In Chitwan, bikes move everything…from people to produce to cement bags..

They are THE mode of transport, and I loved that we could just stroll and be part of daily life without feeling out of place or being run over.

After the rain from the night before, the sky was clear enough to see the nearby hills. I’ve seen photos of a sky so clear that you can see beyond the hills all the way to the Himalayas in the North. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to see it with my own eyes…but this was very pretty anyway.

This rice field had a head start before the monsoon, so the crop is well underway due to community irrigation ditches. The next day we came back to find the ditch dry, so they have a system of diverting the water too.

This looked like hard wark! The farmer was working at preparing the soil. His patch somehow was still unplanted in a sea of growing rice. He was still ploughing when we returned an hour later.

Here’s another field on catch up mode. I’m not sure what she was doing. Planting baby rice, perhaps?

This is the community hall of a home stay project. The “Welcome” sign was everywhere. An organization had funded a community effort to offer home stay lodging to foreigners and visiting Nepalis. It seemed very clean and organized. I hope it does well for them…I’ve no idea how much they charge but its probably a very affordable way to stay and a good source of income for locals.

In England when cows sit down its supposed to mean its going to rain. Here I think they’re just chillin’