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Dhaulagiri: Part of the Family

Tuesday, May 1st, 2007

We met Conor on the afternoon of Sunday Arpil 22nd. After spending three days in Thamel, the backpacker district of Kathmandu (which is hardly Kathmandu at all, given it’s Western style bars, trekking stores, travel agents and internet cafes), it was time to head out to the orphanage.

It was sort of strange meeting Conor, given that Bec and I had been reading his travel blog for a couple of years now, and that we’d been in regular email contact for the previous five or six months. But as he took us on a tour around the orphanages, we hit it off like the old buddies we felt.

[read on]

Kathmandu: The how’s and the why’s

Sunday, April 29th, 2007

So, how did we end up in Kathmandu volunteering at an orphanage? It’s a fair question, and one Bec and I were asked numerous times during the six weeks we were home in Australia in March/April of this year.

Towards the end of last year we came up with the idea of volunteering somewhere for three months after our UK visas ran out. Tanzania, on the East African coast, was the number one option back then. But that all changed after a guy by the name of Conor Grennan, travel blog writer extraordinaire and super-hero to orphans across Nepal, announced he was opening his own orphanage in Kathmandu. I’ve recommended his blog here before, and he’s just transferred it all to a new site – go and check it out www.conorgrennan.net

We contacted Conor about coming over to Nepal to help him out, and now, six months later, here we are! Family and friends were frequently asking us who we were volunteering with, and simply answering “Conor” never seemed to satisfy them, damn info-hungry folks.

“Yeah, Conor’s a friend of ours.”
“Oh ok. So, how do you know him?”
“Er, yeah, um, through the *cough* internet *cough*.”

Upon meeting Conor here in Kathmandu, he said he had the same problem when telling the other folks at the orphanages of our impending arrival:

“So my Australian friends arrive in a few days…”
“Cool, so where did you meet them?”
“Yeah, well, haven’t really done that whole ‘meeting’ thing yet.”
“You’ve never met them?”
“Er, no.”

The orphanage Conor set up is located amongst the seven or eight orphanages I mentioned in the previous post, run by the Umbrella organisation. These guys seriously helped Conor out when setting everything up, and whilst his orphanage (called Dhauligiri, after one of the nearby Himalayan peaks. Yeah, it’s just the eighth-highest mountain in the world or something) is independant, it is also sort of part of the Umbrella system. It’s like one giant family, all these orphanages within a few minutes walk of each other. It’s just that this family has around two hundered and fifty kids running around in the yard. Each of the orphanages/houses is named after a Himalayan peak: Sagamartha (that’s the Nepali name for Everest), Machapucchre, Gaurishanka, Annapurna, Amadablan etc. So if these weird names pop up in this here wee blog over the next few months, don’t go freakin’ out or anything.

Hopefully that gives you enough basic background to ensure the words I put up here make some sort of sense.

And again, check out www.flickr.com/photos/becanddave
for photos…….

Nepal: Balance

Thursday, April 26th, 2007
We stepped from the airport; a red-brick, two-story building set in a dusty field. A group of locals sitting at a card table under the verandah ushered us over. The sign at the table said something like "official taxis". That ... [Continue reading this entry]

Edinburgh: Of Mice and Scared Little Boys

Friday, September 22nd, 2006
The two most likely ways you will jump a foot into the air whilst standing naked and half-asleep in front of your toilet at 4.16am taking a pee-pee: 1 – You wake up enough to realise that, in fact, that is ... [Continue reading this entry]

Makin’ Movies

Sunday, August 20th, 2006
Ok, so it hasn’t quite been the six months I said it would be between posts, but during my lunch breaks whilst back at work in Scotland, I’ve knocked up a short little video about our two months in Laos, ... [Continue reading this entry]

Australia: What, me write?

Tuesday, April 18th, 2006
So, I've been home for seven weeks now. And have spent those seven weeks driving all over the state of Victoria with Bec, catching up with friends and family. We've knocked up just short of 4000 km (or around 2500 ... [Continue reading this entry]

Culgoa: Dude, we’re home

Tuesday, March 21st, 2006
The road is straight and flat. The heat rises off the asphalt ahead of us like a mirage, as though we are chasing the endlessly receding tide of a river. The land around us is alternatively brown then yellow, and ... [Continue reading this entry]

Bangkok: Sweatin’ our way home

Monday, March 20th, 2006
Following our shopping spree in Hoi An, and now with our existing bags fully loaded plus an additional bag bursting at the seams with new clothes, it was time to go home. Home to Australia. Of our time in Vietnam, I ... [Continue reading this entry]

Hoi An: The Clothes Maketh the Man

Monday, March 13th, 2006
From Mui Ne, Bec and I were headed north up the Vietnamese coast to the World Heritage listed town of Hoi An. To get there, we decided to skip through the typical tourist stop of Nha Trang, a decision we ... [Continue reading this entry]

Mui Ne: Easyrider

Sunday, March 5th, 2006
Mui Ne is only a few hours north of Saigon. We estimated this from the south-Vietnam map we'd photocopied from an old guidebook months earlier. It is situated on the coast, near some huge sand dunes (well, huge by Asian ... [Continue reading this entry]