Teej, Burtibang, some amazing views and turning 19

Sitting here now, with some unexpected rain as background noise, I feel so grateful to be living in Harpe and to have had my 19th birthday in such a beautiful place. This past week has been crazy and it’s so strange to think that Teej was just over a week ago. In the past week we’ve danced, walked to Burtibang to meet the other volunteers, gone on a walk that we thought was a walk to some great views of mountains (it ended up being a walk that lasted eight hours until it got dark) and we’ve done some more days of teaching. I wanted to start writing this post (even though it’s quite late and I should be sleeping) because I’m feeling so grateful for everything, Ashvi, my family and friends back at home and also the lovely people here that are so welcoming.

To celebrate my birthday, all the Project Trust volunteers had decided that we would meet in Burtibang. Most of us had a week off for Teej anyway, so instead of coming to Rajkut (the plan for the day before my birthday), they decided they would have more time if they turned up to Burtibang on the Thursday, then stayed until the Saturday. I wasn’t actually aware before this that everyone had come specifically for my birthday, because we were planning to go to Burtibang anyway because we wanted to buy some blankets and buckets and other various things we needed. I don’t think the other volunteers in Puja and projects around that area realised quite how far Burtibang was from them, so with high hopes they set out on Thursday, expecting to arrive by Friday afternoon, but didn’t actually make it until midday Saturday. We left for Burtibang on Saturday, enjoying the beautiful walk in amazing weather. Burtibang already seems so much closer to us than we originally found it, and we arrived after only about an hour and a bit of walking. Along the way we saw some children herding goats and a student from school (who let us know that we were going the wrong way). When the sun’s out the hills look so beautiful, and when it’s clear you can even see Dhaulagiri (over 8000m!) from my bedroom window. After seeing this, Ashvi and I made a pact that we would do the Annapurna Circuit in the October to November holidays with the other volunteers - Annapurna is meant to be the best trek in Nepal (according to the lonely planet trekking guide) and after seeing Dhaulagiri we decided we couldn’t miss it. Despite leaving almost two days later than the other volunteers (Eli, Adelaide, Stephie and Liam) we still arrived before them. When they got to the hotel, Oscar, Kieran, Ashvi and I were greeted with relieved faces. We later found out that they had left their projects without a guide, and they’d gone in completely the wrong direction. They ended up walking along a misty path for two hours without any sight of houses or civilisation before seeing a woman with a tiny child wander out of the dense wood (or forest as Adelaide described it). They were okay in the end, but when they arrived in Burtibang they were exhausted and they said that the only reason they kept going was because it was my birthday (sweet but I wouldn’t wish a misty walk in the darkening evening on anybody). At least we now know never go on long walks without guides; Shanta (the country coordinator for Project Trust) was shocked that the other volunteers had left without a guide. In Nepal, there are so many deserted areas and paths that can become quite dangerous at nighttime - Ashvi and I are told not to walk around the village once it gets dark because of supposed tigers and also landslides. It can also get really misty at night, and after the volunteers arrived in Burtibang, Shanta told them some recent stories about girls getting murdered in the mountains. Effectively, that taught us all to never head off on random paths or trails without a guide.

After the volunteers from Pyuthan arrived at the hotel, we all went out to a restaurant to have some samosas and food. We were getting a lot of looks as we walked around the town because there was such a big group of us (also perhaps because Eli was trying out the portable speaker in the shop and playing the theme tune for the Lord of the Rings particularly loudly). I’m glad we met up with the other volunteers, and it was interesting to hear stories and see photos of their projects, Nepali weddings being an example. Only four out of six of the Pyuthan volunteers made it, because apparently Allannah and Vivienne didn’t realise before they left that they didn’t have a day off on the Wednesday, so were called by their headteacher to return to their projects (they’re probably glad that they did now). I think the other volunteers are in slightly more rural areas than us, so they were almost hysterical about the chocolate (Cadbury lickables) and the ice cream that you can get in Burtibang. Stephie and Adelaide actually cried once they were in the hotel room that we were sharing - I think it was all a bit too much for them seeing a clean toilet and shower after two full days of walking. They gave me a lovely birthday card with “Happy Birthday Orla” in Nepali that was painted with watercolours, and Eli bought me a bright green Happy Birthday hat that I still haven’t worn yet (thanks Eli, it’s beautiful). It was a great evening, and the only disappointment for them was that we all had to leave the next morning at about 6am in order to get back to our projects (we had school that morning). We made it back to Harpe with them after daal bhat in Devisthan, and the people in our village helped them to get a guide to show them the way back to their projects. They have another week off school this week (which they found out three days after the crazy walk) and Eli suggested they come back to Baglung which I expressed my surprise at but later realised it was only Eli that fancied the hike again.

