Shivapuri Hike (with bloody ending!)

July 7, 2014July 7, 2014 / wrightsolution / 5 Comments

We finally got out of the city this weekend. Latham and I managed a short hike in the Shivapuri hills, just North of Kathmandu city. I am frequently told the area is covered with a labyrinth of footpaths and trails, but getting out to explore has been frustrating. And now it is the rainy season, the weather can turn bad unexpectedly, so to be on the safe side, we committed to a short walk in the forest to a small waterfall.

It was so wonderful to be able to just walk unhindered along a trail. No noise, no traffic, no horns. And the first outdoor exercise I’ve had in a long, long time. Here are a few photos from the trail – full of greenery, lushly blanketed forest floors, flowers and not too many bugs:

We could hear the waterfall long before we saw it. More of a waterslide really… a gentle babbling flow, not gushing roar

The cascade ended in a waist high “bathtub”. It would have been a great place to bath. We just stuck our toes in the water

Beautiful lantana growing everywhere, as only lantana can…

Loved the gnarly, multi-coloured tree trunks

Unusually, we saw quite a lot of stone work…something I haven’t seen much of so far in Nepal. This was an abandoned hut.

leaf close up

wall closeup

Look what we found growing wild…!

Before we set out, we were warned about avoiding leeches in the rainy season. I remember the same warning in the Philippines but we never did make it into the jungle during the rains, and I never got to experience them first hand. So, naively, we kept a look out for leeches. I’m not sure what I thought would happen. I guess, I thought if we could avoid brushing up against long grass or bushes, we’d avoid the leeches. But these aren’t ticks…. Little did I know that the little bastards live in the soil. They can lie there dormant for very long periods of time, and when it rains they rise out of the dirt..standing upright with their heads hungrily thrashing around for a blood meal, which they spot by heat and vibration from the victim. The hapless hiker stands a moment to admire the view and the well camouflaged leech makes his move…..

Latham stopped a moment and pointed at his shoe. ” Is that one?!”” We both recoiled in horror when we realized it was. It was tiny and thin, more like a threadworm that the slug-like creature I had imagined. (It turns out they only look like slugs once they are full of blood.) He kicked and squished it. It broke the spell and we couldn’t get off the trail fast enough! The initiation could have been worse…we could have been bitten….

…ironically it was Robert who was….as he never actually went hiking. The dreaded things inject the bite site with an anti-coagulant so it takes forever to stop bleeding. Gross!

And for the truly brave….here are a couple of leech pictures (from the internet I might add)…no way were we going to stop and take a picture!

Leeches before a meal….

….and after! They drop off when they’re full!!!!!

Word a Week Photo Challenge: Remote

July 6, 2014July 6, 2014 / wrightsolution / 3 Comments

Shivapuri National Park, Kathmandu Valley, Nepal

During the rainy season which is now upon us, you can just sit and watch the clouds roll in and off the mountains. Such a romantic feeling of mystery and isolation. Behind them, hidden in the rain and mist, are the mighty Himalayas.

This post participated in the Word a Week Photo Challenge: Remote.

Wrong Turns Down Dark Alleys

July 2, 2014July 2, 2014 / wrightsolution / 2 Comments

Daily Prompt: Wrong Turns. When was the last time you got lost? Was it an enjoyable experience, or a stressful one? Tell us all about it.

How funny to return home in the last hour to this prompt! We just got lost in the back alleys of Kathmandu, which was quite an adventure….

Kathmandu at night just closes down, and as the shutters from shops descend at the end of the day, things get very dark. There isn’t a street light in the whole city. It is sort of mesmerizing and scary at the same time. Not really scary in a way that you might fear other people, but scary because you can’t see where you are going in a city where sidewalks have missing paving stones, giant holes, obstacles, dog poop, and gutters with 12 inch drops.

Fortunately we were driving. So it was the driver who feared making a wrong move…which he did by turning right too soon. I knew that…but then I presumed he knew something I didn’t, which is often the case for me. I was wrong ( and he was wrong too), so we got lost. The road grew narrower and narrower and the crazy thing about Kathmandu alleys is that driving down them sort of feels like some kind of computer game. At every turn you see the dead end of a brick wall ahead, and is only when you are upon it that you realize that the road still continues by winding left or right around someone’s property. It always looks like a dead end for sure…but suddenly there’s still a way out…at least most of the time. The organic way that the city developed means that roads were never laid out and no space was ever planned for vehicles. The roads just wind their independent way around whatever property they come across. I lost all sense of direction in no time.

On and on we wound, until finally we turned right towards the main road and there it was….a giant dug up ditch the size of the whole street. Piles of dirt lined its edges and concrete drainage pipes sat waiting to be laid inside. It was completely impossible to pass. We couldn’t back up, so we turned left. On and on we wound some more, only this time we were heading in the wrong direction, at least I thought so. My internal compass isn’t great at the best of times, but in the dark, down endless alleys, it was hopeless. After about another ten turns, there was another car in front of us, heading in the opposite direction. It wasn’t going to back up..so we had to.. and we backed up around corners –much to the entertainment of onlookers – for about 50 yards until the road was wide enough for two vehicles to pass. Phew! And finally…God bless him… the driver found his way out of the maze and back onto the main street again. We laughed and it was an adventure. But I don’t need to do it again soon.

