look and a 'namaste', as if to say, 'what on earth are you doing wondering round like a little lonesome soul!?'

In those two weeks, I got to know our host family a little more and they couldn't have looked after me better. Amazingly, I was even allowed to start helping with simple chores, carrying water, weeding in the garden and sorting and drying the chives I'd picked with Ibi (Granny of the house!). Its hard to know if its through politeness or a complete lack of faith in our abilities to perform the simplest tasks, but on the whole we were not allowed to do anything to help!

The festivities for the Sonam Buddhist New Year (Loshar - one of the hundreds of New Years they celebrate here!) lasted 10 days and for all this time, there was a seemingly never ending supply of the chewy, oily and slightly odd rice flour breads that are a speciality of the festival. We had them for at least two meals a day and I would be lying if I said I wasn't glad when the mould set in and they became Jenny's (decrepit family dogs) treat... Although with no teeth it was more of a struggle for her!

I went along with the family to a few puja (ceremonies) at what remains of the monestary or Gompa. These consisted of hours and hours spent sitting crossed legged under a tin shelter being kept regularly fed and watered with salty yak butter tea, roksi (millet spirit), daal bhat, rice pudding and even bags of biscuits (ten hours sitting was my record!). In between this sustenance, there was much chanting, praying, ringing of bells and blowing of conch shells. It was an incredible thing to be part of and if only I could stand the unbelievable pain in my hips from the crossed legged sitting, it would have been even better (more yoga required!)! As evening drew in, a huge fire was lit and some simple string instruments came out and the subdued chanting morphed into a repetative and mesmerizing circular dance with men and women singing alternate verses. The roksi flowed freely and we stayed up way passed bedtime, dancing in the moonlight with the huge snow capped mountains silhouetted against an amazingly bright midnight sky.

Before I knew it, I was walking down the hill again to meet Ed after his own solo adventure!

While Kat was preparing for two weeks in solitary confinement in the mountains I trundled off down the valley in search of Kathmandu! I'd like to meet anyone who'd racked up more miles for their GP application... sadly the Royal College doesn't pay travelling expenses! There was a lovely freedom walking down from over 2500m in the Himalaya along a path I'd never walked. Spring was in fast forward as I descended, the rhododendron began to bloom and the once barren rice paddies became a dense green. Purna and his family thought I was a bit mad walking out to Melamchi Bazaar, where I planned to take a bus to Kathmandu, and I'm not sure they believed I'd make it. They somehow seem immune to the constant precipitous drops alongside the route the bus takes out of the mountains which I was very keen to avoid! After 8 hours and 25 miles my feet were starting to regret that decision but I'd made it just in time for the last bus.

The valley had been celebrating Loshar over the weekend and unbeknown to me, everyone was heading back to the city having spent the weekend at home. What followed was one of the most terrifying bus journeys to date! Barely room on the bus to breathe let alone sit (I got incredibly friendly with the men in front and behind me!), standing for five hours on mud rutted tracks, half of the bus suffering from travel sickness and screaming babies being passed around to whoever had most room. We reached Bouda, a Buddhist area of Kathmandu, at 10pm and I skulked through the dark streets looking for a hotel trying to avoid the roaming packs of dogs! Finally, a kind fellow opened the gate and gave me shelter for the night!

Before I knew it, I was touching down on terra firma in London and then sitting my GP assessment a few days later in a Holiday Inn off junction 25 of the M5! It all seemed a bit strange! After a haircut, which took over one and a half hours, and with a new school uniform I looked vaguely presentable and practiced being a doctor again! On the same day, I headed back to Heathrow to see if I could find Kat where I left her, bags packed with dark chocolate with raspberriers, marmite and other essentials! Needless to say, Expedition Manager, R V Moore, shone once again and made sure I reached all essential appointments on time and with great company!

Determined to avoid all contact with Nepalese buses, this time I decided to walk all the way from Kathmandu to find Kat! 40 miles, two days and a horrible amount of up later I found Kat sunning herself almost exactly where I'd left her two weeks before! It really was all very strange! And so the story continues...

(I'm really sorry about the lack of contact while home, I was doing everything not to break the bubble (while spending a lot of time feeling crook on the loo... The Kathmandu Quick Step kindly followed me home!)