It’s so strange that some of my memories from Harpe and from Baglung already feel like a dream or like I’m in some kind of amazing adventure book, like the Lord of the Rings or Narnia (there was actually a moment where Oscar played the theme tune for the hobbit and him and Kieran lay back on the grass and smiled contentedly). Yesterday was one of these moments. Since we had the day off because of constitution day (or something along those lines), Ashvi, I and our friend Bishnu organised that we would go to Rajkut for a pre birthday day out. She told Oscar and Kieran to come when we last were together in Burtibang, so in the morning Oscar and Kieran walked from Jhimpa to meet us and Bishnu at our house in Harpe. We knew some of our eldest class was going to come, but our expectation of a small group of people soon changed as we opened the door when Bishnu turned up to see a row of people waiting to leave for our day out. Everyone was dressed in nice clothes; jeans and heeled sandals, whilst Ashvi and I stepped out in our trainers t-shirts and baggy trousers, and Oscar and Kieran with the same sort of clothes. At the time I wished I’d dressed up a bit more, but now I’m decidedly glad I didn’t head off in flip-flops. Again, we were wrong to think that this was the whole group of people coming along for the walk, and by the time we’d begun walking to the next cluster of houses we’d already picked up a few teachers and most of class 6 and 7 (we then realised where the rest of the people going to our school lived, since we’d never been this direction before).  By the time we actually began climbing we must’ve been a group of about twenty people. At this point we still didn’t really realise where we were going or what was happening so we followed on after the rest of the group, steadily climbing upwards. We ended up at a beautiful 360 viewpoint of our area and you could see Burtibang as well as some mountains from the Annapurna range (I think it’s called Takora but I could be spelling it wrong).

What I’ve learned here is that, in Nepal, what you’re expecting to happen is not what usually ends up happening. After the views of the mountains and hills around, we ended up walking along a tiny path on the edge of a steep incline, with what we thought was a warning about landslides from our friend Himala. What we realised later on was that the plan all along had been to walk to the recent landslide just past Burtibang to see what had happened in real life (we found this particularly funny because when we started walking down the really steep slope with no path we assumed we’d gotten lost, but actually it was the way to the landslide). We found out then that we’d actually been in Burtibang when the landslide happened and from this path on the hillside you could see what looked like a lake but was really a flood of the valley due to the river. There were a few fields and houses underwater and you could see the damage of the hillside (I will attach some photos - one teacher borrowed Ashvi’s camera and became official photographer of the day so we have plenty). When we were walking up this hill to see the landslide there were so many people taking photos and going to have a look.

After going up the hill we’d been walking for maybe a good 4 hours, not really realising where we were going, so it was then that the dried noodles were taken out of the box. We were kind of relieved at this point, since we’d only eaten daal bhat and curry, and I think Oscar and Kieran were particularly relieved, since they’d done two or three extra hours of walking and had only eaten some Rice Krispie type cereal and pancakes. After eating, the speaker was brought out, and everyone told me to dance since it was my birthday the next day (after dancing at Teej, I’ve been asked to dance again and again, in lessons and everywhere - when this happens Ashvi usually sits or stands with the students and looks expectantly at me - she doesn’t like to join in). At that point, we were in the middle of a small path on the hill, with the students and teachers from the school all sitting on a rock or on the floor. Kieran did join in, so at first it was Kieran and I dancing to a whole load of students clapping along to the portable speaker. Kieran stopped after a while, after which it was just me trying to get Niruta to dance with me (she is a really good dancer). After dancing for a while with Niruta, and Kieran dancing on and off, I realised that a three person deep crowd had surrounded me and that another lot of students from our school had turned up. At one point there was literally a circle around us on the middle of a fairly steep hill, and people I didn’t know were video recording me (Ashvi still didn’t want to join in, and after I realised how big the crowd was I’d say that’s fair enough). The crowd got a bit bigger and there were more phones whipped out, so I stopped dancing and we carried on heading up the hill.

