First walking week in Nepal

Dear friends,

The first walking week in Nepal is over. Today I have a rest day….

I am walking in the flat area in Nepal from west to east. 130km done towards Lumbini. Climate is good for walking. Sadly it gets dark very early, at around 1745h. Nepalies are very friendly. They have always a smile on there face. Remarkable there are much calmer than Indians. Even poorer also. Not so many jobs available in Nepal. But generally a happy folk. Usually they ask me where I am from and where I go. Then the talk is often finished. Very interesting. When they understand, that I do a long walk from Germany to Myanmar,  they understand easier the reality. Indians did often hear the info, but it did not enter the brain. I had to explain in different ways, then Indians got it, sometimes even not. Still figure out, why that is so…..

On the second day, after walking through the jungle close to a national park ( with tigers, deers and rhinos …) I reach to a magic area. It feels somehow holy. People are farming in small fields. They have build houses from mud and materials nearly only from nature. I don’t see electric wires. Everything feels so harmonious. … Because sunset is close I look for a place to stay and find a little collection of 5 huts, one with a little shop in it, around the others hay is stored, tethred, calm and chewing buffalos are standing around. Courious kids and adults coming closer. A white skinned person is always a reason to be happy… Nepalies love foreigners with white skin…. After a little while a sleeping place is arranged… after the shop closes I can sleep in this shop hut. .. a bed and blankets is brought…. From ‚Neil Sir‘ I learn, that all this huts here are illigeal. The people came here around 12 years ago from different parts of Nepal. They cut the trees and prepared fields for farming. Around 500 huts with more than 2000 people are here. ‚Neil Sir‘ says, they will all move peacefully as soon the government offers them another place to farm or live. Also there are willing to live in the city. It seems, that the government will reforest the area and extent the national park, what makes sence. … until then, this idyll will continue to exist…. people are so one with the nature…. great

Some days later I have the joy to witness another area, where I meet the pharmacist Chandrika in a village in the middle of the forest. Also here it feels, that the people live very harmoniously in the forest – they left more trees -. Chandrika is with his education and mini-pharmacy somehow the doctor of the region, has two wife’s (each lives in an extra house) and together eight kids. Most of them are grown up, some have already own families. One son worked 5 years on a Pacific iland called Palau and returned with the earned money one or two years ago. Another 19 year old son does not like to study either work somewhere, he is still on the way to find his path…. Both of the places so peaceful and smooth….

If I come to other villages, where there is an existing ‚hotel‘ people like to sent me there.  Somehow it’s understandable, also they have a lot of people in the house… But these ‚hotels‘ have less than the lowest standard at all. Mostly it’s combined with a restaurant and Nepali’s like to drink and smoke there too. It feels, that only the drunken, but also workers rent this kind of rooms. It’s allowed to smoke also in the rooms. And the problem is, the rooms, or better say beds never seems to be cleaned…. often they stink to the sky. Through my travel I am used here and there to this kind of conditions, but this just happens here to often, that I have to sleep in a room/bed like this. Usually I need a day or two to recover from such circumstances, but here I face this every or every second day until now…. this cost a lot of energy and it’s so difficult somehow to survive in these surroundings and to meditate in this atmosphere. … really a big challenge. Truly this accommodations are very cheap, mostly between 3 and 5 $, so somehow I can effort it, but the price on the energetically level is ‚high to pay’…. my body somehow already reacts with ‚allergic‘ symptoms, so far, that I coughed hardly and nearly threw up. The streets are offen not sealed, so in the season now, there are very dusty, even though little traffic…. so the lungs have a lot to do these days – streets and beds, dust and smell….

Further on I am again challenged moneywise…. actually I have 7000 Nepali Rupies left, what’s about 70 $. I don’t know if another donation is coming before the first of next month, where I always recieve some donation by two friends, and I am not sure if the money will reach out until then. Also I have another 45 $ with me, but it seems, I can’t change that money in Nepal because the $ notes are slightly damaged. The money for the cancelled flight from Ladakh to Delhi I get back only in the mid of December. So…. let’s see…. there will be a solution… as always.

Blessings and Love

Thomas

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