Travel Writing

What do you do when you’ve lost everything that ever meant anything to you? 

When you’ve lost your money, your wife, your marriage, your family life, your home and your job? When you have nothing more to lose except your health, self respect and your life?

I lost everything in a disastrous year in 2006. I lost much of my money and my job in a doomed franchise enterprise, which I had bought in an attempt to save my marriage of 26 years. When the franchise collapsed after a few weeks, I had a nervous breakdown. Then a few weeks later my wife petitioned for divorce. I was in a very fragile mental state – I contemplated suicide. I was desperately worried about how my 2 dearly loved children would react to the news. I had to claim Incapacity Benefit while I recovered and looked for another job

The best answer to these problems is to TRAVEL. To travel the world to see places you’ve always wanted to see, meet fellow travellers, broaden your horizons, put your troubles behind you, learn to live with, and within, yourself with just your inner convictions to give you strength and courage. And, by the way, you may wish to do some voluntary work to help those people and those countries less fortunate than you, with even less than you have, and learn about their economies, politics, cultures and way of life.

In the months following my disaster, with the help of good friends and family, I gradually recovered my mental state. I found temporary work with Bedford County Council Welfare department through an Employment Agency and my new work colleagues were extremely supportive, most of them had also been through divorce and knew what it was like. I gradually grew stronger and began to think of the future – although it would be another year of bitter, protracted and incompetent divorce proceedings before I could put the past behind me. By then I had moved away to a new area, found a job with a local Government social services department with a 1 year contract, and was living in a rented house on my own. It took many months to come to terms with what had happened, but my doctor, solicitor, counsellors, friends and family and colleagues all suggested that I was not the only one this had happened to, that  I should think about my children and family, that life was still worth living and new opportunities would open up.

The origin/the Idea.

The final hearing for the divorce was in October 2007. After it was all over, I felt a sense of relief and indeed a sense of new opportunity. A huge weight had been lifted, and now I was free to do what I liked, within reason. My year’s contract with the Social Services would end in February 2008.  I was wondering what I would do – with what was left of my assets after the divorce, could I afford to buy a small flat in England? The property market was still rising but beginning to be affected by the financial crisis (Northern Rock bank had collapsed and had had to be bailed out by the government) and mortgage lenders were raising interest rates, credit ratings were being squeezed and every day it was becoming more and more difficult to raise even the minimum deposit required on a modest property. I thought about buying a small property abroad – I thought about the Czech Republic, a beautiful country which I had visited many years before to see a Czech pen friend, and where property prices were still comparatively cheap, and where I thought I could happily live in a small cottage near mountains, rivers and forests. It was a dream – but impractical; – although I yearned for the bucolic landscape I remembered, I would be entirely on my own, I could not really earn a living there – all I could think of to do was be a wood carver and make toys and puppets like Pinocchio’s father! And I was not quite ready for that.

 As I was looking out of my window into the frosty garden of my rented house one Sunday before Christmas 2007, I suddenly thought – what about travelling the world? – or at least, to South East Asia, which was where I really wanted to go. I had learnt about the tropical jungles and forests at a very early age at school – THIS was my Dream, to see the jungles and wildlife, and maybe work for a time in SE Asia.  I suddenly was very excited about the prospects. I had nothing to lose, everything to gain.  I realised that if I could find an organisation offering voluntary work, I could stay longer in each country and see their cultures and way of life, as well as contributing something useful. I had no commitments left in England after February 2008, apart from my 2 children who had already left home and were working independently. By doing voluntary work of several weeks or months in each country, I could plan a trip for at least 18 months, during which time I could acquire skills in ecological management that would enable me to find work anywhere in the world.

Research and Costs.

The next thing to do was research on Internet for Voluntary Work opportunities in South East Asia. For several nights I researched many sites, offering opportunities all over the world. But I had specific criteria – I didn’t want to teach (as in VSO), I didn’t want to spend one whole year in one country, I wanted to do conservation work, especially working in forests. I made enquiries with many organisations (including WWF) around the world, offering opportunities in South America, Canada, USA, India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Thailand. Two in particular interested me – one was Twin Work and Volunteer (now WAVA, Work and Volunteer Abroad) based in London, and the other was LPTM in Makassar, Sulawesi, Indonesia which I found on Go-Abroad.com. WAVA’s website was interesting and clearly presented, and they have many opportunities and links with volunteering organisations around the world. They offered reforestation/conservation work in Nepal, also similar work through Conservation Volunteers Australia (CVA) in Australia and New Zealand, both countries which I wished to visit after my time in SE Asia. I contacted WAVA and they sent me much useful and helpful information, and after considerable thought and planning I booked in my first 3 months to go to Nepal, beginning in May 2008. As WAVA also offered reconstruction work in Sri Lanka, I thought this would be make a good second destination after Nepal, prior to onward travel into South East Asia. The programme was shaping up with Nepal and Sri Lanka to begin with, and in the distance lay the prospect of Australia and New Zealand as final destinations. WAVA’s written instructions were excellent and comprehensive, leaving no question unanswered.

The second investigation I made was with LPTM based in Makassar, Sulawesi, Indonesia. The very name Makassar was fascinating and exotic, reminding me of colonial periods when British sailors traded the Straits of Makassar in the nineteenth century. I remembered at school we were taught that Indonesia was called the Spice Islands (I have since learnt that that term only applies to a small group of islands in eastern Indonesia called Maluku or Molucca Islands). I was very interested in what I read about Indonesia, the volunteer work in re-forestation, and the whole ethos behind the LPTM company. I wrote for more information and got a reply within days from their Director, Dr Baharuddin (Baha) Abidin.

From the information I had gathered, I could plan my year by starting with WAVA in Nepal for 3 months, starting May 2008, then moving on to Sri Lanka for 6 weeks after a short break in India in August. I would then move south-eastwards on to Indonesia to start in September. Initially I booked with LPTM for 4 months, with the idea I would go on to Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand or the Philippines in January 2009 for 3 months before going on to Australia and New Zealand, beginning April 2009. However, as things turned out, I had to change my plans and I stayed for the full 6 months I was allowed to do under the Indonesian Social Visit Visa.

Problems that became apparent.

Response from organisations (or lack of them). Eg WWF Mekong project in Thailand/Vietnam.

I had to phone WWF in Thailand, only to be told that the project was restricted due to the time taken to teach volunteers to speak the local language (!)

Also Terrorism from the Tamil Tigers posed a real threat and resulted in cancellation of plans for Sri Lanka.

My temporary work contract ended in February 2008, so I had the best part of 2 months to organise everything. Much work went into organising the trips, with several visits to the Nepalese, Indian and Indonesian Consular departments for visa requirements, a whole series of different vaccinations, travel clothes and backpacking equipment to be bought, appointing a Power of Attorney to look after my affairs while I was away, and changing my Bank so that I could withdraw money while I was abroad. While I was waiting to see the Indian embassy I had a call from WAVA to say that the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) had advised that people should not visit Sri Lanka due to recent terrorist bombings caused by the Tamil Tigers, in which several tourists had been killed, so WAVA had to cancel all programmes in Sri Lanka. Unfortunately I was not able to recover the cost of my flight from Kathmandu to Colombo. This therefore left me with a belated and unexpected gap to fill, which I did by booking a short independent 1-week holiday in India (the Golden Triangle of Delhi, Agra and Jaipur), then a further three week ‘Borneo Uncovered’ adventure trip in Malaysia, organised by the Australian company Intrepid and booked via Trailfinders in Oxford. I was hoping to end my time in Malaysia by staying with an old friend, David Topping, who had married a Malaysian girl and was living and working in Kuching, Sarawak.

Travel begins.

After a farewell lunch party for my family and friends, I was finally ready to depart from Heathrow at the end of April 2008, bound for Nepal.

WAVA has an arrangement with CCSV Nepal (now Quest Volunteer Nepal) in Kathmandu, run by Salve Shakya and her team.

I will never forget my first impressions of Asia in Kathmandu- the clouds covering the Himalayas, the descent to Kathmandu over the lush green tropical forests in the valley, the hot steamy airport, my three £1 English coins which I gave to a man to phone a taxi for me as Salve was not there to meet me – the hot, dusty, crowded, unmade roads as the taxi jolted into the city, poor people selling anything by the roadside under rickety awnings – but smiling and cheerful, as I was to find everywhere.

Salve greeted me warmly at my Hotel in the Thamel district, the heart of Kathmandu. It is surrounded by shops and crowded with motorcyclists, close to Quest’s office in central Kathmandu. My room was small, plain and basic right at the top of the Hotel on the 5^th floor which was a bit of a trek. Salve is from the  Philippines and had come to Nepal in the late 1990’s for charity work and met and married a Nepalese businessman. She has one son who was 7 yrs old when I arrived. Salve is very welcoming with a lovely friendly smile, greeting me warmly as if I was already a long-standing friend. She arranged for me to come to Quest’s office the next morning at about10.00am.

So on Monday 5th May 2008 (with help from Dev* [see below] who had seen me in the street and followed me as he felt sure I was going to get lost!) I arrived at Quest’s pleasant office for my induction. Salve gave me printed sheets of information on Nepali customs, the caste system and cultures, and the aims of her organisation.. She explained where I was going to be placed and what sort of work I was going to do. She introduced me to her team. Devendra (Dev) who was to take charge of me, and Sanjay who was to teach me some basic Nepalese and give me my induction for 2 or 3 days.

We sat cross-legged on the floor of the office – I quickly adjusted to this novel position. I told them a bit about myself, and then Sanjay (who speaks excellent English) attempted to teach me from the blackboard some basic Nepali words, the most important of which of course is “Namaste!” (“Greetings !”). At about 1.00pm we ate lunch, sitting on the floor, a delicious curry and rice with salad of cool cucumber, lettuce, onions and tomatoes with the hot spicy sambal sauce so beloved by the Nepalese. We ate with our hands – again, a first experience for me but one which was to become familiar.

In the afternoon Dev took me sightseeing around the city – we saw (in heavy rain) the famous Durbar Square with its ancient wooden temples and mystical gurus who were more or less begging on the streets, the ornate stone carvings of ancient Hindu and Buddhist deities, the colourful market produce of vegetables, spices, rice and fruit, the street traders, and climbed the steep Swayambhu Monkey Temple mount for wonderful panoramas of the city. I was disappointed with the fleeting appearance of the monkeys who only dashed out from the bushes briefly, it seemed they had become so used to pilgrims and tourists feeding them that they were not very hungry and preferred to sleep.The temple at the top of the mount seemed very dirty and grubby, with candle wax spilled on the stone floors, tarnished brass temple ornaments  and ragged flag bunting draped across the roof, but I sensed and respected the palpable reverence that the Nepalese held for this venerable site. After an unhurried climb back down the steep steps, we visited the Old Palace to see the Kumari Living Goddess make her daily appearance. At about 2.00pm every day visitors crowd into a small courtyard through a narrow porch and wait patiently for the appearance of the Goddess on an ancient wooden balcony. We are warned not to take photographs, and that the sight is for only a few seconds, so we all gaze up intently and expectantly, not wanting to miss this opportunity. A few minutes later than expected there is movement on the balcony and suddenly there is a glimpse of a young girl, perhaps 12 years old, beautifully made up and wearing colourful ceremonial dress and headdress. She stares directly and impassively down at the crowd, no smile or wave, and then she is gone, literally after a few seconds so if you blinked you would have missed her.

