Wonderful Beautiful Nepal | Nepal Travel, Culture & Food

Tomorrow will mark one month since the first earthquake struck; I woke up to another aftershock this morning. There has not been a lot of relief for the people, rice, a blanket, some plastic tarps, a few sheets of aluminum and little more. Outside the village, I can see that several helicopters have been delivering goods to the people in more rural areas. They fly so low it can feel like an earthquake, thus traumatizing us anew several times a day. No one seems to understand why they have to fly so low. The food supply has not been seriously effected, yet. I do not know if I should be concerned in the long term, but have purchased a big bag of rice and a couple Kg. of organic coffee. It's important to prioritize. Yesterday afternoon a wind storm came up and blew the tents away at our hilltop. Then it started raining. People had to scatter to make sure things didn't get blown away in the high winds. The wind was so strong a person could hardly stand up and both of my young men v...

I needed something I just couldn’t find in Nepal, and therefore had to order something on the internet and had it mailed. It shouldn’t have been an ordeal to write home about. Each year or so I need to have credit/debit cards sent to me and it usually costs at least $120 and this last time my brother put BA for Bagmati district in Nepal and it went to Basnia; it finally arrived. Another time I had it go to a friend in Kathmandu to his business, then I had it go to my other friend’s business in Changunarayan. These were the best plans, but I had to pay for FedX international rates for letters. So when I ordered this special cream, since it was a package, I thought I’d skip putting a person’s name on the order and just have it go to the business. After a few weeks it hadn’t arrived. I looked up the order and saw that it had actually arrived in Nepal. I sent Bikram to get it when he was already in Kathmandu. Although Bikram had the printout from the internet, the man refused to give it to...

Maoist Rally I’ve been in Nepal almost two years and I’ve acclimated pretty well, I suppose. But one never really knows how well she is doing without a comparison now and then. I’ve seen a lot of westerners come and go and the under thirty crowd do just fine, all wide eyed and ready for anything. But those of us over 40! Now that’s a challenge. I’m finding that our European counterparts do quite a bit better than the Americans, both from the US and Canada. Surprisingly, those from the US seem to do better than the Canadians.  But even as I approach my second year in Nepal I still have my moments. We are often the last to know when others feel like laughing at us; we get too caught up in the moment. Last year a woman about my age came, late fifties. I had been looking forward to meeting her in person. We met via the internet, and it was nice to have someone who might understand my culture better and be a companion.  Aloo Paratha served with Ju Ju Dau and salad. When I went to...