Shortly after we arrived in Melamchi Ghyang initially, we heard that two other British volunteers had been living in the village for a few months, now trekking to Everest. All any one could remember of where they were from was that they lived by the sea. We remember joking at the time that they were probably from Cornwall but then thought little of it until we finally got the chance to meet them. The world being the ridiculously small place it is, the answer they gave us was almost inevitable when we asked where they were from.... 'just up from the Tap House off the main road to Perran in St. Agnes!' Not only that, they were planning on meeting two of our friends in Myanmar after leaving Nepal.

The St Agnes Crew..
Kat, Kate, Steve and Ed!

Within minutes, we were chatting away like old friends and catching up on village gossip both in Melamchi Ghyang and back home. Kate and Steve left real life behind in Cornwall and set off on their 'Grey GapYear' (their words not ours!) in October. Their world wide adventure takes in just about every country imaginable but they'd decided to spend the first five months working for Community Action Nepal. Kate, after a three day TEFL course, was plunged in at the deep end teaching the entire nursery class single handed. Nights spent lesson planning followed and amazingly imaginative displays and projects covered the walls of the temporary class room. Steve, a book binder turned plumber back home, set about reinstalling the school solar showers and getting heavily involved in the village water project as well as attending the endless meetings about meetings about arranging more meetings to discuss the previous meeting, which he absolutely loved! Four hours of discussion without a word of English was his favourite afternoon activity!

Aside from gossiping, it was amazing to be able to share our own experiences of life in the village and to compare notes. With some very important guests due to arrive, we took it upon ourselves to tidy up around Purna and Zangmo's house. We four spent an entire day together tending a big bonfire of rubbish which villagers added to throughout the day. It was the perfect place to chat away for hours, reminiscing about Cornwall and the funny characters there as well as stories and tales from travels so far. Every now and then, pinching ourselves that somehow, we all lived in St. Agnes and yet had never met until we wound up in this tiny Himalayan village. It will be fantastic to meet up in our little Cornish village when we get back home and chew the cud again. Hopefully not in front of a fire of shivelling plastic packaging and toxic fumes coming from a pair of old slowly melting Wellington boots... sorry again World!

Shortly after Kate and Steve arrived back in the village, having bravely gone on the annual five day Year 9 school excursion, we jumped on a weather window and headed off, rucksacks bursting, into the mountains. After a very heartfelt goodbye with Zangmo, Meme and Ibi and a 'see you soon' with Kate and Steve, we plodded off up the almost vertical ascent to Thadapati, 1000m up in 4km was almost too much to bear! 

Our Melamchi Ghyang family... Ed, Steve (front), Kat, Meme, Ibi, Zangmo, (middle) Kate (back)

We topped out at 3600m feeling very wobbly, heads throbbing from the altitude, wishing we hadn't packed those three juggling balls, whittling knife, harmonica, tin whistle and other assorted ridiculous 'essential' items.

Our plan was to trek by ourselves for two weeks, first heading into the Langtang National Park over a 4600m snowy pass to the frozen lakes of Gosainkunda.

A daunting view of the pass...The snowy valley in the centre of the photo on the far ridge.

We then wanted to walk all the way back to Kathmandu, from summit (nearly!) to city, stopping in on two other CAN projects on the way down.

After flogging ourselves on the climb to Thadapati we decided, in the spirit of all great expeditions, to leave a depot of all non essentials to pick up on our return journey. We had been reading 'The worst journey in the world', a mind boggling account of Scott's tragic Antarctic expedition, where depots were a very common theme! So far we had been climbing through huge oak and rhododendron forests, some flowers just about bursting through. The undergrowth was thick with bamboo and thousands of scattered tiny purple primulas carpeting the mossy ground.

With spring ever accelerating, the forest was alive with butterflies warming their wings in the sunshine, bees buzzing about and birds chirruping away. We were ever vigilant for the very elusive and heartbreakingly cute Red Panda...We were a little mistaken as to their size, we imagined something similar to a small bear but were later told they are about as big as a small dog...no wonder we didn't spot one!

As we climbed, the vegetation thinned and the tree line approached, the snow patches grew and the air became colder and thinner. We could see the pass ahead and it seemed pretty daunting but step by step we got closer and after a few days we stood on top next to the fluttering colourful prayer flags surrounded by pristine snow and frozen tarns, gazing at white capped mountains over 8000m.

Adding our offering to the mountain gods!

10 points if you can spot Ed!

No points for spotting Ed here.

Beautiful and snowy descent from the pass to Gosainkunda.

Me trying to work out how to use the timer on the camera and Ed getting bored!