The Nepalese people believe that she is a Goddess who will bring good fortune to the people and city. There is more to this tradition than I was able to learn at the time, but it is a cult of ancient lineage and sacred to the people of Kathmandu.  When the Kumari Living Goddess reaches puberty she is replaced by another girl. Photos are forbidden, but when her appearance is over and you emerge back on to the street, the first thing you see waved in your face as you exit is a large colour postcard of the current Goddess being hawked by a street trader hoping for a few rupees.

 On Day 2 I had more language and Nepali customs training, and an induction into the Caste system of Nepal (which is similar to the Indian Caste hierarchy). I was to learn much more about this later on. In the afternoon Dev and Sanjay took me on a long, hot, dusty taxi trip to the outskirts of the city to see the BoudhaNath Temple, a large Buddhist Temple complex elevated in concentric rings, where pilgrims walk anticlockwise around the central temple before entering. The temple was cleaner and brighter than the Swayambhu, and we lit candles and gave money to some Buddhist monks who in return laid their hands on us and prayed for us. In the evening there was a power cut, not an unusual occurrence in Nepal as I was to discover. I ate at an Italian restaurant in the city centre.

On day 3 in the morning I went to register my details with the British Embassy Consular office in Kathmandu, as we had been advised to do. I was not impressed with the casual  service and general lack of interest in my situation (given that I was  going to be a Volunteer in Nepal for 3 months, I thought the Embassy would be interested in my work) and this impression was confirmed at the end of my 3 months in a story I will relate later. I spent the rest of the day sightseeing on my own in the city and in the evening Salve invited me and another volunteer, along with Dev and Sanjay and her family,  to attend a family Buddhist ‘christening’ party and rice wine ceremony in a small village called Chobhar on the outskirts of Kathmandu. Chobhar was the family village of Sanjay, which was how we came to be invited. This was my first introduction to Nepali hospitality and I was most impressed with the friendliness of the villagers. We first met the family whose baby was going to be blessed, took some photos and gave them some money as was the custom. Dry rice grains are scattered over the baby and family home as part of the ceremony, but the rice wine that is handed out is potent and fiery and one can soon get quite drunk. There was plenty of food and we sat around the edge of the courtyard under the colourful canopies, talking happily, accepting frequent refills of the rice wine, and enjoying meeting, it seemed, the whole village. The women in their colourful saris sat apart from the men, as is the custom in Nepal. After a long but enjoyable evening, we stumbled into a taxi to take us back to the city centre, all feeling just a little the worse for the rice wine!

The following day Thursday 8^th May, I was up early to leave Kathmandu at 6.30am on a long (6.5 hrs) bus journey to Chitwan National Park, my placement for 3 months. Salve accompanied me on the long hot and dusty trip, out of Kathmandu through an interminable traffic jam. She had brought plenty of fruit and bottled water for the journey. This was my first chance to see something of the beautiful country of Nepal as the bus wound through spectacular lush green mountain scenery along precipitous roads, through steep river valleys and gorges with river rapids and waterfalls tumbling down the mountainsides, through the traditional villages and across flat rice fields, south to the Chitwan National Park.

My placement was to be in the Chitwan National Park in the south of Nepal, a dry forest area with the Rapati river running through. I was to stay at the Parkside Hotel in Sauraha village. The Parkside Hotel business was owned by the Pariyar family consisting of Sher Bahadur Pariyar, his brother ShreeLal, his sister Sabitri and his mother.

HOTEL PARKSIDE

Parkside Hotel (www.hotelparkside.com)   is sponsored by a German philanthropic businessman, Mr Heinz Kintzl, who had originally sponsored the brothers’ education in Germany. Sher had spent a few years in Germany and learnt western business management, and his close association with his German sponsor enabled him to start the Hotel and other associated projects in the late 1990’s.

The bus arrived at the tourist terminal in Sauraha village at 1.00pm – we staggered out feeling tired and very cramped after our long trip from Kathmandu. We were met by a driver from the hotel who ushered us and our luggage into the back an open topped jeep, and we sped off to the Hotel which was situated at the very edge of the village. We screeched to a halt with a flourish in a cloud of dust in the front compound.

 Although Sher himself was not there when I arrived, his brother Shree Lal greeted Salve and me and bade us sit down in the reception area while a welcoming cooling drink was offered. Shree Lal is a short, stocky and powerful man with a rugged face, he likes to talk loudly and animatedly and he directs the staff. His English was not as good as his brother’s but still was most effective in communication.

I was introduced to some of the reception staff. Very soon I was taken across to the Hotel itself .

I barely had time to note that the compound was formed by the restaurant and reception area on the left, on the right was a lovely tropical garden with trees and shrubs, and facing us was the main entrance to the striking, solidly built and brilliantly white-painted hotel of three storeys height. My first delighted thought was that this surely must be paradise on earth.

Going in to the Hotel it was dark and cool. There were pictures of the Pariyar family with previous guests/volunteers, and some of the famed wildlife that one was likely to see in the CNP – exotic birds, tigers, rhinos, elephants, crocodiles and water buffaloes. I was shown up to my room on the second floor to be left alone to unpack and unwind after the journey.

My room was a large cool and comfortable twin bedded room on the first floor with air-conditioning and shower. A mosquito net was neatly tied suspended above the bed. My windows looked out across the rice fields, vegetable plots and farms towards the flat, green and lush plains of the  Terai, or lowland area of Nepal, famed for growing most of the rice needed in Nepal. The surrounding Hotel gardens are beautifully cared for with many different exotic tropical plants, banana and mango trees, hibiscus flowers and other colourful flowers all combining to give the effect that the Hotel is a jewelled lush tropical island set in a sea of green rice fields.

After a while I heard a knock at my door. I answered to see a small, dapper man of about 40 dressed in khaki uniform. He had smartly cut and combed gleaming black hair, a neat moustache and piercing black eyes. He had wonderful white teeth which showed in a flashing smile. He introduced himself as Gopal and asked if I wanted to go on a river wildlife trip the next day with him as my Guide. I thought that would be a great idea so I agreed to be ready for an early start the next day. Gopal was the Hotel’s Tours Manager and I could immediately see he was an important member of staff as he spoke excellent English, was very knowledgeable about the jungle and wildlife, and had an air of authority about him even though he was quiet and unassuming. I got to know him well in the next 3 months, both at the Hotel and on several jungle treks, and appreciated his many qualities, not least his discretion, intelligence, humour, knowledge of birds and jungle wildlife in the CNP, his loyalty and commitment. He became a good friend .

Gopal had an amazing repertoire of stories and jokes which kept me entertained on many nights. Some of his jokes i sent to my friends as they were not only funny but also a good representation of the characteristics of Nepali society. He often quietly sat down at my table to give me company, but he was ever vigilant and knew when he had to attend to management or other guests’ matters as a priority. 

Later that same evening of my first day I was introduced to Birendra Mahato, who was to be very important to my work in the CNP. Birendra was a young man in his late 20’s, extremely intelligent, apparently well educated,good looking and energetic. He spoke good English and greeted me with the customary Nepali friendliness and flashing smile with gleaming white teeth. He was to be crucial in interpreting for me and introducing me to the local people and groups whose work I was going to study and assist with. Birendra is Co-founder and Chairman of the Tharu Cultural Museum in Bacchauli Village, and Treasurer of the Green Society of Nepal, one of Sher’s main projects. He invited me to walk with him to his village that evening and see some of his work. Bacchauli village was only a short walk from Parkside Hotel. Birendra showed me round the interesting Tharu Cultural Museum which was his idea and inspiration, set up in an effort to preserve local artefacts, farm and fishing tools and cultural ornaments. Outside the museum was a herb garden growing herbs used in traditional medicine. The Tharu people were traditional occupiers of the lowland Terai of Nepal, originally hunters and gatherers but now farmers and their ancient traditions, cultures and customs were disappearing with modern society.

 I saw some of the handicrafts made by the local village women, particularly basketwork and some colourful cards hand-painted with traditional motifs (I later learned that the cards were made from elephant-dung paper, another of Sher’s projects).

Birendra is a Tharu village leader and representative of his people at local government level. He works closely with the Pariyar family with their projects and helping volunteers with the Green Society of Nepal. He was to be instrumental to my work in Nepal, helping translate for me, working with me on my Biodiversity Report, and my Project to study the effects of waste from the tourism industry on the local ecology. Birendra was later to  introduce me to his family, the village people and eventually the teachers at the local school, when it was considered that a valuable part of my project would be to teach some lessons on environmental awareness. In the event I taught two lessons and left my lesson plan for future use by more local schools.

Birendra was a busy man as throughout my time at Parkside he was also in charge of a local road building project for access to his village, funded by central government – he was responsible for co-ordinating the building work, paying the wages, overseeing the project on behalf of the local authorities and ensuring the work was carried out properly and within budget. This was demanding work involving the participation of most of the men and young boys of his village, but I was fascinated at seeing for the first time in my life how such a project was carried out, without the resources and heavy equipment available to western countries (apart from a diesel road roller), and learnt how vitally important such civil construction work was for the development of a poor country like Nepal.

Parkside’s pleasant restaurant and kitchen are across the compound away from the Hotel, above the reception area, under a thatched roof. On the wall there are local artefacts similar to those found in the Tharu cultural museum, such as pole ploughs and basket-work fish traps, and photos and certificates from previous volunteer workers. Mango trees grow so closely to the open balcony of the restaurant that you can pick the fruit from your table! There are about 12 tables set out, with a bar and drinks fridge at one end of the restaurant. Service is very attentive and my usual waiter was Gangga, a serious young man. As I was a volunteer who had prepaid, I had a set menu, where the food was not always to my taste, but of course I could choose anything else I liked.

Nepali food was an acquired taste…..or at least the way the meat was cooked. The meat was only chicken, goat and fish, all other meat was either prohibited for religious reasons, too expensive or simply not available.

The staple food is of course rice, with Dahl-baht, Nepali chicken in a curry sauce and rice, being the main meal. I could never understand why the local people liked to eat the bones on the chicken, it seemed they never ate the breast or white meat! Eggs, boiled, scrambled or in omelettes were widely available but I got tired of them. Most of the dishes were cooked in ghee (clarified butter), which gave a heavy, greasy taste to the food and was a bit sickly for my stomach.

Fresh fruit (mangoes, bananas, oranges, limes, lychees and water melons) and vegetables such as cucumbers, onions, garlic and tomatoes were in abundance as all villagers seemed to grow their own, and I much preferred to eat these uncooked.

I liked the creamy and smoky- tasting thick buffalo-milk yogurt for breakfast, served ice cold from the fridge with a small pot of delicious sweet clear honey. Nepalese truly wild honey is delicious, expensive and scarce –  it is considered the highest honour to be given some as a sign of respect and friendship, as I was to learn at the end of my 3 months.

