The hotel was lovely and very luxurious especially for Nepal standards (also quite luxurious for our budget too to be honest) a treat to start our trip as we really needed a nice place to recovery from the journey and have some well needed rest and time to acclimatise.
We were lucky enough to arrive in Kathmandu whilst Wouts friend from home in Notter was spending his last 2 days of his his 3 weeks trekking trip so we went for some dinner and drinks with him on our first night.
We also arrived in time to catch the last two days of the biggest festival in Nepal where the Nepalese were celebrating their new year, which meant that there was a lot of street parties taking place (and also meant a lot of noise!) It also meant that there was the added bonus of much less traffic which was a welcome surprise as Thamel is one of the most crazy cities I've visited when it comes to pedestrians vs vehicles!
We managed to get our Nepalese SIM cards without an issue aswell so we now both have constant internet access which has been really helpful when trying to find our way around and not get lost!
Today (Wednesday) we checked out of the hotel and set off in search of the local bus station to make our way to the lalitpur valley where the family I did my home stay with 9 years ago live.....
It was an interesting experience when we arrived at Ratnapark bus station and had to try to find the correct bus to take. We asked a few people for assistance but quickly learned that our English accents were not pronouncing our next destination correctly so we spent quite a while walking up and down, sweating with our big backpacks on untill we finally located the correct bus. Luckily I was able to put my Nepalese brother on the phone to the bus driver and he confirmed that we had found the correct bus.
Our bags have turned out to be way to big when it came to fitting us and them onto the small Nepalese seats in the bus, but we managed and reached Lamatar about 3 hours after leaving the hotel.
As we got out of the second bus in Lamatar I could not believe how much the village and local area has changed. Almost all the traditional Nepalese houses have gone and been replaced by tall concrete houses. This has come about mainly as a result of the 2015 earth quake where many of the houses - including our hosts families home were destroyed. The new house that my host family have built is incredible though and such a different place to that which I remember from my time volunteering and living here in 2009.
The new house is really beautiful and grand and has hot running water inside which is world's away from when I was last here washing in an outside make shift bathroom using freezing cold water from a bucket.
Old house in 2009:
New house:
Old bedroom in 2009:
New bedroom:
It makes me so so happy to see this new and improved home and to see how happy and settled all the family are here. And also really makes me proud to know that if it wasn't for the help and support via donations from my friends and family back home I would not have been able to offer the financial support I did to be able to contribute to the construction of the new house. 🙏
After being given the grand tour of the four floors and the roof top we had some time to sit and discuss our upcoming road trip and book some accommation.
Tomorrow at 7am we will be collected by our driver who will chauffer us for the next 4 days. Myself, Wout, my host brother Atma Ram, his wife Prabha and their nine year old daughter Putal will be setting off to visit Chitwan, Pokhora and Lumbini!
All three places look so amazing and we're really excited to see what's next. The most thing we are looking forward to at the moment is that when we reach Chitwan tomorrow we are going to organise a Jeep safari in the national park where we are hopefully going to get to see Rhinos, Crocs and maybe even a tiger if we're super lucky......
Our road trip - total approx distance 750km
A few pics from Thamel:
Roof tuuuuup pool at our hotel:
Imagine if your job was to fix a fault in these wires!
The only way to handle all the fumes and dust
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