New Year Walking

We’d planned to spend Friday 1st January 2010 with some friends at a Guest House that’s part of Anandaban Leprosy Hospital (tlmnepal.org) about 10 miles south of Kathmandu. The plan was to get a bus to the hospital and then go for a walk in the surrounding area, then stay the night and do a similar thing in the morning before getting a bus back.

The best laid plans of course always come unstuck, particularly here in Nepal. Unfortunately a Valley Bundh(strike) was called for New Years Day so no buses would be running. Undeterred, well sort of, we decided to walk instead. Some friends have kindly gifted us a baby carrier backpack for Samuel which worked really well, although Dan was grateful that our friend Jon offered to help carry for some of the time.

So Friday we set out for a ten mile walk, thankfully along mostly flat roads. The road we walked along normally has 1000 trucks a day going up and down it as there is a big quarry near the hospital but because of the bundh it was absolutely void of traffic. This made for a really peaceful walk and we provided much of the entertainment as we walked through the villages with a 7 month old baby.

The guest house was lovely and homely and we enjoyed an evening of chatting and playing games before heading back the next day. We walked over the hills for about 5-6 miles to the next village when we got a bus back into Kathmandu. It was a great way to spend some time with our friends who leave Nepal at the end of the month to return to the UK and a great way to see in the New Year.

Happy New Year Everyone

Christmas Day in Nepal

I thought for this blog you might like to know what Christmas Day was like for us here in Nepal, as it probably has many similarities and some differences to the Christmas Day you celebrated.

Samuel woke us up nice and early on Christmas Day, not because he was excited, but because that is what he does every morning. Soon after we had a breakfast of porridge and tea, the same as most days this time of year. Porridge is a must most mornings as it warms you up, the temperature here at the minute means you can see your breath indoors. We then opened our presents and soon after headed off for church – not that different to a British Christmas so far.


However Church on Christmas Day in Nepal is significantly different. It’s a day when many Hindu’s come to church as they understand it’s a special day, so most churches put on special “programmes” rather than a nice short Christmas service. Our church lasted 2 ½ hours, and included amongst other things a traditional Nepali dance.

However, some of our friends’ churches went on all day (although most of them didn’t stay the whole day). After church a nice big DhalBhat (lentils & rice) with vegetable and chicken curry was put on. We managed to resist the server’s efforts to give huge quantities to the Bideshi’s so as not to spoil our western Christmas dinner coming later.

Soon after we headed home and started work on cooking our Christmas dinner, for which we had 6 guests coming. We were aiming for a 4pm serving, a slightly strange time, but we couldn’t do it much earlier due to the length of church and size of dhalbhats that took up the morning and early afternoon. But then the power went off at four making the other option 8pm which seemed a bit late. However come about three thirty it was clear that the large oven we were borrowing to cook the chicken breasts and potatoes was still not much better than warm, despite having been on for an hour. We faced the prospect of a ruined dinner, but we managed to squeeze enough chicken breasts into our little oven and we decided boiled potatoes would be fine thereby enabling us to enjoy our Christmas lunch at 4pm as planned.

Christmas lunch was especially enjoyable for Samuel who was given a selection of vegetables to enjoy. We were both distracted with being hosts and the lively conversation and suddenly realised that Samuel hadn’t quite grasped the idea behind Broccoli. As you can hopefully see, very little ended in his mouth, he even managed to get some in his eye!

After lunch we had a ninety minute wait for desert as we needed the power back on to heat our Christmas pudding (steaming would have taken much longer we realised too late). We then enjoyed an evening of games, chatting and eating various desserts; we had a choice of Christmas pudding, Banoffee pie and mincemeat pie plus a selection of cookies, mince pies and other nibbles. Then at 8.45pm came the moment we’d all been waiting for. Unfortunately it couldn’t be found anywhere online to view it live, but we were able to listen live to the Queen’s speech. A few more games and trips to the pudding collection brought our first Christmas as a family to a close.

Happy Christmas

Christmas time in Nepal is not quite like the UK, as you can probably imagine. For starters we’ve only really become aware that Christmas is upon us in the last 7 days. Not like the UK where cards where appearing in some shops before we left back in September.

In the last 7 days we’ve had the Kathmandu Chorale, a choral group made up of mostly ex-pats, give their annual Christmas Concert, the British Embassy Christmas Carol Service and KISC’s Christmas Carol Service. They are already forming part of our Christmas tradition here (indeed for more information on them just look at last December’s blog).

This year there is also the threat of a nationwide, general strike by the Maoist party. They are in the third phase of the protests about the actions of the President back in May. The strike they are planning will initially be for just 3 days, but if their demands aren’t met they are saying it will continue indefinitely. This means that there is the possibility of everything being closed for quite some time if the strike is as serious as some believe it might be. So yesterday we went out and stocked up, including everything we need for Christmas dinner.

Changing tact completely Copenhagen has dominated the news everywhere this last week or so. You may have seen on the news that the Nepali government held a Cabinet meeting at Everest Base Camp a few weeks back, with the aim of raising awareness of Climate Change; flying everyone up there in helicopters for a short meeting. They’ve also taken about 400 delegates to Copenhagen. The words footprint and Carbon spring to mind.