I settled my extras and bar account every month. A particular favourite after a hot day’s work was to have a large bottle of cold Gorkha beer, straight from the fridge, mixed with some Sprite lemonade and served with crispy poppadums. Usually I drank this with fellow volunteers or new guests on the restaurant  balcony, overlooking the courtyard where we could see new guests arriving, tourists returning from their day in the jungle, or passing villagers going about their evening business, but occasionally I preferred to take my drink to the  thatched gazebo in the gardens for a quiet time of relaxation and contemplation in the cool of the evening….

The restaurant with reception below was the very centre of the Hotel, where everyone met at the end of the working day – guests, staff and management exchanged news and gossip, and meetings with the Green Society or discussions with Sher about his projects were frequently held.

Here I learnt about Sher’s projects – land purchased at the edge of the village (with German backing) for a school, an eye clinic, womens’ craft work and the Elephant Dung project.

On my first evening Thursday 8^th June 2008 in talking to Shree Lal and Birendra, I discovered what my work would be.

My work WAS NOT, as I had expected, to work on re-forestation planting trees. Instead I was to study the local tourism industry, the Hotel industry and the problems of waste disposal. I was to make a report to Parkside, the Green Society and the Hotel Association on ‘Biodiversity and the Threats to the Tourism Industry in the Chitwan National Park’.

But in order to carry this work out, I needed some time to see the river and jungle, meet the Hoteliers and officials of the Hotels Association,  get to know the villagers, the officials of the CNP and meet people who would be part of my work. It seemed a good idea to take up the offer of a morning’s jungle trek led by Gopal.

So on Friday 9^th May I was up early and met Gopal at breakfast. We walked through the village down to the River Rapati and boarded our canoe made out of a hollowed out tree trunk. As it was so early there was mist on the river – the sun was trying to break through, and fish eagles were swooping down over the water. Our boatman punted us downstream, on our right the jungle was close to the river, on our left there were mud banks and a wide margin of cleared land between the river and the dry scrub-like jungle. We looked out for crocodiles on the mud banks – I was pointed out the larger fresh-water Marsh Mugger crocodiles but did not see the Indian Gharial croc. Gopal pointed out various tropical birds in the tree canopy but to be honest I did not see them very well. I sat on the low, hard wood seat and just enjoyed the wonderful sights and sounds as we drifted leisurely downstream. We sat very close to the water and could see the bottom. I trailed my hand in the cool water, half thinking it might be snapped at by a croc. After an hour or so we landed and started our trek through the jungle. This was what I had been waiting for. The jungle was dry and certainly not teeming with wildlife. By this time it was very hot and we needed to drink plenty of water. We did see a family of Langur monkeys eating high up in some trees but they were well hidden. Colourful butterflies flitted in the sun-dappled glades. This was my first introduction to any jungle experience. It was quieter than I thought it would be. I saw the problems of the notorious creeping weed, Micania Mikrantha, a bindweed the locals call Banmara or Forest Killer. This is a noxious plant originating in South America that spreads pervasively, creeping over the undergrowth and smothering the native plant cover. Soon the Mikania covers all the undergrowth in a blanket of uniform green leaves, killing local ground cover on which much fauna depends. It is a huge problem as so much effort needs to be put in to counteract the spread – it covers so much of the jungle that it will take years of prolonged and co-ordinated effort by many people to deal with it, if the forest is not to die. If the jungle dies, the tourists will stop coming – and the hotels will go out of business.

After a picnic lunch and photos taken of me swinging precariously on a liana vine bent into a convenient swing shape, we returned to the river for our return upstream back to Sauraha. It had been arranged that I would go on an elephant safari in the afternoon. At 4.30pm I arrived at the elephant embarkation point and got aboard with a young German couple. At this time of the day the hotel owners take their new guests on an elephant safari into the CNP, this is a traditional part of the Tourist package. There was a procession out of the village into the Park of at least 6 elephants, each with their mahout ‘driving’ and carrying 4 tourists. I found the experience fascinating, it was a bit like being on a ship as the elephant lumbered along and we swayed back and forth on our ‘saddle’. Many photos were taken. The reason for the safari was to see the Indian rhinos in the jungle – this was what most of the tourists wanted to see and the hoteliers obviously didn’t want to disappoint their guests. It was essential therefore that the hotels owned at least one elephant – this was a very important source of income from the guests, but the environmental problems this caused soon became apparent to me. I noted these problems for inclusion in my Report on Biodiversity. Unless these problems are addressed, the very wildlife and jungle the tourists come to see will disappear, leading to catastrophe for the environment and the local economy.

On my elephant safari trip we saw 4 rhinos and one baby, also a mongoose and jungle fowl and peacocks.

The next day I visited the Elephant Breeding Centre at Sauraha with Gopal and 2 Australians, Dave and Des from Tasmania. We crossed the river by dugout canoe and walked through the dry scrubby forest to see the elephants in their compound. They were sheltered by tin roofs, the mothers were shackled to posts with their appealing babies freely close by, the mothers blowing dust or throwing leaves over them to keep them cool. A good photo opportunity. When we had finished, we returned to the riverside at Sauraha to see the hotel elephants bathe – this is another tourist attraction and a controversial one, but the elephant mahouts naturally see it as an opportunity to try to get money by allowing the excited and totally captivated guests to ride on the elephants’ backs, swim next to them and be showered by the elephant’s trunk – all providing wonderful photos for the tourist. After the photos, the mahout reaches out urgently with his hand, demanding damp rupees which he tucks behind his belt.

In the evening I went to see the Tharu Village Cultural show which is held every week during the tourist season. This was a wonderful display in the village hall of traditional Tharu dancing, cultural singing, weapons and fighting displays, and individual skills such as a peacock dance and fire-juggling. At the end of the performance the guests are invited up on stage to participate in a group dance, to which some guests contribute in a more or less enthusiastic manner. On this first visit I did not have the courage to participate but I had one further visit later in which I did get on stage. There is no fixed fee for entrance but we are encouraged to donate in a large tin as we exit.

On Sunday 11^th May I had a  Rest day, I went on the internet in the afternoon and went to Bambooz River Cafe overlooking the Rapati River, where I met the owner, Puru. He was a very nice man, welcoming, personable, intelligent and concerned about the implications of tourism, waste  and threats to biodiversity in the CNP that I was already beginning to see. Puru is an active member of the Sauraha Hotel Association. I spent many evenings later in my time having a cool drink with Puru, looking out over the beautiful river scene with elephants bathing, swallows flitting over the water, villagers returning from the fields with bundles of hay and fodder on their heads, the occasional crocodile causing fish to jump out of the river, and hearing the village boys laughing,  as we all witnessed the river scene in the glow of the setting sun.

I had decided that in order to write my report on biodiversity, I needed to see more of the jungle environment, so I arranged with Gopal that he would take me on a 3 day jungle trek starting early the next morning.

Jungle trek with Gopal, River View Lodge Ghatgain, and Radha.

May 12-14^th

An early start and we met Gopal’s assistant guide, Jitu, a handsome and pleasant young man of about 20 who was a cook at Parkside. We walked through the village to get to the water’s edge and embarked in a dugout canoe as we had the previous Friday. Again it was an enchanting scene as we drifted downstream passing little islands where marsh mugger crocodiles basked in the sun, pretending to be dead or logs. Gopal pointed out the various birds in the trees along the river. After an hour we disembarked and clambered up the river bank into the jungle.

Gopal explained how the Nepalese government had placed the Army as guards in the protected National Park, to guard against poaching. The poaching, funded by Chinese, was a huge problem as the Chinese (and it must be said, many other Asian countries) traditionally used rhino horn, tiger bones, claws and other body parts in their medicine. Although we saw the army posts and armed soldiers, look-out towers and electrified fencing, the problems still persist as the money the poachers get is too tempting, and it is believed that some of the army are bribed to turn a blind eye to the problem. I was also to discover that the administration of the Park was not as good as it should have been, also due to bribery and corruption and the chronic lack of a firm lead from central government – the political state of Nepal was a whole study in itself and I was to learn much about this during my time in Chitwan.

Our objective was to visit a rhino watering hole which we had to approach quietly. Gopal led us, and on the way we saw many birds, langur monkeys, deer in the distance, and a wild boar which startled me as it crashed through the undergrowth. Eventually we reached the edge of a flat boggy area which marked the waterhole, and we quietly moved into position behind the undergrowth to see the rhinos. These were some distance away and feeding or wallowing just around a bend so they were difficult to see clearly, I only saw the large rump of a male covered in brown mud as it moved back and forth. But it was enough. We stopped in a cool shaded area by a stream for a delicious picnic lunch brought by Gopal – boiled eggs, salt and pepper, fried rice, fried chicken, raw onion and garlic, bananas and oranges. We threw the biodegradable peels and egg shells into the undergrowth where the ants and insects soon made short work of it.

After lunch we continued by foot on to our destination of River View Lodge, Ghatgain, a tiny village right by the river. If there is a Garden of Eden on earth, River View Lodge is it.

Picture a courtyard garden of lush green plants, bright tropical flowers, hibiscus and frangipani, mango trees, pineapples and fruit trees. The garden is set high up on a riverbank at the edge of the jungle. There are neat gravelled pathways dividing the garden into squares.

There are two approaches to River View Lodge. One is by foot from the village, passing through chicken coops and trees, and you emerge into a garden square bounded on 2 sides by low single-storied huts facing each other, while the third side fronting the river is a bigger circular thatched lodge comprising the dining room. The guest accommodation is in the left hand row of huts, consisting of simple rooms with bunk beds and attached shower room and toilet. The right hand row is the kitchen and accommodation for the guides. The central area is filled with the well-tended and attractive garden, and the whole is surrounded by tall pine trees, banana and mango trees whose fragrant branches form a protective umbrella over the whole plot. The second approach is from the river and ferry dug-out canoe, where the ferryman paddles you across and all you see is the thatched roof of the dining area. As you wind your way up the steep riverbank, gradually the whole scene unfolds and you think, again, that you have arrived in Paradise.

The scene is enhanced by the fact that it is hidden away from the passing world, your guides have to know where it is otherwise you would never find it on your own. It is an isolated gem which makes you feel as if you’ve stumbled upon a hidden paradise that no-one else knows about. This is a dichotomy for the owner, Rhada, who naturally wishes to make her lodge more known to tourists, but wants to keep its quiet and special character intact.

Rhada is a small, young, quiet and beautiful Nepalese woman who lives with her elderly and disabled mother in a bigger house in the village of Ghatgain. Her mother had been injured by a wild buffalo while she worked in the rice fields and was now bedridden.Rhada has married sisters but is not married herself (or was not at the time of my visit) and had taken it upon herself to be her mother’s carer.  When tourists arrive with their guides, she comes from her family house to the Lodge, greets them with a lovely welcoming smile and shows them to their rooms. Usually guests wish to rest after their jungle trek, have a shower, and then in the evening they gather with their guides outside the kitchen where Rhada is making the evening meals to order. Guests sit on the benches with their drinks, overlooking the courtyard garden, or wander to the river’s edge to see the evening scene of villagers returning with wood or hay, fishermen still casting a late net into the river or elephants drinking and wading across the river returning to their hattisars (stables).