So that was my Wednesday night, how was yours?!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Contrast (2)

June 30, 2014 / wrightsolution / 1 Comment

In the spiky shade of a fig tree! Loved the contrast of light and of tender tots in rocky places…

This post participated in the Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge: Contrast

Weekly Photo Challenge: Contrast

June 29, 2014 / wrightsolution / 3 Comments

The contrast of old and new. It turns out Buddhist monks use iPads too!

This post particpated in the Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge: Contrast

The Snackmandu Vending Company

June 26, 2014June 27, 2014 / wrightsolution / 4 Comments

The Daily Prompt: The Need Machine. Soft drinks, electronics, nutrient-free snacks — you can get all of those from a vending machine. But what type of vending machine is sorely needed but doesn’t yet exist?

I can’t really think of a vending machine that doesn’t already exist for something I need. Vending machines haven’t been a part of my life for a very long time. Perhaps I should try to be creative and imagine a machine that could dispatch smiles or good fortune…but the creativity wheels just aren’t turning.

But I can remember a time back in the 1970s when they first installed one at my school, and we loved it! It was so sophisticated and exciting to put your money in, excitedly choose, press the right series of keys, and watch it deliver some delicious morsel with a satisfying clunk into the bottom drawer. Why was it so much more fun to feed the machine then to stop in the sweet shop on the way home for exactly the same thing? But we loved it, anyway! I can remember buying bags and bags of Disco crisps every week to collect the tokens from the packets. Six tokens got you top pop hits like the Bay City Rollers on a 45. All you had to do was post them in with an SAE. (That’s a stamped addressed envelope for the post-internet crowd.) What you got back was a cheap, flimsy disc that was nothing like the singles we bought every Saturday from Woolworth’s….but it was so exciting to just get something in the post with your name on it.

Flash forward 35 years here in Nepal, and I can say with confidence that there can’t be one single vending machine in the whole country. They would be a spectacular disaster in so many ways! Where to even begin?! Here are just some of the challenges the Snackmandu Vending Company PVT would have to tackle:

There are no coins, except tiny, tiny amounts that are fractions of a rupee and completely useless. You would have to use notes, which are the only real currency here and they are very old, very dirty and extremely crumpled. They would never be accepted by already overly finicky vending machine slots.
Imagine a vending machine in a place where there are constant power cuts. Cold or hot thermostat settings without electricity would mean a world of warm coke and sweaty sandwiches. You, the thirsty customer, would hear the heavy thud of disconnected power just as your money leaves your fingers. The machine would swallow your cash and you–and your expectations– would be left in the dark. Good luck getting that refund!
Vending machines require maintenance. They need to be filled, cleaned, oiled and serviced. Not here. The distribution lines from India sometimes supply… sometimes not… This week we have diet coke.,,,next week…not so much. The machines would be filled if and when… and maintained even less. As a temporary measure, someone creative would fix the broken vending machine with a rubber band and a bit of hose, where it would stay permanently until it, too, broke.
And last, but by no means least, is the truth that nothing here is ready to be automated and vendors (real human ones) are the life blood of this city. Vending machines in Kathmandu are the guys that sit on street corners every day.

So perhaps to go back to my earlier thought of a futuristic machine that could sell anything… perhaps that vending machine could dispatch the elusive silver bullets that never seem to exist to solve problems here. A machine that dispatched problem-solving bullets that could cure poverty, corruption and social injustice…maybe it should be solar-powered, though?!

A Word A Week Photo Challenge: Inside

June 25, 2014June 25, 2014 / wrightsolution / 2 Comments

Near Didima, South of Athens, Greece are some strange holes in the mountainside. They look like craters made by striking meteors, but are in fact sink holes in the side of the mountain. Tucked inside the sink holes are two tiny churches, built into the rock crevices.

To make it inside the crater, you need to lower yourself down a precariously steep set of stairs hewn into the rock. It feels like an adventure! And a treat too as the stairs have been whitewashed for extra Greek charm…

…And once you’ve made it down and into the church, you’ll find it as charmingly rustic on the inside as the outside. A beautiful place.

This post participated in the Weekly Photo Challenge: Inside

Weekly Photo Challenge: Between

June 24, 2014June 24, 2014 / wrightsolution / 7 Comments

There’s no better place in the world to fall asleep than between mom and dad. Even in Kathmandu traffic!

This post participated in the Daily Post’s Weekly Challenge: Between

A Walk in the Chitwan Countryside

June 18, 2014June 19, 2014 / wrightsolution / 4 Comments

A another little photo journal tale of a walk away from traffic and congestion in the rural countryside:

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’

Down on the Farm (Chitwan Style)

June 17, 2014 / wrightsolution / Leave a comment

So to get back to the upside of life around here, after being weighed down by too much Kathmandu dirt and disorder lately, here are a few photos from a lovely time we just had at an organic farm down in Chitwan a few weeks ago. The farm was part of a tourist resort, providing fresh produce, meat and dairy to the guests, and supporting the livelihoods of about 140 locals. They even set up a small school for the children of the employees.

We loved looking around at the animals and crops. Here are a few highlights:

Feeding the cows

Organic farms in Chitwan have to have elephants, of course

…and elephants like their snacks. This guy made some in front of us. He basically wrapped hay into nests, stuffed the nests with goodies like chickpeas and rice, and wrapped the bundles up with straw ties. Elephants love ’em…especially the chick peas apparently.