Annapurna Journals

We've been back in Kathmandu for nearly a week now (time flies!!) and we've been busy busy busy!

Amongst other things, I've been preparing the hundreds of photos I took on the trek and cherry-picking the best ones to post in the Gallery section of nepal.ethanfsmith.com. In lieu of writing a lot about the experience here, I decided to try writing a photo-journal on this trip, and wrote captions for just about every photo while we were on the trail. At the moment the photos haven't all been uploaded, but you can explore our first few days here.

Coming back into the chaos that is Kathmandu was surprisingly pain-free after our 19 fantastic days on the trail and an uber-relaxing 18 hours in Pokhara. After unpacking a bit at the boy's home and recovering from an exceptionally long bus ride, we celebrated Christmas eve by grabbing yummy coffee, cinnamon rolls, and chocolate croissants in Thamel (Kathmandu's touristy district -- and home to many yummy bakeries, including our favorite: The Pumpernickle Bakery), and then splitting up for a few hours to do a little Christmas shopping for eachother. We even bought knit stockings ahead of time so Santa would have something to fill :)

This was our first Christmas away from our families, and we are very thankful that we had the opportunity to have multiple video-conferences with loved ones during their holiday festivities and our own. Still -- we missed being around friends, family, and egg nog, and made us excited to be around for the holidaze next year...

Only 5% of Nepalese are Christian, and in Kathmandu Christmas is acknowledged, but not heavily celebrated. At Papa's House, on the other hand, Christmas is a much anticipated event, and the boys here were treated to presents galore under a small tree (at 5am no less), hot chocolate, Christmas movies, and a very festive spirit. The star of this Christmas was a new puppy, a very cute, very soft, very small female mutt the boys decided to name Snowball (picture to come). While we (and the other volunteers) were a bit dubious of this idea at first, Snowball is acclimating to this place very well, and has been under the very good care of Vinod, the 20-something Nepali man-cub who looks after the boys here.

In the days since, Ashley has been researching and visiting a nearby Ayurvedic clinic that she hopes to take a comprehensive course from, and has spent a few days playing with the babies at a government-sponsored orphanage here in Kathmandu (I visited for a bit today -- the babies are so responsive to any attention that is given them that even spending a few hours there was a very rewarding experience).

Meanwhile, I've been compiling photos, piecing together data from research I did on the trek for a pending report, conceptualizing new ideas with Sanu at FoST, and laying the groundwork for the next four months we have to play with here in Nepal (where time is already flying).

We'll reside primarily in Kathmandu for at least the next few weeks while I work closely with FoST and Ashley (hopefully) takes courses at the Ayurvedic clinic. Then we're off to Narti and Trisuli Bazaar to implement FoST products, help with basic health care, and teach what we can about basic resource conservation.

Back in Pokhara

We arrived back in Pokhara a few hours ago from a wonderful 19 days on the trail. We had an amazing time and have many stories to share. We're taking an early bus back to Kathmandu tomorrow and I'll be posting a recap within the next few days.

For now, we're basking in the glow provided by our first hot showers since Thailand, and are about take our guide, Peter, out on the town for his thirty-somethingth birthday.

Namaste!

To the Hills

It became apparent during the our first few days in Kathmandu that Ashley and I needed to escape to the hills sooner than later in order to get a true taste of rural Nepal. While our initial plan was to jump straight into work here, we found ourselves a bit stuck while trying to define and schedule our time over the next five months. The problem? We're hoping to accomplish a myriad of things in rural Nepal, but have no context to base our direction or decisions on. Several people recommended we go on a trek (tourist-speak for 'a long walk') to experience another of the culture here. We first planned on a short week-long self-supported trip in the mountains of Langtang, to the north of Kathmandu, leaving November 29. However, when another volunteer at Papa's House, Krish, invited us to come with him on a guided trip around the Annapurna Circuit, we quickly decided we didn't have any good reasons to say "no." We were planning on doing this trek in the spring because December is a bit past the recommended season for this route, but since weather here has been holding a pretty nice sunny pattern, we all figured (guide service included) that we would be good to go.