Dinner at River View is noted and recommended for its delicious small fresh fish from the river, fried like whitebait and usually served with cucumber and onion salad and a touch of sambal or chilli sauce. I thought this tasted wonderful, especially with a squeeze of fresh lime juice, and accompanied by a cool bottle of Everest beer. The meal is served by Rhada inside the thatched dining room, with candles on the tables, overlooking the river as dusk falls, huge insects flying through the window and large posters of the jungle wildlife adorning the walls. When you return to your room, the last thing you think before you go to sleep is that there can be NOWHERE else quite like this in the whole world.

Sometimes if you get up very early the  next day you may be lucky enough to see rhinos grazing on the riverbank. I never did see these but was told that rhinos had visited in the night and the evidence was on the ground. My second day at Ghatgain, Tuesday 13^th May 2008, we again made an early start for a jungle trek with Jitu and Gopal. Today we trekked for an hour to see the crocodile breeding centre. This is a famous and successful centre for the breeding of endangered Indian Gharial crocodiles, sponsored by many international NGO’s and wildlife organisations.

The Gharials are smaller, less aggressive fish-eating crocodiles with characteristic long thin snouts terminating in a large knob. They face many dangers in the wild, not least poaching, snaring by fishermen’s nets, attacks by birds of prey on the young ones and competition from the larger and heavier Marsh Muggers.

 As we arrived there was excitement as a large monitor lizard was seen alongside the wire fence surrounding the centre – it had presumably been trying to scavenge some of the fish used for feeding the crocs. It lumbered quickly off into the jungle but I just had time to see its huge head and gain an idea of its size.

The centre is divided into large concrete enclosures where crocs of all sizes are allowed to develop. We saw the incubation chamber where the eggs are warmed artificially. When the babies are hatched, they are placed in the nursery enclosures. The tiny crocs are very appealing with large eyes, characteristic thin snouts and squeaky chirps. When they grow bigger in this protected environment, they are placed in progressively larger ponds until they reach the age of 5 or 6, then they are released into the wild. One or two older crocs, especially large examples, are kept in the Centre for interest for the tourists, and the oldest was about 20 years and had grown a huge knob on the end of its snout.

There were no other visitors when we were shown round, but I was pleased to note that the centre is obviously well funded and is a successful operation; being an International scheme of great importance, it has to have guards and close inspection to prevent poachers and large animals intruding.

After this we visited a tiger enclosure near the breeding centre. This is a huge timber enclosure with walls 20ft high. In it is a female tiger who has been there since birth. Her mother was shot and she was one of two cubs rescued and kept here for all her life. We looked down from the viewing platform as she paced about – a beautiful animal but, I thought, how sad, here she is just close to her natural environment but never able to be free. She was visited by wild male tigers but they could not get into the enclosure – this must have been so frustrating for these poor animals. We saw actual tiger tracks in the jungle so we knew they were around, but they live in an ever smaller area, facing habitat loss, disturbance from tourists and death from poachers.

We saw bear claw marks on trees, elephants, rhinos, mongoose and monkeys. At lunchtime we reached the Tal Lake, deep in the jungle, covered with lotus flowers and noted for its fish-eating birds and marsh mugger crocodiles. Here there was a tall viewing tower. We climbed this for a rest and to have lunch (cucumber and onion sandwiches, boiled eggs, bananas, biscuits and mango juice). Again we disposed of the organic waste (apart from the cardboard cartons) onto the forest floor, where it would be quickly eaten or decomposed.

After this we returned to River View Lodge for our second night. We had a similar delicious fish supper as per the previous night. Here we met with Krishna, a bird expert from Sauhara and the Green Society, who was conducting a bird survey. I was to meet with Krishna again.

The following day 14^th May, we were up early to say goodbye to Rhada and return to Sauhara. Our journey back involved catching two buses, and the final stretch back to our village was by pony and cart from Ratnanagar. We arrived back by 9.30am. I had a rest, followed by a visit to the internet cafe, and in the evening I had a drink at Puru’s Bambooz Restaurant, where I chatted to him about my jungle expedition. He was interested about my volunteer work, agreed with some of my observations and offered some wise and helpful advice about my project.

I wrote up my Report on Biodiversity in 2 days, 16 & 17^th May, based on my observations both in the jungle and in talking to local people concerned about their environment.

I presented this Report to a meeting of the local Hotel Association and the Green Society at Parkside Hotel on Sunday 18^th May. After some discussion it was agreed that I should draw up a questionnaire to discover what the local Hotels do about waste management. This meant that I would visit most of the hotels in the following 2 weeks to deliver and receive back the questionnaires – quite a task considering there were about 50 hotels in the village.

I was helped by two things: firstly, the purchase of a bicycle from a shop in the local town Ratnanagar, which Shree-Lal accompanied me to – bicycles are the chief method of transportation in Nepal and although cheap by western standards, represent quite a substantial investment for the average Nepali family. This enabled me to ride easily around the village and talk to the hoteliers. The second help was the timely arrival on 20^th May of Mariah from Kathmandu, a young American from New York who was visiting Nepal as part of her international project to film the work of volunteers for a Documentary. She had already visited many countries in Asia to study and participate in the volunteer movement, and her most recent visit had been to Vietnam and Cambodia. She was most enthusiastic about my work and immediately helped me in drawing up my questionnaire, planning the distribution and collecting and analysing the completed answers. On the day of her arrival Sher and Basu Dhungana (Sher’s friend and chairman of the Green Society) took us into the jungle by jeep to visit ‘20,000 Lakes’ and the construction of a new lake financed and organised by the Green Society which will help draw wildlife and birds to a new area of the Park.

From 21^st to end May Mariah and I were involved with printing, distributing and collecting the questionnaire. This meant meeting with many Hotel proprietors, managers and Park officials, as well as others involved in the tourist industry such as cafe owners, shopkeepers and naturalists. One such was Basu Bidari from Mowgli’s, a Tour Operator specialising in the birds of Nepal and especially the birdlife of the Chitwan jungle. Basu is an intelligent, friendly and dedicated naturalist, radiating enthusiasm for his subject, very concerned about the threats to wildlife and a prominent and influential member of the Green Society.

Other Hoteliers were comparatively wealthy, had been established for many years and had many links with, and sponsorship from, western countries such as Germany, Holland and America. They naturally had no wish to change the status quo, which had been the source of their income for many years, and I sensed they were more complacent but they too could not ignore the changes that were happening in front of their eyes. The more responsible members were looking anxiously to the future. I was able to talk to a former president of the Hotel Association and he made the point, which became very relevant to me later, that education was the key to meeting some of the problems.

Almost everyone we talked to was concerned about the problems of tourism and waste disposal.

On the one hand their livelihoods depended on tourism, getting as many tourists to come to Chitwan as possible and spend money in their hotels, cafes, shops. On the other they were aware of the increasing pressures by tourism and other factors on their resources – the damage done to the jungle by too many hotel-owned elephants, the lack of waste disposal facilities and the consequent damage to the environment, the attraction for poachers of the rhinos and tigers, the pressure on land from development and the villagers’ traditional methods of gathering wood and grasses for fuel, building materials and fodder.

Our questionnaire gave the hoteliers the option of responding in both English and Nepalese, although the vast majority replied in English. We asked them for their own suggestions and ideas as to how to improve the situation. The one factor common to all answers was that central Government should do more to address these issues, but in discussing the political situation of Nepal we opened up the fundamental problem that central Government was weak, corrupt and inept – the political state of Nepal cannot do much because there is so much internal dissent and self-interest, compounded by Marxist ideology, so there are long periods when nothing gets done. Strikes are frequent, public workers do not get paid, and there is a constant state of Stop-Go. In other words, there is no strong incentive for tackling the issues of threats to biodiversity – as long as the tourists keep coming, that is all right by the government.

The distribution and collection of the questionnaire gave Mariah an opportunity to meet and film tourists, guides and fellow volunteers, both at Parkside and other hotels. Almost all were sympathetic to the work we were doing, and told us of their own experiences. Mariah obtained some interesting and sometimes impassioned views. She even filmed me for her documentary on volunteer work.

In between this work I had the opportunity to see more of the Nepali countryside on a motorcycle trip for 20 kilometers along the Rapati river valley with ShreeLal, where we stopped for traditional Dahl bhat breakfast and Shree Lal laughed at my doubts and suspicions as to what we were eating ! I saw how the river was central to the economic life of this part of Nepal. I discussed Sher’s proposed project to build a new school and eye hospital on land his family and the Green Society had recently bought, and viewed the site at the edge of the village with members of the Green Society. I saw Sher’s project to make paper from elephant dung, learned how this was made and saw how the local women turned the paper into art and craftwork which would enable them to make a modest living.

What was a highlight of these days was an invitation for Mariah and myself to attend a traditional Tharu village wedding on 26^th May. This probably gave me more insight into Nepali customs and culture than any other single event. It was a whole day event. We travelled to the village where the wedding was to take place in the back of Toyotas and Land Rovers. We needed tough vehicles because the roads were very rough, with large potholes and obstacles over which we sometimes had to push the vehicles by brute strength.

We travelled through several villages on the way, sounding our horns and cheering loudly –  we picked up the splendidly-dressed groom from his village (he was a farmer) and followed his gaily decorated car to the bride’s village. The groom’s little family car scraped its exhaust and underside so badly on the huge potholes and ridges and boulders that I wondered if it would last the day.

There were many local people attending, the women beautiful in their glossy black hair and brightly coloured saris, the men smart in their best clothes. Mariah was taken into a house and dressed in the Tharu fashion, she was the centre of attraction for the local ladies and many photos were taken. The bride’s family was most hospitable and welcomed us into their house to see the bride in her magnificent red wedding dress sari, and we were given a cool drink in the shade.

The wedding ceremony took place outside the bride’s house, under large awnings. It was very hot. The groom and bride had their feet washed, there was much incense and flower throwing, and we went up to congratulate the happy couple as they sat on their thrones. It was the custom to present gifts of money to the Groom. Then followed a feast – the women and children sitting separately from the men, as I had already noted in my first few days in Nepal at the Rice Christening ceremony in Chobar outside Kathmandu. I met several young men and women and exchanged e-mail addresses. There were two elderly identical twin brothers, dressed identically, whose presence as priests was important to the married couple in giving their blessing throughout the ceremony. They were as wrinkled and brown as pickled walnuts, and smiled continually.

Apart from this cultural experience, I also witnessed a highly significant event in Nepali affairs – the abolition of the Nepali Monarchy on Wednesday 28^th May 2008. This had been looked forward to for some time and was a highly popular event, televised live from Kathmandu, and indeed for a short while Kathmandu was the centre of world attention for this historic event. The people gathered outside the palace waiting for the king and his family to leave. The beautiful and evocative Nepali National Anthem was played loudly all day, and indeed every morning at Parkside during my whole time there, I heard it played on the radio of our farmer neighbour. It is a most beautiful tune and sung with extreme passion, and if I hear it now it brings a tear to my eye. This event prompted much discussion with my Nepali and international friends at the hotel, about the way Nepali society works, the benefits or drawbacks of a monarchy, the meaning of democracy and how the monarchical system works in England. This was most interesting and gave me much insight into the views of the Nepalese people, that the monarchy was hated because it was so corrupt in a very poor country.

