Kathmandu

This morning I decided to try and do some packing and rearranging of my stuff in preparation for shipping some things home before I leave Nepal. I was fairly unsuccessful lol. Instead I ended up calling Alanna and we had a great chat! I then ate breakfast and decided to call her back as I heard she'd be at the pub with my brother and our friends. It was great to talk to the all! I gave them a video tour of the house I'm staying in and the neighbourhood (restricted from going to far because I was on wifi) and they were particularly interested in the toilet lol. None of them have ever used, or seen, a squat toilet before. Makes me wish I had taken a photo of the one in Sirubari before I left so they could compare the two! Becuase the one at Sudarsan's home is much more modern, it has a flusher and a sink in the same room. Anywayyyy of course the boys would be interested in toilets :p

I spent the rest of the morning/early afternoon working on more text and content for the website. The company is called Unleashed Nepal International, and again, I'll share the link when it's ready! It combines sustainable tourism with volunteer work if desired and is a fully customizable program. I've decided that I want to continue to be involved even after I leave Nepal.

Beda came back to Sudarsan's around 1:30, we all had tea together and then Sarita took me to the Shawl factory! What an incredible place. So many choices it was overwhelming. And so much variation in price and quality.. Definitely different than what was offered in Thamel, and if you ask me, much nicer. I spent entirely too much money on lovely lovely shawls and I'm not going to describe them too much because they're gifts for a few lucky people in my life, but I'll take pictures of them at some point ;) Just think 100% pashmina, made in Nepal by hand, and embroidered with lovely patterns.

From the Shawl factory we went to a large supermarket nearby just to browse. It was very similar to a Walmart at home! The most memorable part of it may have been crossing the busy Ring Road to get to it... What I said before about getting used to the traffic? Yea I was wrong. Ring Road is crazy. Maybe 6-8 "lanes" of traffic. I say "lanes" because there aren't any lines on the roads - nor stop lights anywhere, traffic police control traffic in busy areas - and one minute a particular stretch of road may be going one direction and the next it switches. To cross you kind of just walk into the chaos and wait for an opening to inch your way forward... Cars come within inches of you and don't think that you have priority because you're a pedestrian. Ha! There are also cows that just randomly walk down the middle of the road. Actually that was one of the funniest things I've seen and wish I had been faster with my camera to capture it! This calf just wandering down the city's busiest road without a care in the world while cars zip around it at top speed. Oh the eccentricity of the city that I'll miss! Nothing you'd see in Canada. In this area of Kathmandu, there are also numerous people cooking over open fires along the side of the road selling items like corn to passerbys. It's intense. But I love it! Oh, and also shops like vehicle repair and electronics repair shops line the sides of the streets in small shacks and it's quite common to see men Welding things between their feet wearing only sandals! Different standards.. .

Anyway at the supermarket I just browsed and didn't really buy anything. I saw things like "American" Mayonnaise and Ketchup which made me laugh. I did also find two of the drinking cups that I've been looking for! The benefit of the supermarket is that everything is pre set to a fair price and you know that you aren't being ripped off because you're a tourist...

When we got back to the house I introduced Beda to the Crown Royal and he also really enjoyed it! At this point Sudarsan was working in his shop so Beda and I had one final time to hang out together before he left to go to his sister's house again. He leaves early tomorrow morning at something like 5:30 am to make it in time for a meeting back in Lamjung. It was a good afternoon and I was complimented very nicely, "you must have lots of boys at home who like you because you're smart and funny"

After Beda left I went down to sit with Sudarsan in his shop. One of his friends came by at some point and we all shared some beers together. Carlsberg, Tuborg, and San Miguel are quite popular here it seems. At some point during this time a girl, an IT student at the local university, came by to talk about the website. She's in charge of getting the domain name and hosting arranged, and wanted to know how much space we needed based off the categories and content we started writing last night. She left and Sudarsan and I continued working late, until about midnight.Read more