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Kathmandu: Your Moment of Zen

July 18th, 2007

Three months have flown by. We’ve left Nepal. We’ve said goodbye to all the kids. There were a few tears, none of which were shed by them. We will miss them tremendously, and are already considering how we can get back to the orphanage in a year or two. But ahead of us is a bit over two months of travel around Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, before returning to Australia and the real world.

But before I finish up, here’s a little tidbit that I neglected to include in my previous posts:

In NepaL I often wore a Mighty Mouse t-shirt. The first time I wore it, one of the young kids (unfortunately I can’t remember who it was) looked up at the shirt, pointed at it in excitement, and enthusiastically proclaimed; “Mickey Mouse Superman!”

Like I said, we’re gonna miss those kids!

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Kathmandu: The Daily Show, Evening Edition

July 16th, 2007

Life at the orphanage is rigidly structured. It has to be when you’re trying to control forty kids.

Bec and I pick the youngest ones up from school at 3.30pm. Before they leave, the whole school lines up in the courtyard to do exercises; “Arms out! Arms up! Arms down! etc.” We poke our heads over the fence and try to catch the eyes of the little ones. Six year old Nisha is normally the one to see us first, and a cheeky smile spreads across her face. She quickly glances around her to make sure no teachers are about, and then sneaks in a quick wave, before turning her head back to the front to finish her exercises.

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Kathmandu: The Daily Show, Morning Edition

July 15th, 2007

Bec and I have less than a week left in Nepal. Wow. They say time flies when you’re having fun. And apparently, they were right. Before we leave, I thought I’d better at least try and give you an insight into our daily life here.

The day starts involuntarily at 5am, when we are woken violently by the doberman next door. This big, beautiful dog spends 95% of its day locked in a tiny kennel; one so small that it’s snout sticks out the front bars. I cannot feel sorry for this dog though, because it is at 5am every single morning that it begins barking. Barking frantically, as though it is being attacked. Barking as loud as a jet engine, continuously, until at least 6am. Every morning. And even though we’re up on the second floor and the dog is down in the yard below our window, it sounds as though the bastard is standing at the end of our bed. (Unless you’re Nepali and reading this, that is, in which case by ‘our bed’ I mean ‘my bed’, because we’d never live in sin by sleeping side-by-side without being married. At least, that’s what we tell the kids when they ask. And believe me, they do ask. Every single one of them, right down to the six-year-olds; “Dave sir, you and Bec miss, sleep same room.” “No no no, not until we’re married.”). I’d like to shoot that dog, if Bec doesn’t beat me to it.

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Sagarmatha House: The Little Things

June 10th, 2007

Wow. We’ve been in Nepal for over six weeks now. Damn that’s gone fast. Faster than a monkey stealing your banana (and I’ve seen that happen here. Whoa, those monkeys don’t mess around folks!)

Bec and I have settled into a nice routine now. The initial impact of immersing yourself in a culture vastly different from your own has passed, and we’re feeling right at home with the kids at the orphanage. They make me smile every day. Huge grins that spread right across my face. And I find it’s the little things that make me smile the most.

I smile when Prakash asks Bec if he can use the eraser during homework time. Prakash (that’s him on the left in the photo, Pawan is the boy on the right) is one of the youngest boys at Sagarmatha house, perhaps five or six years old, and he’s, well, he’s a little slow. A few sheep short in the top paddock, if you know what I mean (or, as Kamal, the house manager put it one day as Prakash was the last kid to get his shoes on, “Prakash is, hmmmm, mental”). Bec has been teaching him and the other young kids to ask for things in English, rather than just point and utter a single word. So during the couple of hours after school, when the kids sit down to do their homework, we hear a chorus of “Bec miss, can I have the eraser please?” and “Dave sir, can I have the sharpener please?” Except the words don’t come out quite as fast as you probably read them then. Prakash is the slowest. The words slide out of his mouth heavy and slow, and he nods his head dramatically with each word. It’s as though his eyes, well, his whole damn head, are following a bouncing ball, and each word comes out as the ball hits the ground;

“Can……..I………hab………de………elaser……….pwease?” And he’s so sincere and he tries so hard and it makes me smile every time.

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Annapurna Sanctuary Trek: Photos, Baby!