 It was hoped that with the results of my questionnaire the Green Society could form some action to tackle some of the problems. Mariah helped me compile my questionnaire, assemble the results and share the writing of the conclusions.

The results of the questionnaire showed that most of the hotels did not recycle anything, they either put rubbish in a hole in the ground or threw it into the river. They agreed this was not environmentally friendly, but what else could they do? Mariah suggested that the Green Society could look at the possibility of a glass crushing machine from America. She researched some American companies and came up with 2 who were in the business of making glass crushing machines. One in particular was of interest and we wrote to the company and printed off fact sheets and prices. Glass disposal is a particular problem in Nepal as it does not have the infrastructure or facilities to collect, melt down or recycle glass – a proposal was therefore made that a glass crushing machine could help the problem and earn some revenue for the Green Society by selling the products. The Society were interested in this proposal, however the initial capital costs of buying and importing the machine (a minimum of $125,000) were far beyond the resources of the Green Society at the time of my work.

On 29^th May Mariah and I went with Sher and Bashu into the Community Jungle near Sauraha. We climbed a sturdily- built timber look-out tower that had been paid for by an English philanthropist who had been to Nepal many times. We viewed the lakes and took many photos. The tower is used by the Green Society to take guests to spend the night safely in the jungle, it is equipped with two bedrooms and two viewing platforms. On the way back to Sauraha we visited an isolated village populated by a marginalised and visibly poor community called the Masru people. I could not fully understand why this village was separated from the rest of  Nepali society, but it seemed they were victims of the ancient caste system which I had learned about in my first few days. They were not of the same caste as the majority of the area, and indeed had become almost ‘untouchables’. This was apparent in the poor-quality concrete block housing, the ragged children, the poor elderly women squatting aimlessly in front of their houses, the rags of clothing hanging up to dry. Sher sponsors this village and admits it hurts his conscience that the village is excluded from the comparatively prosperous centre of Sauraha and tourism.

In the evening we all went to Bambooz and the ever-obliging and pleasant Puru, and had cocktails and fried fish and chips, watching as the sun set over the river and the elephants enjoyed their evening bath. Back at Parkside there was a musical evening as a farewell for Mariah, who was to leave us the following day. There was plenty of energetic dancing – but only by the young boys and Mariah, who had been encouraged by the rest of us – she bravely did her bit!

On 30^th May, it was the end of my first month in Nepal, – Mariah left for Pokhara and Sher returned to Kathmandu, so it was an end to a certain period during which I had got to know the complicated and interlinked environmental, political and economic problems facing the ChitwanNational Park.

In the course of my work and leisure time I had met with many Nepali officials and proprietors of businesses, Hotel Association, restaurant owners, Guides and wildlife experts concerned about the problems, and discussed ways in which some of these problems could be solved.

My Report on Biodiversity in the Chitwan National Park, produced by the end of my first month at Parkside, covered the threats to biodiversity from poaching, corruption, lack of effective administration and a clear direction from central government, the fragile political system in the whole country, land use, tourism, pressure on the jungle by elephant safaris, the Banmara Forest Killer bindweed (Micania Mikrantha), the lack of recycling facilities, and the problems of waste disposal.

Month of June 2008.

With the completion of my Report and the departure of Mariah, I sensed a slight loss of purpose at the beginning of June. I was free to explore more of my surroundings and Nepali society, and felt more relaxed, but still needed something to occupy me. There was also a change in the weather.

On Monday 2^nd June I decided rather unwisely to venture on my bike to the local town Tandi Bazaar. It was extremely hot and I had omitted to take any hat. When I arrived at the Bazaar I felt rather unwell, due to heatstroke. I wandered around, buying some lychees and apples and withdrawing $50 in rupees. I was amused by a very vocal Mynah bird in a cage on the ground outside a shop – it certainly seemed to attract customers to the shop! I found a small cafe and asked for a beer. I was served it deep inside in the shade, the owner and her family were sympathetic to my plight, now compounded by a thumping headache. They were most hospitable. I decided to return to Parkside and be more careful about hats and shade in the future.

That evening the Monsoon arrived. All day the heat had been building up, and now the famous Asian monsoon just exploded over the village. I had a safe view from my hotel bedroom, but it was quite awe-inspiring. The rain was so heavy it flattened the maize crops all around the wide fertile valley, trees bent double and many were felled by the force of the wind, the sky was angry grey with vivid flashes of lightning, and thunder cracked liked I had never heard before. I now saw how rapidly the river could flood and wash away the stone embankments, breaching the banks and threatening a widespread flood. Apparently a devastating flood only 3 or 4 years previously had caused many deaths and much destruction over the area.

The following day I went with Birendra to the Green Society headquarters in Bacchauli village. Here I met some of the Green Society members, and I was able to work on the computer to get information relating to my Report printed off.

I had been captivated by my visit to River View Lodge and wanted to return there. It was not difficult to persuade Gopal to be my guide again and we planned a 3 day visit, setting off on Wednesday 4^th June. We set off on top of a bus from Narayanghat, having bought mangoes, watermelons and lychees for Rhada. It was pelting with rain, the monsoon having seemed to have set in, and there was no cover on top of the exposed bus top – we just hung on grimly to the rails as the bus struggled through rutted roads and potholes, but I didn’t really notice as I was so looking forward to returning to Rhada and Ghatgain. Sure enough, Rhada met us, soaking wet, through the dripping trees and showed us to our rooms, delighted with our gifts of fruit. Needless to say we had the fabulous fried fish dinner that night which I had been so eagerly anticipating.

The following day, which was fine, clear and sunny, we set off. This time we had asked Rhada to accompany us. I had discovered that she rarely had the time or opportunity to go into the jungle herself, to see what the tourists came to see – she had so many commitments in running her business and looking after her family, that she had apparently not visited the jungle on her doorstep for 4 years. So, rather as a special concession to me, she agreed to come with me and Gopal on our jungle trek. Gopal with his binoculars pointed out many birds along the river and by the lake, and we also saw deer in the distance and a mongoose. As we were walking along a path beside the lake he picked up a beautiful peacock’s feather which displayed the iridescent blue, green and purple ‘eye’ which characterises these feathers. I pressed it into my diary and have it in front of me now as I consult my diary for memories – it brings back all those wonderful memories.

We retraced our steps to the female tiger’s cage and peered through the timber posts to see her. She was pacing around the edge and coming towards me. I took a photograph and then suddenly the tigress reared up on her hind legs and towered over me with her front legs stretching high above me – for an instant I forgot the bars between us and thought she was leaping on me. I fell over backwards in great terror, and allowed Rhada and Gopal to pick me up, both of them laughing at my embarrassment.

In the evening, while waiting for dinner, we viewed the beautiful little kingfishers swooping down and fishing, there were herons stalking the banks, and in the distance an elephant was drinking with its mahout on board –  it later waded across the river and ambled past River View Lodge on its way home. Although I didn’t know it then, this was to be my last evening at my paradise. I had my usual fried fish with chips, while Gopal had another delicacy, the fish curry. We finished the meal with mangoes and lime juice.

In the night the monsoon returned with a vengeance, the rain drumming ceaselessly on the corrugated tin roof. I got little sleep.

We got up at 7.00am to return to Parkside. I said goodbye to Rhada in the rain,with some emotion, as she had made such an impression on me with her hospitality, her courage, her gentle manner and innocence. I was not sure if I would ever see her again, although I retained a small hope at the back of my mind that I would have time to visit her one last time before I left Nepal.

The first part of the journey home was accomplished by motorbike, me clinging to the back of Rhada’s cousin. We caught the bus to Narayangath, where we were pleasantly surprised to meet on the bus my old friend Dev from Salve’s office in Kathmandu – he was going to Parkside for a few days as a little ’holiday’ from Kathmandu.

Salve phoned me in the evening to check up on things and I was able to update her on my Biodiversity report, the ‘waste disposal’ questionnaire and our jungle treks.

The following day, 7^th June I went with Birendra on a village firewood collection into the jungle. This involved many of the strong men and youths from Bacchauli village, under the direction of Birendra, driving into the forest with tractor and trailer, picking out suitable fallen logs and trees (no tree was allowed to be felled). They had their adzes and machetes, and worked sweatily sawing up the heavy timber and manhandling it onto the trailer. Although I wanted to help in sawing, it was felt better to leave it to the men who were experienced and skilled in handling their tools, which were unfamiliar to me. I did help load the timber, however.

A huge trailer-load of timber was then triumphantly brought back into the village in the evening and unloaded in a great heap, there to be cut up and distributed later for communal firewood. It was quite an experience to witness this efficient and effective community effort.

Birendra being actively involved in my work, he had thought it useful if I extended my work into the educational sphere by drawing up a lesson plan on Environmental Awareness which could be delivered to the local schools. At first I thought I had had enough to do, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was a good idea. Education WAS the key to the future, and could help the people of Nepal raise themselves out of poverty. In fact this project gave me further purpose and direction. Birendra consequently arranged a meeting with the head teacher of his local village school and on Monday 9^th June we met him and discussed the objectives. It transpired that I had less than 2 weeks to prepare and deliver this lesson as the school term would be ending on 20^th June. However I was confident I had enough material, and previous experience, to deliver a successful lesson, in conjunction with Birendra as my translator.

On the evening of 9^th June I attended the local Tharu culture village show for the second time. There were different people performing the show but it was enjoyable and entertaining, and as vigorous as before, and this time I set a good example by going on stage for the traditional line-dance at the end! No doubt my clumsy efforts have been captured on some tourist video clips.

The next 2 days were spent in the Hotel. It was very hot and I had a bad headache on Weds 11^th June. However, that evening I went on to the flat roof of the hotel and was gazing out over the flat terai when suddenly in the far distance, way to the north, I saw a brilliant white pyramid towering over the surrounding clouds. At first I thought it was an aberrant cloud formation, but I suddenly realised that this was the peak of a mountain – of the Himalayas. It was so tall it was higher than the clouds. It was mind-boggling in its grandeur and magnificence and completely awe-inspiring. I thought then and there that I MUST SEE THOSE MOUNTAINS! This after all is what most people think of when they think of Nepal. I made up my mind to arrange a trek before my three months were over. I let Shree-Lal and Birendra and Gopal know what I wanted to do, although I was committed to staying at Parkside until the end of June when my lesson was due to be delivered.

On Thursday 12^th I was working on my lesson plan at the Green Society offices. I gathered further environmental information from the local office of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and was pleased to see how active this branch is in the area. In the afternoon I witnessed the local road building programme overseen by Birendra, with his colleague Kapil – I took some photos of the hardcore base being laid, all by manual labour from the local boys.

On the evening of Friday 13^th June I was invited to dinner by the manager of an orphanage which was situated just a few hundred yards down the road from Parkside. I had often passed this and waved to the lovely children, and sometimes stopped to give them sweets. The manager was Sante, a motherly and friendly woman. She gave me dahl-bhat and we ate with the children. After dinner we sat outside in the dark (there was a power cut), talking and laughing, watching the beautiful fireflies dancing around the Flower Tree. It was a memorable evening.

