Day 2
Morning routine:
At the house there is no indoor tap so we need to collect water from spring every morning. The spring is a 5 min walk along the rice fields and takes some balance.
7am: Breakfast of tea and crackers/ + homegrown bananas.
7.30am: 30 min walk through terraces to burn off breakfast
9am: ‘lunch’ of rice, dhalbat and curry.
Curry for breakfast is a new concept for us and takes some adjustment.
Walk into the town to meet the teachers and check out Khudi.
The actual town of Khudi is around a 20 min/1.5km walk down a rough track. We pass other farms and houses along route and soon become a talking point with the local kids. “Namaste”, “What is your name?”, “Do you have sweets?”
We spot a local restaurant at the start of the town next to the bus stop with roof top and good WiFi. This would be a regular hanging out place to kill time, research and upload pics and blog posts.
As this is our first day, we walk to school with Bishnu to meet with principal – we understand that our plan for teaching for 3 weeks is now down to 1 day (our last day) due to the following:
- Exams- 5 days
- Sports day- 2 days
- Holiday- 15 days
It took us a couple of hours to re adjust our expectations from passing on our pearls of wisdom to simply living in with a family and contributing to the community with help in the house, farm and whatever else they needed.
We sit with teachers, Trey with the computer teacher and me with the craft teacher to see if there is anything we can help with.
Whilst I learnt about the arts and crafts that they have done, Trey learnt an interesting method of cleaning a computer which involved gasoline and a toothbrush.
We both leave feeling confused and frustrated with the situation but we have errands to run so we choose just to get on with it.
After our school visit we got the white knuckle bus to Besisahar to get new sim for Trey’s phone and to discuss how we should rethink the plan for the month. The rough plan looked like this:
- Stay in Khudi until Sports Day was completed in case the school needed help
- Take six days between this and the start of the festival to trek on the Annapurna Circuit
- Spend the festival of Desain with the family which apparently involves slaughtering a goat, making tall swings out of bamboo, giving gifts and eating.
- Go to Pokhara for a five day yoga and Meditation retreat
- Head to Kathmandu for a couple of days to try to find some space invaders and to to finish up the month here.
We arrived back to the house in darkness around 6pm as the power was out. This happens a lot. Like, every day- our headlamps are coming in handy.
Evening routine:
5.30-6.00pm: Ginger tea and a snack of fried rice, crackers or both
8.00pm: Dinner of dhalbat and rice with curry
Bed
Day 3
We are amazed by Goma’s incredible warmth, insisting that we eat more food, and that I drink water to gain weight ;-). She has a warm smile and cheeky laugh.
By day three we’d got used to morning food routine and started to feel a ‘little’ more comfortable with cold showers and an outside squat toilet.
The evening of day three, however, sets us back a little as we hear something on the roof-screeching, scurrying around, and causing the ceiling of our room to shake.
“Oh, don’t worry, it’s just a mother rat being chased by it’s babies who want milk.”
The chasing continued for around 20 mins after which either the mama rat gave in or the babies got bored.
Day 4
We walked to the local hydro plant, waterfall and dam with Goma. Apparently China is investing in the area with the hydro plant and the nearby dam. Apparently China and India are investing heavily in hydro to have influence in this shared neighbor. Despite the huge amount of electricity being produced, we still have power outages daily.
The walk took a couple of hours and was along a dusty 4×4 track so by the end we were ready to take in some shade at a local tea house. En route we saw the start of the Annapurna trekking route and the guest houses which was helpful ahead of our trek.
Day 5
Went to the school again to try our luck at some kind of help. Sounds a little desperate doesn’t it? Sadly the only assistance we could offer was to help with their printer for the margin settings and to offer up alternatives to Adobe Illustrator for logo design (Word/ insert/ shapes/ text box if you’re curious).
We later went to Besisahar on the white knuckle bus to get trekking permits and cash from the ATM (tried 4 got lucky with 1).
Back home to the farm T helped with animals by putting the goats away in a wooden crate to keep them safe from the local wild tiger that’s found in the nearby woods – I kid you not (no pun intended).
Day 6
Went to school, again, to try to help with their sports day.
We walked 1.5km with the kids (including daughters we live with, Sandha and Smritti) along another 4×4 track through rivers to get to the field. There we watched the mini football tournament – unfortunately there was no option for us to help.
At 5pm when the sun was setting we walked the girls back home 3km.
T and I decided that we would start trekking the next day.
No Shrubs 