| 1. The Group Experience | ||
| The
first
part
of
the trip was a one-week Nepali language course (including one day
sightseeing). Tapaaiko naam ke ho? Mero Nepali naam Prakash ho! ;o) I was in a group of 10 volunteers, all bound for different projects afterwards, from a choice of: English teaching, orphanage work, construction work in a village or helping at a health post. We were staying in a RCDP-managed guesthouse in Kathmandu, where the class room was located as well. The group was a nice mixture of nations and ages, and I found this week a pleasant start to get into the unknown depths of the 'volunteering business'. After the language course most of us went off to the second stage of country introduction: village stay, rafting, trekking. Not for me, though, because my vacation time was pitiful short, that I skipped that part and began working in my placement immediately afterwards. |
 The language class... Lessons began at 10 a.m., for only about 4 hours a day, so it was pretty relaxed. But everyone did some 'homework' on his own, so in the end we were able to speak a respectable little bit of Nepali! Here we have Canada, England, Germany, USA, Australia sitting side by side ;o) |
||
 Tapaaiko pariwaarma ko ko chha? Means: Who belongs to your family? Our friendly teacher Raj wanted to know all about it ;o) |
||
Break time on a sunny morning. There was a nicely tended mini lawn behind the guesthouse, and lying on it was definitely comfortable ;o) |
||
 After lessons there was enough time to do some exploring in the neighbourhood to get a first glimpse of what Nepal (or at least Kathmandu) is about. Here a typical tailor store ;o) |
||
Volunteers on their way to downtown Kathmandu.... The roads were mostly in a very poor condition. Because at the end of September the Monsoon was not quite over. When it rained, many places became a nice mess of mud you had to walk through. As for paved streets: There was always a wide choice of potholes to fall into ;o) |
||
 The guesthouse was located almost immediate beneath the famous Swayambhu temple hill, or monkey temple, because of the many monkeys living in the surrounding forest. A beautiful sight... |
||
 Locals turning the many prayer wheels set into the walls of a Tibetan temple at the base of Swayambhu. Nepal is mainly a Hindu country, but because of many people exiled from Tibet there are many important Buddhist temples and monasteries, like Swayambhu |
||
 Inside a temple building |
||
 Kathmandu lies in a beautiful green valley, but crowds it with a sea of rather simple houses, no particular skyline and -last, but not least- awfully smoggy traffic that I found even worse than in Delhi or Bangkok! If you want to enjoy the beauty of the country, you need to travel at least a little outside of the city. Then soon you will have rich, green impressions of what Nepal is 'really' like... |
||
 The end of the language course means departure: For most of the participants to a three-day village stay outside of Kathmandu, for me the transition to my placement at an orphanage... On that day the fading monsoon provided us with one of its last rainshowers. |
||