The following day, Anastasia arrived at Parkside. She was an absolutely beautiful, really stunning French girl, tall, blonde and blue-eyed, beautiful cheek-bones and elegant figure. She had come as a volunteer to teach in another of the orphanages in the village (not the one I had attended the night before, but another one on the road to Bacchauli village). Needless to say I summoned all my hazy French linguistic skills learnt long ago, and tried rapidly to revive my memories of the beautiful French language. Miraculously my poor French returned in a few short days – although Anastasia spoke a little English and understood spoken English better. I thought we got off to a good start when I ordered a bottle of cold water to be brought to her room, as she had just arrived and was feeling very hot and tired. She never forgot my little consideration and we became good friends.

On Sunday 15^th I went to the Biodiversity office in Sauraha. A visit had been recommended by Birendra. This is a government office for the Chitwan Park officials and is partly a museum for the fauna to be found in the locality – such as crocodile skulls, snakes, spiders, birds, jungle animals of all types. I tried to get some material and information for use in my lesson plan but I don’t recall getting much if any. On my way out of this office, I saw an attractive Asian girl coming in and she asked me where the Tourist office was. I gave her as much information as I could and found out she was called Shane (Frances McCollum) and was an American living in Los Angeles. She was originally from Korea but had lived in America for many years. As it was lunchtime I suggested we go to the Riverside Hotel for a drink. I ordered us a shandy, a mix of Gorkha beer with half lemonade – a delicious and cooling drink on a hot day. Shane had never had this before and was intrigued. We talked while enjoying the river view. She was a confident and extrovert person with an attractive personality, vivacious and a clear speaker. It turned out that she was a perpetual traveller with an ambition to visit most of the famous sights and countries in the world. She had already achieved over half of this ambition. I asked her how she managed this from an employment point of view, and she said she was always able to pick up a job when she returned to the US because she was in the computer industry and had skills that were in demand. When she got the travelling bug, she just left. I admired her confidence and seeming assurance, also of course her determination to work at achieving her particular ambition.

Shane was staying at the Rainbow Safari Lodge and invited me to dinner there. Here I also met an interesting older woman, Irmgard (Sarah) Meyer, an Austrian doctor who had worked for many years in the Cochin area of India. We all talked about travelling and volunteer work, and the politics and philosophies of the many countries we had visited or wanted to visit.

On Monday 16^th there was a meeting of the Hotel Association at Parkside. As far as I remember, this was an occasion for me to update them on my work so far, to present the findings of the questionnaire and to tell them of my plans for the lesson on Environmental Awareness which was to be delivered later that week. They were interested in the possibilities of a glass crushing machine and the potential for the Society to earn money from it, but I knew that they would never be able to afford the capital costs of the machine and its import from America.

Weds 18^th June – in the morning more work on the lesson plan and I went to see more road building with Birendra. This was the day I met Rajesh Ghimire and his sister Devi. I had already met Rajesh’s mother, who had invited me in for a drink one day when I was passing her house. She was a most engaging woman. She wanted me to meet her son who was away at the time. But today, as I was returning to the hotel past her house, she excitedly beckoned me in and introduced her son to me. He is a young and obviously intelligent man, speaking good English. It quickly became apparent that Rajesh wanted sponsorship for his education – he wanted to study civil engineering in Kathmandu, and although he was studying at his local college, they could not provide the sort of education he needed. I knew that a qualification in civil engineering would be of inestimable value both for him and his country. He told me what he needed financially, and I calculated at the time that I could afford to sponsor him, even though the course was for 4 years. The exchange rate was good – Nepalese rupees to English pound, and the cost of his education through college was just short of £500 per annum. We more or less agreed there and then that I would sponsor him. He was so grateful and happy and, at the time, I felt that my commitment in this tangible way to the ultimate benefit of the economy of Nepal was very worthwhile. I was not to know then how hard this commitment was to be for me to meet.

Rajesh and his pretty sister Devi came to Parkside that evening for a drink, to celebrate our bond. Rajesh rather engagingly calls me his ‘brother’.

The following evening, the 19^th, I was invited to the Ghimire’s house for dinner where we ate dahl-bhat and we had a very convivial time. I had luckily met Rajesh just in time for his help with my delivery of my lesson in Environmental Awareness to the local school the next day.

Friday 20^th June I was up early for the first lesson at the school. This was scheduled to be at 6.30am, certainly the earliest lesson I have ever attended in my life. I met Rajesh on my way to the school (it was just a few minutes away from his house) and there were 2 teachers supervising the children. On schedule they all poured into the classroom which was actually the offices of the Green Society, which happened to be on the same site as the school. I greeted them with ‘Namaste!’ and a few words in Nepalese, introducing myself and Rajesh. Thereafter my words were translated by Rajesh. The lesson actually went very well, with the usual questioning technique of what they knew about the local wildlife, what they had seen, what they knew about the tourist industry locally. Then I showed them examples of waste – plastic bags, rubbish, glass bottles and asked them what this was and where it came from. The answers were – the Tourists. I asked them what they thought this was doing to the environment, and again the answers showed that the children were aware of the damage that waste was doing to their community. I asked them what they thought could be done about this. Mostly the answers were intelligent – community rubbish dumps, recycling facilities, awareness by the hoteliers, awareness by the local community. The final point made was that if we all did something, it would make a difference – we should spread the word about that waste needs disposing of thoughtfully, and that government needs to put money into waste disposal projects. I felt the lesson was a resounding success. But there was a SECOND class waiting to come in at 7.30am – so we went ahead with a repeat performance. At the end there was a photo shoot of the entire class with myself, Rajesh and the teachers in the centre. It seemed a good lesson to end the term with.

Afterwards we returned to Parkside for a de-brief session. I felt a little ‘de-mob happy’ as I had worked quite hard over the last few weeks and felt that I had accomplished my environmental objectives. I could now look forward to my planned trekking in the Himalayan foothills. I was due to depart for Pokhara on 22 June. As if to celebrate my mood, we had a fried chicken and chips dinner that night with beer and plenty of lively discussion.

This dinner was followed by the most amazing Firefly display in the mango trees surrounding Parkside Hotel – all enhanced in the complete darkness of another power cut. The range of colours produced by these little flying beetles are amazing – more beautiful than any Christmas tree could be imagined. This is because of the scale of the sight of the tiny flashes against the backdrop of the huge trees, the fact that the multi-colours not only flash but also move constantly up and down, sideways and diagonally, all centred on a focal point. Ethereal, ephemeral – but a wonder while it lasted. And this is Nature, not created by man, not imagined by man but there to see and enjoy.

Saturday 21^st June 2008. Today was Rajesh’s sister Devi’s 25^th birthday. I had arranged to go with Devi and Rajesh on our bikes (Devi sitting side-saddle on the back of her brother’s ancient machine) to the local Tandi Bazaar for a treat. I wanted to buy Devi a colourful sari. We searched the markets and visited several shops before we found what we wanted, at the price I was prepared to pay. Devi looked so beautiful sitting against the background of different coloured saris, I took a picture of her. I had assumed Devi was a single girl. Little did I know at the time that Devi was already married, she never made any mention of this and I only found out from Gopal later that she had married the previous year. I don’t know what her husband would have thought of my present of the sari. I did not know where he was – I think he lived at another village and Devi had only returned to her family’s house for a few weeks.

 After we bought the sari we caught a bus to Narayanghat where we were due to have lunch. While we were sitting at the back of the bus, talking in English, a lady sitting in front of me turned round and introduced herself. She was middle aged and had been beautiful when younger, but seemed to have experienced some pain in her life by the lines etched around her eyes. She retained a beautiful serenity and dignity. She spoke in good English, said her name was Saraswoti, that she was a teacher in Narayanghat and that her son was a teacher working abroad. She gave me her telephone number and said that she would like me to come to her house for dinner one day. I was most touched by her kindness, although I told her I was about to go to Pokhara for a few weeks, but I promised I would phone her on my return. I was not to know what a sad story she had to tell.

After a fish lunch with Rajesh and Devi in a local cafe, I bought some cheap plastic footballs and  some colouring books and pencils for the children at the orphanage in Sauraha. Finally we bought some lychees and mangoes and made the return to Sauraha. As I was walking back to the hotel, some of the orphanage children came running down to greet me, saw my ‘goodies’ and seized my books and pencils so that by the time I arrived at the orphanage, they had all been taken! At least I was able to kick two footballs around with them for a while.

That evening we celebrated Devi’s birthday at her family home with a cake and candles, the family gave me a Tikka spot and a garland of flowers, and we sat and talked and took photos. It was a lovely end to my first period in Chitwan. I said goodbye to the Ghimire family with some emotion, as they had been so kind and welcoming to me, and they obviously had liked my company. The next day I was due to leave for Pokhara and the foothills of the Annapurna range of mountains some 150 kilometers away.

Sunday 22^nd June 2008. At breakfast I met relatives of the Pariyar family, Top Bahadhur and his wife, and daughter Jasmine. They had spent a few days at Parkside after visiting Kathmandu, and were returning to their home town of Pokhara. I was to go with them on the long bus trip. I was captivated by the very beautiful Jasmine. She was about 22. She was, like most Nepali women, small with beautiful skin, paler than most Nepalese women, in contrast to her glossy black hair. She knew she was beautiful, and unlike most Nepali girls, she was extrovert and confident and knew how to flirt. This was because her parents owned a Travel business in Pokhara which is the trekking centre for the western Himalayas, so not only did they come into contact with western tourists and trekkers but they also travelled themselves and were far more aware of international politics and customs than the majority of Nepalese people. It was very likely that Jasmine already had many boyfriends with whom she corresponded all over the world!

They were a comparatively wealthy family and Top wished his daughter to have an international education. So she was about to depart from Nepal within the next month for Australia (where there is already a sizeable Nepali community of students and workers) to study Tourism and Hospitality in Sydney.

I sat behind her in the minibus and she started to sing a Nepalese song, rather prettily. I actually told her I thought she was beautiful but she seemed nonplussed, probably because this had been told her many times before.

It was on this long bus journey that I witnessed some of the dangers of travel in a poor country like Nepal. The roads pass very sharp bends in the mountainsides, and at one precipitous bend a vegetable lorry had swerved off the side and rolled down into a narrow ravine, killing the three occupants. When we passed, the rescuers had just dragged the three bodies out of the wreckage and laid them out by the side of the road under blankets. We saw this gruesome sight as we passed by and were reminded that there are many casualties on the mountainous roads, avalanches are common and sometimes the drivers have had too much to drink. It was certainly not the last such sight I witnessed in Nepal.

POKHARA

We arrived tired in the late afternoon at Pokhara. I was staying at the  Nepal Guest House under an arrangement with Sher, who knew the owners and they reciprocated guests between Pokhara and Chitwan. The Guest House was about 15 minutes walk from the centre of the town, set back off the main street up a narrow approach that opened out into a very attractive garden planted with heliconia, fuschias, palm trees, jasmine, hibiscus, bougainvillea and many other colourful and semi tropical shrubs. The Guest House was a pleasant enough place but without the warmth of the staff of Parkside. The restaurant was being refurbished so all my meals had to be taken at other establishments – not too much of an inconvenience. (In fact it gave me much more variety in food than I had been getting at Parkside).

