Travel and Settling In.

I don’t remember much of my trip to the airport, or the flight itself for that matter. My body did the things needed to be done while my brain dreamed of sleep. I do remember having a great conversation with Jess at our layover, comparing the carpets to the ones in Wetherspoons (I’ll explain how I knew her already in a moment). But Alex’s idiotic plan seemed to have worked because by the time we’d flown the 8 hours to Mumbai, and the 1 hour hop to Kathmandu I had slept for 7 or 8 hours and felt positivity fresh.

Interlude to explain Jess: While on my placement year, between my 2nd and final years of University, I had completely forgotten to sort out accomodation for the coming year and, by the time I’d gotten around to it, everyone had already sorted their houses. This left me to trawl the Loughborough students Facebook group and student housing forums to find the other billy-no-mates to live with. The first stranger I had talked to in my search was Jess. She didn’t use Facebook so we emailed a few times, sorted out a house and some other housemates, but then she bailed and went to live in The Cube (off campus halls which were miles from anything). We found a replacement for her and moved in anyway and I now consider 2 of the 3 people I lived with to be some of my best mates so it all worked out. I went on to meet Jess at a couple of Hiking club socials but we didn’t really talk much and that was that. Except it wasn’t. A year later, without communicating anything, she see’s a Facebook post about Nepal I’ve made and messages me. Turns out we were going on the same trip. Coincidence or stalker?

My good mood from being well rested was immediately ruined by the baggage claim at Kathmandu airport taking literally an hour and then some random Nepali in the car park trying to get me to pay him to carry my bag. God knows where he was going to carry it because we were already next to our coaches. We were greeted by some of the team leaders (slightly older volunteers who had been in the country for an extra month for training) and were quickly on the road.

I don’t know what I expected from Kathmandu, but it certainly wasn’t what I saw. In short, everything was fucked. Roads and building alike were riddled with a maze of cracks, there were temporary structures made from corregated iron everywhere, stray animals wandered the streets, and everything was shrouded in a haze of dust. The traffic reminded me of videos I’ve seen of the roads in India. People sitting on top of vehices, no clear side of the road, and the horns seemed to be the most used part of the cars.

After about half an hour we arrived at ‘The Agricultural Development Bank’ (no I don’t know what it means either) where we’d be staying for a few days for training. The warden immediately came onto the coach and started yelling in Nepali, we found out later it was to say there were no ball games allowed. He needn’t of worried, a few smashed windows might have improved the place. The rooms smelled like sweat and most of the taps didn’t work, to name but a couple of problems.

We were taken to a canteen area where we were served our first ‘Dahl Bhat’. Dahl meaning lentils, and bhat meaning rice. You’ll want to remember that because it’s what we’d be living on for the duration of our time in Nepal. I was rooming with a guy called Sam, who I vaguely knew from the training weekend. Him and his mate Jamie were both on the trip and hoped to be put in the same village. We quickly bonded over watching a woman throwing stones at a cow from our window. Hilarious, but confusing, considering cows are sacred in the largely Hindu country of Nepal.

My first day in Nepal ended with a spectacular sunset that silhouetted the mountains and ramshackle buildings.