Back to Kathmandu
Jan 16th, 2009 by Q
It’s been nine years since our last trip to Nepal. The last time we went (my first) was for one month in January of 2000. My wife and I flew from China, where I was living at the time. We spent two weeks in Kathmandu and two weeks on a permaculture farm in Gumi, which was the subject of my wife’s Master’s thesis. Bhumi is 20-hours by bus from Kathmandu, and it was a harrowing ride. During the journey we drove through a shallow river, observed goats flying off the roof, and passed the burning wreckage of another bus. The photo above is a girl we met walking around near the farm.
This time we’ll be with the boy, so no 20-hour bus trips to do farm labor with only 2-hours of electricity a day. But today we read that Nepal is now experiencing a power crisis. The entire country only has electricity 8 hours a day, split into two four-hour blocks! This is a recent change, and the new 16 hour “load shedding” was just instituted on January 11th. Now we know to pack a flashlight!
We’ll fly to Kathmandu on the 28th, stopping for a day in Bangkok along the way.