I had a light and airy room on the first floor – it was much cooler than at Chitwan and in any case we were higher up and the altitude, and the prevailing monsoon weather, kept the atmosphere damp and cool.

From my bathroom window I had a good view of the mountains and the lush green gardens of the neighbouring houses, where domestic washing was usually hung up, complementing the overall colour effect! On my first evening I experienced the tremendous power of a thunderstorm descending on the town, the sky lit up with brilliant flashes of sheet lightning and fearsome thunderclaps, the sound of which I had never heard before (even surpassing those I had heard in Sauraha a few days earlier).

Pokhara is a sizeable town nestling high up in, and surrounded by, the Annapurna foothills, and caters entirely for foreign trekkers so there are many more western-style cafes and restaurants, and a whole economy based on tourism. Prices are therefore much higher than in Chitwan. But there is of course much more variety in shops and goods, and there are many internet cafes with good connections, unlike the unreliable internet facilities in Sauraha.

On my first day I first met with Bishnu, a co-owner of the Guest House, and discussed my plans for trekking. I told him that I had been recommended to use Mr Bharat Adhikari as my personal guide by Mr Gopal at Chitwan, and Bishnu arranged that I would meet Bharat as soon as possible. In fact I met him that afternoon. Bharat could see, and I explained, that my fitness level was reasonable but not of the highest level, that I wanted to do some mid-level trekking at a gentle pace but couldn’t do the vigorous climbing to the upper levels of the trekking paths. After discussion, Bharat thought that it would be good to do two different treks, one of three days as an introduction (the Dhampus trek), and one of five days, (the Ghorepani-Ghandruk and Poonhill trek). Mr Bharat is an extremely nice, professional guide, very dependable, very knowledgeable and with an excellent sense of humour. He was a most pleasant companion and I was very fortunate to have his services.

 He was aged about 35 and had a young family, and was studying to gain further qualifications in the trekking and tourism industry.

After this meeting I wandered through the town, past the scenic Lakeside, and went to see the Bahadhur family. Here I met Jasmine’s two younger brothers, the youngest one was fat and spoilt, the older one a bit of a ‘lad about town’. I also bought some interesting Himalayan crystals and minerals that were ‘guaranteed’ to have come from Everest and Annapurna.

On my second day it was fine and sunny, so I went for a long walk out of the town by the huge lake and took some nice photos (using the special effects facility of my phone camera). On this walk I met Narayan, a very likeable young man who taught at an orphanage and professed a great interest in the works of Shakespeare, which somewhat surprised but impressed me!  We exchanged e-mail addresses. On my way back into town I was beckoned in to a cafe at which some young men and a pretty girl called Sunita were chatting. Over a drink we arranged to meet up again that evening at the Moondance Restaurant. Sunita was, not unnaturally, a bit nervous because she felt her ‘friends’ had set her up with me. After a drink and some awkward attempts at conversation we went on to a dance club which turned out to be just a show of very stilted dancing by professional singers, there was no actual dancing by the guests, the drinks were very expensive (as is usual in such places, worldwide) and it was so loud that you could not hear your neighbour speak….Sunita not surprisingly did not want to continue her acquaintance with me – so we parted amicably.

Day 3 was 25^th June. I had discovered the German Bakery, which served a nice breakfast of coffee or masala (Nepali) tea, croissants, marmalade or jam. After a spell on the internet, I had arranged to meet Bishnu and we departed on the back of his motorcycle  to the Seti Falls, a local landmark, followed by a visit to the famous Gurkha Museum. After this we visited the interesting Pokhara Mountaineering Museum where evocative photographs of the Himalayan mountains, their heights, the history of the mountaineering attempts on their summits,  their eventual conquerors, the mountaineering equipment used and many artefacts and fascinating little details were clearly displayed. Afterwards over tea at the cafe I met the distinguished English entomologist Colin Smith, who had spent the last 30 years living in Nepal and studying the beautiful butterflies and moths of the country. He had written several books on this subject. I noted that in the evening I had a gin and lemon soda, two Cokes and a plate of chilli chips at The Harbor Cafe!

On 26^th June I met Bharat at my hotel and we set off through the forest to climb the steep hill to see the famous International Peace Pagoda overlooking Pokhara. This was well worth the steep climb. It is a huge gilded statue of the Buddha, built by the Japanese after the Second World War as a symbol of international reconciliation and peace. We went into the shrine alongside to offer prayers, in my case I was advised to pray for peace in my life through my father, and light incense sticks. I signed the visitors’ book.

From this wonderful vantage point we could see over the whole town and lake of Pokhara, and hidden by the clouds to the north along the horizon lay the Annapurna range of mountains. The glistening white triangular tip of Annapurna II poked just above the clouds and I took several photos including a nice one of me with Bharat in front of the Pagoda.

On our way down I had a profoundly moving experience. Halfway down the steep mountain path we met a party of children, almost certainly orphans, in the care of one or two women. They were sheltering from the sun and resting under the shade of a huge tree. Bharat and I stopped and chatted and I sat down with them. I said to Bharat I would like to give them some sweets or treats. I gave him some money and he gave this to an older, more responsible girl,(Bharat said that the boys would have spent the money on themselves) and the girl raced nimbly back up the steep path to a shop further up. Meanwhile I had started to clap and sing along with the excited children, who ranged from really small toddlers to a group of 6 or 7 year olds and one or two older and taller girls. I remembered a British nursery rhyme and we sang that, along with the Nepali songs. In a few moments the girl was back with sweets, biscuits and packets of dry noodles. Bharat and I distributed them to the children, as fairly as we could in all the clamour and stretched-out little hands. All this was overseen by the two women who were smiling condescendingly from a short distance away. This whole encounter must have lasted about half an hour. I felt this had been really ‘good for my soul’ and the memory is etched into my consciousness.

Later that afternoon we visited the Mahadev Cave complex with some supposed formations of the elephant-headed god, Ganesh, and a cobra head. Finally we visited Devi’s Falls which had supposed magic qualities as many years previously a western woman, who was thought to have drowned, was brought back to life after being pulled from the Falls.

On Friday 27^th June after breakfast at the German Bakery, Bharat and I set off by bus on the first of our mountain treks, the Dhampus Trek. My diary notes we arrived at a waterfall (where I bought a stout stick at a roadside stall) and had a steep upward walk through rice terraces.

We stopped for a Coke break and saw langur monkeys in rhododendron trees.

In the late afternoon we came across a sombre sight. A landslide carpet of huge boulders had completely buried a village some years earlier. A stone shrine marked the fact that many people had been buried beneath this avalanche and it had been impossible to recover their bodies. Bharat told me this was not an uncommon experience in these mountains where earthquakes occasionally caused unstable rocks to tumble down the steep slopes.

We arrived at Greenland Lodge at 4.00pm. This guest-house had great views down the valley. I noted I had a nice clean room with a separate shower room. I was able to dry my clothes on a string across the verandah. We had black tea and tomato soup with spaghetti for dinner.

On Saturday 28^th June it was raining early. We breakfasted on Tibetan bread (fried) and cheese omelette. A young boy was playing with a kitten at the breakfast table and as it seemed so playful I took a few photos of it, curling up on my lap – I knew my daughter would like the photos! We set off for the top at 9.00am.

Just after we left Greenland Lodge we came across two elderly local women weaving at their looms on a little verandah at the front of their wooden house. They wanted me to buy some fabric but I felt it was not the right moment.

We trekked up through cool forests and gently sloping meadows.

My diary notes that the highest point on this trek was the Australian Camp at 2200 meters. On the way down we saw eagles and tree creeper birds, and trekked through thick rhododendron trees. We came across a hut which displayed the interesting sign TIMS (Trekkers Information Management Services) and of course I could not resist taking a photo of me beside this notice (maybe this was meant to be my destination after all). Wonderful views, cold clear streams, Alpine meadows. Down through the rice terraces again, and we caught a bus and taxi back to Pokhara, arriving at the Nepal Guest House at 4.30pm.

At the bottom of my diary entries for my first week in Pokhara, I have written the following observations on Nepal:

‘Political Trouble.

Strikes- transport-students- violence towards tourists, teachers. Nepal is ideologically much closer to CHINA but is economically almost entirely dependent on INDIA for imports of oil, materials, infrastructure.No transport as fuel is curtailed. Nepal depends on INDIA for fuel which is more expensive than from CHINA. But corruption and commissions for Government mean the people suffer’.

This must have been written because the political unrest following the monarchy’s abolition was spilling over into strikes and violence. We had heard about tourist buses being stoned on their way to Pokhara, although I did not see this myself. But my notes helped me crystallise my impressions of Nepal and its economic problems, which continue to this day.

After my first short but vigorous trek I was stiff and tired, but had glimpsed some of the wildlife and beautiful mountains and lush green valleys and rice terraces around the Annapurna and Macchapuchre ranges. I wanted to see more. My next trip, the Ghorepani Trek, was scheduled to be 4 days, starting the following Wednesday 2^nd July. I had 3 days to recover, relax, shop for provisions, have a massage at my hotel room, write postcards (overlooking the lake, shared by some geckoes picking up titbits from the underside of the table) and send e-mails. I also went to visit Jasmine, working at her parents’ business and getting ready for her studies in Australia. We chatted and I asked if she would like to come for a drink, but she tactfully said that she was ‘busy’. Anyway I told her I was going to visit Australia the next year and hoped I might contact or even see her when I was in Sydney.

On Wednesday 2^nd July Bharat met me early at the Guest House and we set off in a hired car for the trek starting point. Near the start there was a cafe where we enjoyed some refreshing mint tea, an ideal drink on the mountains. We settled into our walking pattern, with Bharat slightly ahead of me, fitter and stronger of course, but he waited patiently for me at suitable resting places so I never got discouraged. I remember the startlingly vivid colours of the butterflies at the start of this trek – electric blue, orange, olive green with white – and the rice fields being ploughed by water buffaloes on a single pole plough, their minders struggling through deep mud behind them shouting to give instructions when to stop or turn. We gazed down at this scene from our path, which was well defined and broad, but steep. I waved to the farmers and their families who were sitting on the stone walls of the terraces, they shouted and laughed and returned waves and flashing smiles.

I noticed that behind us, but rapidly catching up, was a party of three blonde girls who were striding along very purposefully. It was not long before they overtook us – tall, athletic and Scandinavian-looking. In fact they were from Norway, which accounted for their trekking agility. They soon disappeared into the distance. I was impressed by their speed but not discouraged! We were to meet them again the following day.

We stopped for lunch at Anila’s Cafe, a traditional stone and timber house with wonderful views of the valley below, where the cafe was on the first floor.