Of course it is the poorer countries, like Nepal, that are likely to be most affected by changes to the climate. We saw evidence of this last year when trekking in the Himalayas we saw a Glacier that had retreated quite some way, compared to photos of just 50 years ago. However, we know it is also many of the poorer countries that are the worst polluters as they strive to catch up with the west in terms of development. But change is happening so fast in places like Kathmandu policies and procedures aren’t put in place to moderate the development and protect the environment. We see that daily with streets thronging with traffic pumping out thick black fumes and the outskirts of the city littered with hundreds of brick factories making the bricks to keep up with the city’s unregulated growth and adding plenty of their own fumes to the atmosphere.

Anyway, Hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Dan, Becky & Samuel

General News

We’ve been meaning to update our blog for a little while now, but keep struggling to think of a good topic. So this time the update will just contain some general news.

This week Samuel has started on grown up food. Well if you can call carrot mashed up and mixed with breast milk, grown up food. He seems to be taking to it okay so far, although he’s not had too many delicacies so far. However we’re aiming for smoked salmon and caviar soon. He’ll need to learn to get a bit more in his mouth before we actually try that on him. The faces he pulls when he tries new flavours are quite something, but he gobbles it down fairly quickly.

They’ve gone away over the last couple of days, but over the previous few weeks we’ve had some truly spectacular views of the mountains. October/November is usually one of the best times of the year to get good views of them and this season has given us some of the best views we’ve ever had. I think we’ve especially enjoyed them recently as we now have a flat where we can actually see them from inside and also immediate access to the roof which gives us a great panorama.

We are now half way through the second term of the school year at KISC and everything seems to be going well for Dan as he works away there. However the Secondary Principal goes back to Australia for 6 months in 2 weeks, which will mean a lot more work for him. Becky has settled in well to life as a full time Mum and has already joined a number of mums and tots style groups. Some good friends, who also had their first baby in the summer, have just returned to Kathmandu. The wife of the couple and Becky have been out together this week which caused even more interest than normal.

Tihar

Last week saw the Hindu festival of Tihar, better known as Diwali outside of Nepal. This is the festival of lights, so it kind of feels like Christmas with everyone putting up lots of lights inside and outside their houses. They also set of lots of fireworks and bangers, which tend to be very loud, but thankfully never disturbed Samuel.

The festival lasts for about 5 days and includes one day of worshipping the dogs, so they put garlands and tikka’s on the dogs. There is another day where they worship the god of wealth and as part of this they paint a path with red clay from the money box out onto the street. They then decorate the street end of the path and often light the path with tea lights. This festival is surely the best for burgulars.

It is a much happier festival than Dhosai which was at the beginning of October and Nepali’s seem to really enjoy the celebrations. There were numerous parties going on in many of the houses nearby, including one where the (bad) Karaoke went on until 2 in the morning. We were not impressed.

As a family we are starting to feel very settled in our flat and are starting to make it feel more homely for us. Just yesterday we moved all the furniture (inherited from the previous tenants) in our living room around to get a layout that is just ours.

Two weeks in

We've now been back in Kathmandu for 2 weeks and felt it was probably about time we updated our blog. Time has flown, but also it's starting to feel like we were never away from Kathmandu. It has been great seeing friends, catching up on news and just spending time with people we've not seen for 5 months. The welcome and help we have recieved has been great, both at the airport (see photo), with settling into our flat and even having meals provided for the first week. It has reminded us about the great community atmosphere here which is one of the things we've loved about living as ex-pats.

Samuel has seemed to cope fine with everything that has been thrown at him so far. It's a lot hotter than in the UK, despite the Indian Summer you're having, but he's been fine with that. But it's also all the things we got used to before, but are very different to the UK, he's taken in his stride. Things like the traffic, the attention recieved from the locals and the dogs barking as we walk along the streets. The Nepali's are enjoying him too, they are quite used to Bideshi's (foreigners) walking the streets, but to see a Bideshi with a baby causes much pointing, staring and quite a bit of poking and silly voices. Much like the time he spent with his Grandfathers!

Time to Return

Well time is rapidly running out on our stay here in the UK. Our suitcases are partially packed and will probably face being repacked several times before we leave on Monday. Many goodbyes have been said, but some, most notably those to Samuel’s grandparents remain.

We have had a great time here in the UK but we are also looking forward to returning to Nepal. Of course the main event of our time here has been the arrival of Samuel. He has coped remarkably well with our attempts at parenting and is thriving in all ways a child can at 3 months. Of course I am slightly biased but we think he’s great. He was just telling us yesterday how keen he is to get to Nepal and meet everyone there.

This Sunday we had a Service of Dedication for Samuel which was a great event. Many of our family and friends were able to join with us for this special event, including four of Samuel’s five Great-Grandparents. We really enjoyed the service and it was a great chance for us to refocus on what we are doing and why we are doing it, both as parents and as we return to Nepal.

So now all that is left is packing, more packing, goodbyes, a wedding on Saturday and then some more packing. It’s going to be busy.