Entry 15 Host family & Village

Saturday, 3 April 2010

This was the driest place I went to. You could feel the air sucking water out. It was a pretty tough place to live. People would have to spend half a day to walk and carry water back to their homes. 

My host family had deep family connections to a German family, Kaptan (the father)’s old boss. He was the connection. They raised money to build a chorten (temple thing tibetan style) for their village in memory of his grandfather which was a really nice gesture. Prem actually designed and managed the building of the chorten. The proportion of each part is representative of the Buddha in a meditation position. 

It was the eye opening ceremony which I witnessed first hand. The all seeing eye of lord Buddha is watching you. Kind of like the religious and low cost version of the CCTV in the UK. To be fair to a lot of Nepali, they were actually really honest because they respected Buddha and believed Karma. 

I took part in the ritual, sprinkled some rice over it. It was really good event for the locals. His grandfather was the leader of the village. It was pretty incredible story. First it was just Kaptan working in KTM for the Germans, and the Germans made him move his family to live in KTM with Kaptan. The family of 6 then lived in the guardhouse. The German couple made sure the kids were educated and the girls were treated with equality. That was the short version.

It was well worth the 7 hours round trip. I promised Prem that we would ride to his village from KTM in the future, like his father and his friend. So I need to learn to ride a motor bike. I might have said that I rode a motorbike. Let me clarify that there were no hard evidence that I rode a motorbike in Nepal since I wiped my fingerprints off the handle bar. It would have been a bit illegal but no-one remember anything. 

I could never survived out here. So much of the year with so little water. Nepal is one of the countries with the most amount of fresh water. Spare a thought for those developing country without a huge source of water. The world is a bit crap really.