June 2nd, 2007

Day ten was our final day of trekking. Just a short 2 hour walk down to the bottom of the Annapurna Range, about a half hour drive from the town of Pokhara. Rather than bore you with more words, given that it was a pretty uneventful last day (save for the feeling I got when we first got back in a car. After not having seen a vehicle for ten days, and going everywhere on foot, the sensation of sitting still but moving along at amazing speeds (well, maybe 60km/hr, so only really amazing if you’ve just spent ten days in the mountains. And did I just put a bracket within a bracket?! Damn, somebody help me here) was incredible. Although it lasted for all of about ten minutes before it felt normal again.), I’m going to throw a whole crap load of photos at you. Mostly these will just be snaps that help tell the stories I’ve been trying to get across here (the better, more picturesque shots I’ll save for flickr). So, if you like looking at photos of gorgeous mountains, bustling rivers, and skinny white guys with red beards and nerdy glasses sweating buckets, then by golly this is your lucky day!

Day One self portrait:
I made sure I took at least one self portrait a day. These generally range between me looking absolutely buggered and covered in sweat, and me looking absolutely stoked to be in the mountains. This one is during our thigh-burning climb at the end of day one. It was about at this point that I thought I would actually die on the trek. (click on the picture for a larger view)

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Annapurna Sanctuary Trek, Day Nine: Dry the Rain

May 30th, 2007

It had been a restless night’s sleep, with the fierce storm keeping me awake, and, when I finally slept, thoughts of horror movies racing through my mind.

I continued to doze in the morning well after the sun had come up; half awake, half asleep. It was around 7am when I turned in bed from my side onto my stomach, pushing the pillow to one side.

That was when I saw it. I began to lay my head down onto my arms, but stopped, frozen, shocked. It was massive. The biggest fucking spider I’ve ever seen in my entire twenty-seven years, sitting on the bed’s head-board. And I’m from Australia, so I’ve seen some big-arse spiders in my time. But this fuckin’ monster was HUGE. I’m talking the size of my entire hand. Its body was the size of an egg, and it’s legs bent up and out like the type of spiders you see in horror movies where they’re the size of houses. And it was just inches from my head. I thought it was going to eat me.

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Annapurna Sanctuary Trek, Day Eight: Black Sheep Boy

May 29th, 2007

Upon leaving the village of Sinuwa, the first half of the day was spent retracing our steps from a few days earlier back to Chomrong. This meant a forty minute descent down one side of the valley below Sinuwa, and a solid hour’s climb up the other side.

Herds of buffalo again blocked our path along the way. A gentle stream flowed beside us where there had been only dry rocks previously. Waterfalls jumped down the cliffs around us where before there had been only trees and hard rock. The monsoon wasn’t far away.

As I climbed up the stairs to Chomrong, straining to put each foot on the next stone step and lagging a little behind the others, I was overtaken by six or seven kids in their best school uniform bounding up the steps, as though each step was a mini trampoline. When they reached Salik, our nineteen-year-old porter, the two littlest kids, perhaps aged five or six, grabbed his hand and he helped them up the final few steps to their school.

As if he didn’t have enough to carry already!

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Annapurna Sanctuary Trek, Day Seven: I Made a Lovers Prayer

May 28th, 2007

Twice through the night I had to rise and rush to the bathroom, but not before putting on a couple of layers of clothing. It was awfully cold up there at Annapurna Base Camp.

Despite my headache I stopped outside in the dark, switched off my head torch and looked up to the twinkling sky. Thousands of stars waited up there, staring down like so many unblinking eyes, watching me grinning like a fool. There was enough light to see the silhouettes of the mountains all around me. There was no noise. It was beautiful.

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Annapurna Trek, Day Six: Thin Captain Crackers

May 27th, 2007

Day six, it was the day we would reach our main destination, Annapurna Base Camp at 4130m. But to get there we would have to climb over 1200m through bear-infested forests, life-threatening avalanche routes and cloud so think you couldn’t see the glasses on your nose.

Ok, so I exxagerate a little, but we did climb over 1200m and it was bloody hard work.

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Annapurna Sanctuary Trek, Day Five: Breathless

May 24th, 2007

Shafts of sunlight dissected the dark morning sky, shooting straight and bold from behind the glorious fish-tailed peak of Machhapuchhre. It was 5.30am, and I was stood on the balcony of our guest house, once again rising before the big yellow ball of energy hit the sky. A lazy morning was spent watching the sun climb up over the mountains before us; it was 8.30am before we left the village of Chomrong.

For the first time on this trek, my legs were sore. My calves had paid the price of our descent from Poon Hill at 3210m to Chomrong at 2210m. We had a long day ahead of us; a six hour walk and 1100m climb to the Himalayan Hotel, which would be our last stop before reaching Annapurna Base Camp the following day.

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