For this whole day out we didn’t really know what was going on, apart from that there were about twenty students from the school with us, and that it was effectively a school trip for the older students without actually being a school trip. We thought that after seeing the landslide we would probably be heading back, but by that point we were quite a long way away from Harpe and we still needed to walk up several hills to get back into the right valley. The whole day I kept being reminded of everyone’s strength and ability to walk for hours and hours. Most of the group were wearing flip flops or heeled sandals and were still faster than some of us in trainers. The hill we walked back up was just as steep as the one we walked up, except for maybe with more bushes and trees on the way up, making it harder to climb (I slipped few times while running up the hill with some of the grade 7 girls and Bishnu). Some of us ran up the hill so we waited for a while at the top, but what Ashvi told me later was that her and the rest of the teachers and students were sitting and having some cucumber and noodles on the hillside (that’s why they didn’t answer to Bishnu’s calls). After running/climbing up steep hillside we were all really thirsty and tired but the setting sun was so lovely so it made up for it. The slope was dotted with pools of yellowing light, and the trees really reminded me of the front cover of “The Gruffalo”. When we reached the clearing at the top of the hill the sun was setting and the moon had come out. People here seem to love taking selfies, so there was a big photo taking session then and after that everyone ran down the next slope, and it did feel really magical. Everyone here seems to have so much fun, and the excitement really gets to you too. After the moon came out (when it was still light), we walked whilst the sun set back to our village. Kieran and Oscar ended up staying the night in a room full of corn (in Anita’s house), because it was too late to start the walk back to their school in Jhimpa.

Kieran, Oscar, Ashvi and I all agreed that that day full of walking felt really dreamlike; even the next day I found it hard to comprehend that all of it happened. The next day I woke up and Ashvi made daal bhat and potato curry (since it was my birthday) and we went to school to teach. There was another boy in class two with the same birthday as me, so in my first class there were some sweets and tikkas given out (red powder that you put on people’s foreheads). I danced in a few of my classes and we looked through the photos from Ashvi’s camera in the computer room later. It rained a little, and there was a rainbow above the mountains that you could see from the school courtyard. After school we went to our friend’s house and had some chia there and sat outside her shop watching people walking home. Later on, Ashvi gave me some red bangles and a cute card. Some of my family sent me cards three weeks ago but they still haven’t arrived so maybe the postman might turn up next week at school; the post definitely takes a long time to reach Harpe. I feel very lucky with the weather we’ve had this week, especially since today it rained for most of the day so we stayed mostly inside.

I’ve realised I haven’t said much about Teej, so I will write something small and then see if I can post some videos. For Teej last week, we bought saris from Burtibang and got our blouses tailored for us in Devisthan. Our friend Niruta gave them to us on the morning of Teej and helped us get ready. She spent ages making sure they looked perfect, which was really lovely of her, especially with the constant banging on our door from some students from our class 5 who wanted to see them. The festival was the first time we had really seen the whole village get together and everyone there at once, so it was nice to see so many faces we recognised from around the village and at school. There was music on a speaker on one part of the road, and drumming on the other side, with people singing and clapping while others danced. I love dancing so much in the UK, so Teej was so much fun for me. At first it was a bit overwhelming because everyone was watching us and there weren’t many people dancing other than the children (who pulled us straight to the middle) and us, but we soon relaxed and later on other people started to join us. We ended up dancing from about 2pm to 6pm with little breaks in the middle. Ashvi gave her camera to some students who took lots of videos, so I will try to figure out how to attach them to this post. (I’ve just downloaded the canon camera app so I’m one step closer!). We went back after some food (but it was really quite late by then - maybe 10pm) and carried on dancing with some of our friends and students from the school. We were having a good time, but there were a lot of drunk men from earlier that had started dancing, and as we danced they started surrounding us (these were the relatives of people in Harpe that work abroad in countries like Saudi Arabia) so the girls we were dancing with kept helping us by moving us to another area to dance (they told us they were “dirty men”). We wanted to carry on dancing, but after while it definitely did get a bit much, particularly after dancing in a circle with our friends and then being surrounded by another circle of drunk men. We were escorted back to our house and told not to dance in the evening after that. We had a good time dancing, but it was definitely a good time to return, and after that evening all the teachers kept making sure we were safe, telling us that we shouldn’t go out after dark when there are drunk men around (probably good advice). The dancing during the day was so much fun though and I’m now really excited for the next few festivals in our month long holiday starting mid October, where we will trek the Annapurna circuit and go to Pokhara and maybe Kathmandu again.

This is a very long post, but the last few weeks have been really special so I wanted to write about them. It’s Saturday today, so we have a full week of school starting tomorrow.

This blog is a personal blog written by Orla Fawcett, therefore the views expressed in this blog are those of Orla Fawcett and NOT those of Project Trust.