Mahendranagar Madness
on Mel and Steve in Nepal (Nepal), 30/May/2008 10:32, 34 days ago
Hi folks,Sorry for the delay but our arrival in our new home town has kept us very busy for the past 10 days. Believe it or not, we've even had to do some work, although today is a last-minute holiday to celebrate the 'New Nepal'. As you may have seen or heard in the International news, this has been a historic week for Nepal with the abolition of the monarchy and the signing in of a new Constituent Assembly.So, what have we been up to? Well, to start with we left Kathmandu quicker than expected when our Indian visas came through. Despite us stating a wish to travel by road, VSO decided that we would be safest travelling by plane. When we got to the airport and saw the size of it, Mel wasn't so sure.But we did arrive safely with our fellow 15 passengers and crew.Our journey from the airport gave us a taster of the surrounding scenery. This area of Nepal is very flat, although we can see the Himalayan foothills in the background. Much of the area is covered by jungle and a very large part of the district is a protected wildlife reserve. More about that later when we have been for a visit we hope.The weather here varies between hot and very hot with an occasional thunderstorm and violent rain/hailstorm to remind us of Britain! Despite this, it's definitely not as hot and humid as Massawa in Eritrea although rumour has it that it may get hotter. There's lots more water and greenery which is very nice but means that there are loads more mosquitoes. They do give us plenty of exercise and help us to get rid of our pent up aggression especially with our fantastic electric mozzy zapping racquetOur house is very large as it used to house 3 single people, and has quite a big garden. We are already doing well with our New Year's 'Growing-things-to-eat' resolution, as we've already got a bunch of bananas growing in our front yard!Our house was really filthy when we arrived as no-one had been living there for 6 months and this is a very dusty, spidery place. The house is full of volunteers old 'chiz biz' (stuff) going back about 10 years. But thanks to the help of a cleaner and gardener and our angelic teenage neighbour Anu, who loves 'arranging' rooms, we have finally sorted the place out and it's starting to feel like home. We've even started doing some cooking, although after 3 months out of the kitchen it needs a bit of work on the flavour.We've been to work and have been off to an active start, visiting several schools and heads meetings in different areas of our District, Kanchanpur. We've got lots of ideas for things to do, in fact too many. All the people we've met have been really friendly both at work and around town.As you may know, we're only 6km from India here and we've even made a journey there already, taking a lovely walk along an irrigation canal and over the Mahakali river which marks the border.We've got the old bicycles, that were left in the house, up and running, and so we're hoping to explore further afield in the coming weeks.