The guide service we're working with, Alps in Nepal, has a deal with NOH, in which 10% of the fees from volunteers who trek with the service go back to NOH. After spending a bit of time talking them down to an all-inclusive fee we could all chew on, we were told a realistic start-date for this 20-day trip wouldn't be until the following Wednesday, December 3. As we soon found, we'd need every one of those extra days in Kathmandu in order to learn some basic Nepali, visit a few of the tourist areas (finally!), replicate our documents, extend our visas, replace my walk-around lens (the aperture stopped working intermittantly .. probably due to some Thai & Nepali grit), buy snacks for the trail, do laundry, track down some Nepali kayakers who will be here in the spring, and have a few more meetings with Sanu at FoST. The horrible traffic, short days, and unpredictable power outages in this city make errands take a LONG time, and getting around is a bit draining.

We miraculously managed to finish up all of our tasks tonight, and are all packed and ready for our 6 AM departure towards the west.

Being a client on such a straight-forward hike is really strange for me .. I have almost always been a guide or independent in similar situations .. and I'm really weirded out by the porter-factor. Granted, we're going to be lodged and fed in small villages every night of this journey, so we don't need tents or cooking equipment, and we're not doing any climbing, so we don't need any technical equipment, but these guys are still going to be hauling our gear from straps on their foreheads as we, the clients, bobble merrily along with nary a care in the world on our 'holiday.' Perhaps even weirder than the porter-factor: I don't need to worry about ANY logistics.. we all just follow directions and relax. While I feel like all this service takes away from the adventure a bit, it's also the established norm on the Annapurna Circuit, so by partaking in the guide/porter option we're actually getting the 'whole' experience?? Either way, I'm stoked on our guide, Peter, and am really excited to get out of the city for a while.

I'll still be doing some volunteer work while trekking, and had good conversations with Sanu the past few days about things I can start sketching, learning, and sharing while on this mini-adventure. At all of our stops, I'll be interviewing cooks and lodge-owners about the alternative technologies they use to cook food, heat water, purify water, deal with solid waste, etc.. in order find out how some of these technologies can be improved. We're packing a few kgs of Sanu's briquttes to demonstrate where appropriate, and have a host of leaflets, videos (believe it or not, many of these remote lodges have TVs hooked up to solar-panel-powered batteries), and price lists we'll use to try and hawk Sanu's wares. In addition, I'll be experimenting with new solar-cooker forms, and sketching a bunch of ideas that I'll have the chance to build at FoST's shop in Kathmandu upon our return. I'm looking forward to this side project, and think this location will be a great place to learn and think.

A grand schedule for our time in Nepal finally began to emerge from the woodwork today, as Ashley, Sanu, and I sat down in front of a calendar and projected our goals forward. For us, this whole trip has been a study in creating our own multi-faceted adventure, and we're finally at a point where we have enough knowledge and context to start pinpointing some specific projects and needs.

At the moment, we're looking at spending another few weeks in Kathmandu upon our return, during which time I'll be primarily working with Sanu on refining existing designs and (hopefully) creating a few new ones, and Ashley hopes to take a two-week course in Ayurvedic healing. In late January through early March, we're looking at spending time in and around Trisuli Bazaar and Narti. In Trisuli, Ashley will shadow in a clinic, and I'll focus on introducing and implementing Sanu's briquette stoves to one of the schools NOH supports in a village that is a two hour hike from the main town. NOH helps support a home for rescued Kamlari girls in very-rural Narti (located in south-central Nepal), and we will help arrange a FoST workshop there, so that the rescued girls can learn to make briquettes from waste and produce a fantastic alternative to the wood currently used for cooking and boiling water.

Come mid-March our former housemate, Austin, is planning to visit us for two weeks, and we'll probably go off on a fun climb somewhere. We're saving April for project wrap-ups .. and who knows what else .. there are a lot of cool potentials in the pipeline.

We won't have any computer or internet access while we're on the Annapurna Circuit, so wish us the best, and check back just before Christmas to see pictures and read stories.. We should be back in Kathmandu December 23.

Cheers!