So, I was talking to my friends about trying to get into writing about my travels, and decided that I could manage 500 words one day… and then I wrote another 500. So here is 1000 words exactly (to be continued…?), on a favourite Nepalese memory.

29 November 2019 – 5 December 2019
Ghyangphedi, Nepal

Following my excursion to Everest Base Camp, I had a few days off in Kathmandu and had then signed up to do some volunteering in the rural hills north of the capital.

Ghyangphedi is a remote village in the Nuwakot district of Nepal, just outside Langtang National Park. Nepal was hit by an 7.8 magnitude earthquake in April 2015. The earthquake partially destroyed the well-known “Monkey Temple”, Swayambhunath Stupa, in Kathmandu, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of Nepal’s holiest places. It also caused an avalanche that completely destroyed the village of Langtang to the north, killing over 300 people. In Ghyangphedi, 10% of the population lost their lives – a significant loss for such a remote community. Across Nepal, nearly 9,000 people died from the Gorkha quake and hundreds more would have struggled to survive in the aftermath.

I decided to volunteer in Ghyangphedi with an organisation called Sasane. I first came across Sasane a few weeks previously, in Pokhara, as part of the Nepalese portion of my G Adventures tour. We visited a kind of “safe house” where the women ran a workshop for us, teaching us how to make momos (a kind of dumpling). Sasane is a survivor-led, female protection organisation, working to prevent human trafficking, child marriage and gender-based violence across Nepal. They primarily work in remote locations where the potential for female exploitation is high, often due to the lack of educational access for women and girls, as well as due to particular community attitudes. I was inspired by the women I met in Pokhara and the work that Sasane do, and knew that I wanted to work with them. The safe house is there because, sadly, if they survive, many women are disowned by their families after becoming victims of human trafficking. Sasane gives them a home, a family, and a purpose.

So I had signed up to volunteer in the mountains of Ghyangphedi, teaching English to some of the kids in the villages there, for a few days. My guide was Jashuda Rai and you could tell that she was a strong woman. I didn’t know her backstory, it didn’t feel appropriate to ask, but I did know that her family had accepted her back after she had been rescued, and that she was now living with her parents. I don’t know how old she was but she appeared to be a similar age to me, around mid-twenties, although she could have been older. She spoke some English – enough for us to get by for the week with the assistance of hand gestures, although her English writing skills were better. That being said, the only Nepalese I’d managed to pick up was “Hello”, “Yes”, “No”, “Thank you” and “Cold”! (Namaskāra, Hō, Chaina, Dhan’yavāda, Cisō).

I’d met with Jas a few days prior to our trip and I’d received my packing list and the choice of whether to get to Ghyangphedi by car, with a driver, or take the local bus. Of course, I opted for the cheaper and more experiential trip on the bus!

The bus trip is probably still one of my favourite/most amusing memories, although I look back fondly on Nepal in general. The bus was exactly as you might expect. It was packed. There was a chicken on an elderly lady’s lap, in a small cage – who knew where it had been for the day! Despite the crowdedness, the thing that struck me was how calm and peaceful it all felt. It didn’t feel manic. People were not pushing (despite the lack of space and seating), but instead were very respectful to people’s personal space, to giving up their seat to someone less mobile than themselves, including myself with my 50L backpack on. Everyone was good natured and in no rush. What also surprised me is that I was told that the bus was a 4×4! Although after experiencing the roads – hairpin corners around cliffside edges, some roads that were basically just rubble, and steep inclines – I could see why. The journey was only about 50 miles/80 km but it took over 3 hours. We did get a little side-of-the-road break after about two hours to use a very well-used roadside toilet as well as pick up some snacks from one of the little wooden stalls that lined the road.

If you look up “Shree Ghyangfedi Sec School” on an online map, you can see where the bus dropped us off (and the roads that led us there!). This school was built by an international development organisation called Adara Group following the earthquake and opened in June 2017. We walked for a while to the village that we were going to be staying in that night. In fact, from then on, we walked everywhere as there were no roads to these villages. Upon reaching the village, I met the couple who were going to be putting us up for the night. They were shy. For some reason that seems odd now, I offered them my knife-fork-spoon bamboo cutlery set that I had been travelling with. Nepalese people tend not to use knives and forks as they have chopsticks and spoons, and my host had to ask Jas what it was for! I felt a bit silly but hopefully they appreciated the gesture.

Another highlight of the trip was the next experience – Jas took me over to a DIY shelter (a corrugated iron roof propped up by large tree branches) where four older women were making their own wine! It’s called raksi, similar to Japanese sake, and made from millet grain. There was a huge pot over an open wood fire and the wine was being distilled. These women were great, and very welcoming (perhaps due to them being slightly intoxicated?) and I really enjoyed sitting with them, taking pictures, and trying some of their homemade alcohol. One of them even gave me a cuddle. It was such a

And that’s 1000 words exactly! More to come…