The weather was kind to us and with our thermos full of coffee and a celebratory pack of chocolate bourbons we stopped for a cuppa, not a soul in sight. It was a short but snowy descent to Gosainkunda where we spent the next two days exploring the icy landscape, climbing to nearby views points and balancing stone towers on the frozen lakeside (there were hundreds Dave!).

One of the many Anthony Goldworthy style installations around the frozen lake at Gosainkunda

We had two of the most stunning cloud inversion sunsets which made the persistent headaches and awful nights sleep at altitude completely worth it.

Our mountain time machine was put in fast forward as we descended back over the pass and spring sprung all around us once again. We even spotted some beautiful white Himalayan orchids hanging delicately on the mossy tree trunks.

But the weather can change in an instant and we were soon plunged into cloud and sat out a cold, windy, rainy day huddled round a fire playing cards in a cosy mountain lodge.

Just after leaving Langtang National Park, we arrived in Kutumsang. Another tiny village perched on a ridge line and completely destroyed by the earthquakes. It offered panoramic views and a lovely warm wind that whipped up the valley in the afternoon. We stayed for three days and visited the CAN supported health post and school, both of which are in the process of being rebuilt. We arrived at the health post minutes after a young mother had delivered a healthy baby in the "birthing centre", amazingly this turned out to be a ShelterBox relief tent, sent all the way from Cornwall nearly two years ago after the earthquakes.

Shelter Box tent...or Birthing Centre

I (Kat, not Ed, I think he was a little scared!) popped my head into the tent to find a relatively well equipped delivery 'room', a happily exhausted mum, sleeping baby and placenta still in a kidney dish under the bench!

The school was in an equally upsetting state. The four classrooms, kitchen and teachers accommodation were made from large pieces of bent corrugated iron more reminiscent of pigloos back home than a school.

Pigloos....or Primary School

Whereas the children in Melamchi Ghyang all arrived at school in smart clean uniforms, the tiny little scraps we passed walking themselves to school here looked dirty in tattered clothes, some having to walk for over an hour at the age of 5 to get to and from school. One of the teachers openly admitted that the levels of education in the surrounding communities were much lower than that of Melamchi Ghyang and the difference was tangible. It made the work Purna had done over the last 32 years in Melamchi Ghyang even more incredible, utterly changing the quality of life and expectation of the local people there. Kutumsang appeared in desperate need of help which makes the work by CAN all the more important.

We left Kutumsamg to begin our walk back to the city lights. It was a fantastic feeling walking under our own steam, bags on our back, master's of our own destiny! Being the fearless explorers we now are, we even plucked up the courage to wild camp in the Himalayan foothills, braving the constant nocturnal snuffles of wild boar, the twit-twooing of owls and ever present threat of bears, snow leopards and yetis! We slept terribly, twitching at every snapped twig but we woke to a beautiful sunrise over a frosty field feeling very proud of ourselves! Bellies full of the most pathetic excuse for a Tibetan Bread this side of Lhasa, we meandered along a misty forgotten stone path that wound down through the forest until we eventually saw the dusty city below. A sure sign that we were re-entering civilisation and our little bubble was bursting came in the form of a huge group of Korean day hikers, listening to Guns and Roses, Sweet Child O'Mine on their phones as they went!

The ridge that took us all the way to Bouda, a predominantly Buddhist area of Kathmandu and where our friend Kami lives, was a perfect transition from mountain to city and before we knew it we were dodging traffic and inhaling the dust of Kathmandu on its city streets.

What an earthquake can do to a new, reinforced steel concrete building.

We could see the huge white dome of the stupa at Boudhanath from miles away and it guided our route into the city. We reached the stupa just before sunset and joined the hundreds of Buddhist pilgrims making their slow clockwise circumambulation in the evening light. The change from mountain to city was complete!

Joining the crowds around Bouda Stupa

These two county mice have been spending the last week having hot showers, drinking proper coffee, washing clothes and generally reconnecting with life while planning the next adventure to the Eastern Himalayas. We also managed to acquaint ourselves with an excellent Ophthalmologist after Kat had a bit of a problem with one of her eyes which is hopefully all sorted now, oh and I got my GP job in Cornwall... those thousands or air miles to Dubai and the UK were worth it, although the thought of full time employment brings me out in a cold sweat!

So now, on Tuesday we're off back to the hills to visit our next clinic and hopefully see those snow capped mountains once again!

Loads of love, hope you're all good and that spring is on its way back home!

Ed and Kat

Xxxxxxx

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