The cafe was undergoing some improvements and there were heaps of stones, timber planks and building materials dumped in piles around, so we had to pick our way carefully over this. Then I saw a sight which astonished me. There was a pile of steel reinforcing rods, which had had to be transported up the steep slopes by donkey. A man, squatting over one of the rods and wielding a heavy chisel and hammer, was cutting through a steel rod by sheer brute force. It took about ten heavy blows to cut through the half-inch thick rod. This sight rammed home to me the difficulties of labouring and the problems of infrastructure in a country that had so little resources (apart from stone and hydro-electricity). The steel rods, the staple of the construction industry in Nepal, were all imported from India, but the economy could not afford the modern cutting equipment which would have saved so much time. The labour force had to work with traditional and inefficient tools. However, the commodity of time was not lacking. Cement was also imported – usually four or six steel rods formed the reinforcement of the concrete pillars which built up the frame of the house and supported the floors. I saw this method of construction all over Nepal, and it seemed to work – but at what cost in time and labour?

After a lunch of boiled potatoes and grated cheese, we continued to trek and an abiding memory was arriving at a waterfall tumbling down into a pool, and, looking up, the sun was shining through the water so that each individual drop sparkled and flashed from the refraction. The pure, fresh beauty of Nature.

We reached the village of Ulleri and the Mira Guest House. Another traditional Nepali guest house with random-coursed stone foundation walls topped by timber roofing.  By evening, it was raining hard so we changed our clothes, dried out and enjoyed a supper of cheese omelette, tomato soup and Tibetan bread. The tomato soup in the mountains was spicy and herby, and very warming.

The next day Bharat took me to a local cafe which sold wild mountain honey, we bought a small pot, and drank mint tea. Then followed a steep climb, during which we encountered the 3 Norwegian girls again – I cannot remember whether we overtook THEM this time. Anyway, it was hard trekking through heavy rain, and we were very glad to reach our lunchtime destination of Nangithanti. Here was a lovely, open, fragrant wood stove where all the morning’s trekkers were gathered around, drying out, socks hanging over the rails and tee shirts draped on lines above. We had a warming lunch of garlic soup and boiled potatoes with mint, served on a long wooden table around which all the trekkers sat. We had a leisurely lunch and convivial time. A Danish man was there with his two sons – I vaguely recall that he, like me, was escaping from a painful divorce.

In the evening we reached Ghorepani, a picturesque village perched on a crag, with excellent views of the mountains of Dhaulagiri and Annapurna – excellent, that is, if the weather had been fine. When we arrived it was heavy, grey and raining so I was unaware of what beauties lay around. We changed clothes and dried out as best we could – as I was in my room, I heard Bharat call out and came down to the news that the weather was clearing, there was a break in the clouds and we might be able to see Dhaulagiri. I rushed out and across a street, up to a wooden viewing platform on a rocky ledge at the edge of the village – several other trekkers were already there, pointing and exclaiming. I looked out and there it was – the most beautiful mountain I have ever seen with my own eyes. Dhaulagiri is the 8^th highest mountain in the world, with a perfect pyramid shape that seems to  stand alone in its majesty – so many of the great mountains of the Himalayas are part of a range so that it is difficult to distinguish a particular peak, but here there was no confusion or doubt – it was wonderfully and totally awe-inspiring. ‘Dhaulagiri’ means ‘Mountain of Light’, and I could see why it has this name – the evening sun was striking the upper slopes, the colours (pink and white, orange, purple, blue, slate grey) were changing all the time and seemed to be reflected off the clouds which were only just above the summit. It must have been about 20 kilometers away from our village, although I found it difficult to estimate the distance because of the poor visibility at ground level. We stared at this wonderful phenomenon for as long as we could, but gradually the sun set and the light faded, and slowly Dhaulagiri disappeared – but not before I had taken some treasured photos on my phone camera. While we were on the platform, the western face of the gigantic Annapurna II also appeared through the clouds, nearer than Dhaulagiri and looming right above us, almost vertically (an obvious optical illusion – it was still about 15 kilometers away). Bharat said that if we were lucky, we would get a better view of Annapurna in the morning. We ate a delicious supper of wild mushroom omelette, which was a speciality of our guest house – the owner had been out picking the mushrooms that day, and the fruits of her labours were spread out on several rush baskets, drying around the wood stove.  They did not give me hallucinations. It rained again that night.

The next day was Friday 4^th July. American Independence Day. After an early breakfast, we went again to the viewing platform and looked at Annapurna in the morning light. Although it was clearer than the previous evening, rain clouds obscured the very top slopes – however, we appreciated the startling green forests on the foothills approaching the mountain. We were to be climbing higher, through misty cloud forest, pine trees and Alpine meadows with colourful flowers. The path was slippery and we had to be careful, especially on the downhill sections. Buffaloes grazed in the meadows and we gave them a wide berth. Bharat told me that the highest point we would reach would be about 3000 meters, and warned me I may suffer from altitude sickness, but thankfully I never did experience this, although felt a little breathless at one or two points.

 In this sort of climate, leeches abounded and Bharat made sure we regularly checked our boots, socks and clothing to make sure leeches were not sticking to us. Sure enough, when we stopped for a mid morning break at a cafe, I discovered a circular patch of dark blood that had been absorbed by my thick rugby shirt. When I lifted it I saw a big fat leech, gorged with blood, sucking on the skin of my stomach. Leeches inject an anaesthetic so you don’t feel any pain, and an anti-coagulant to make the blood flow freely. The resulting blood loss looks far worse than it is. Bharat delighted in disposing of the leech with his pre-prepared little bag of salt, which is most effective in knocking the leeches off. On our visit to the Peace Pagoda at Pokhara I had had a leech which somehow got into the end of my boot and sucked so much blood that when I withdrew my foot, it looked at first as though my foot had been amputated  – but it was not really as bad as that. In this case, I put a plaster on the wound and carried on – the wound scar took a very long time to disappear. My diary notes that we passed through deep and narrow gorges with mountain streams along the bottom, bees’ nests high up in the cliff face (the wild honey highly prized by the Nepalese, very dangerous and difficult to collect, and fetching big money), also a black fungus growing on the same inaccessible cliff edges, which was gathered for traditional medicine – we would see this in action at a later point. There were beautiful little blue mountain orchids, and wild strawberries growing in mossy banks above the path, and fungi of various kinds, high-domed caps glistening in the rain like the fairy-story pixie houses.

We stopped for lunch at Bhantanti, a stream-side wooden guest house, where we ate mashed potato with cheese and had Coca Colas which had been cooled in the nearby icy stream. We followed the mountain stream for most of the trek on this day. By evening we had reached Tadapani for our guest house, and dried out by the welcoming heat of a wood stove, on which our landlady cooked our tuna pizzas, preceded by wild mushroom soup which was delicious. We drank lemon honey tea. Here we were entertained by a travelling Nepali grandmother who demonstrated taking the fungi medicine (in liquid form) we had seen growing earlier – she took a great gulp, winced and grimaced expressively, shook her head, then pronounced that she felt fine!

We felt warm and cosy in the dark interior, with the aromatic, pungent woodsmoke from the resinous firewood helping to dry our clothes. It was the sort of communal bonding, peace and contentment that must have been experienced by our primeval ancestors relaxing in their cave after a day’s successful hunting.

On Saturday 5^th July we breakfasted on porridge with wild honey, then continued on our way. We were on the homeward trek now, gradually descending through the villages and rice terraces. At lunchtime, still raining, we reached the Ghandruk Cultural Museum where Bharat was well known by the staff. We had a very nice tomato soup and tuna salad, with my usual Cokes. Then it was onwards and downwards, quite steep, until we reached Syuali Bazaar and the Shining River Guest House. Here our accommodation was very basic, and our welcome by the pre-occupied family not quite as enthusiastic as our previous overnights – still, you cannot expect 100%. After a shower we drank a beer and ate spaghetti, tomato and cheese for dinner. We were entertained by children playing football in the terrace below our guesthouse, a game to which I contributed in a desultory manner, and as it got dark the fireflies came out and gave a good display.

The following morning, Sunday 6^th July, I had cornflakes with HOT milk – unexpected! – followed by Tibetan bread with honey, washed down with ginger and lemon tea. From the Shining River (so called because of its view down the valley gorge and the river widening as it levelled out towards the flatter plains) we were on the last stretch of our trek. We descended through the last of the rice terraces, down past thinning forest cover and scrubby patches of vegetation on which butterflies fed, and soon we were on the flat  walking towards the town of Nayapul. As we approached the outskirts of this town, we walked past high walls smothered in startling blue Morning Glory flowers.

When we reached the town we had a well deserved rest and coffee in a cafe, and I reluctantly realised our trek was over. We caught the bus back to Pokhara. I remember I sat next to an elderly ex-Gurkha soldier who had been stationed in Britain at some point and we talked briefly about Buckingham Palace and our respective views on Britain, the colonial era, and our travels.The sun came out. People chatted. Bharat and I smiled at each other.There were geese travelling in the luggage bay of the bus beneath us, and as we stopped at a village near Pokhara they were bundled out, squawking and fluttering. I thought – only in Nepal!  It was only when we were nearing Pokhara, and I had had time to reflect on the past few days, that the realisation of what I had accomplished in the last few days sank in. What I had seen and done, with the reassuring guidance of the experienced and protective Bharat, was the fulfilment of a long-held dream, ever since I had seen films of Himalayan exploration and read my geography books at school a long time ago. I had ‘seen my mountains’ (which was what I promised to myself at Parkside when I first glimpsed that peak above the clouds a month earlier). My dream had come true, and how often does that occur in life? The glowing feeling of accomplishment spread warmly throughout my aching body-  I had known nothing like this before –a wonderful feeling, probably, in my own terms, akin to conquering a Himalayan mountain itself. Despite my tiredness and the discomfort of wet clothes and heavy boots and aching limbs, I WAS HAPPY.

Later that day I sat with Bharat on the grass in the little garden fronting the Nepal Guest House. We chatted and reviewed our treks, and I am sure he felt happy that he had contributed to the fulfilment of my dream. I thanked him for his excellent guiding, we exchanged e-mail addresses and I gave him, I hope, a generous tip.

A proposed visit to Lumbini, the birthplace of the Lord Buddha, on Monday 7^th July had to be cancelled due to the afore-mentioned political tensions that were causing fuel shortages, strikes and possible threats to tourists. Logistically it was going to be a nightmare to accomplish. So it was going to mean 2 more days in Pokhara before my scheduled return to Parkside.

Gopal kindly phoned me on the Monday to ask how I was, and to keep in touch with events. I said I would be flying back to Chitwan as I could not really face the thought of the long bus trip (quite apart from the travelling difficulties). Gopal arranged that I would be picked up by Shree-Lal at Bharatpur airport and taken back to Parkside. So my last 2 days in Pokhara were spent on the internet and walking around the town, visiting Top and his family for the last time, and generally relaxing. On the Monday I ate pizza at an Italian restaurant and had a Korean meal, during a spectacular thunderstorm, in the evening. On Tuesday 8^th I found a nice restaurant called Tea Time Bamboostan where I had both lunch (Salad Nicoise) and dinner (pizza, with 2 Planters Punch cocktails in their Happy Hour.) And so my stay in Pokhara ended.

Back to Parkside

On Wednesday 9 July, having said my farewells to the Nepal Guest House, I caught a taxi to Pokhara airport and caught a small plane to Kathmandu, where I changed on to Yeti Airlines and had a smooth flight  in a DH Otter 2 to Bharatpur. I arrived at 1.30pm, and sure enough, as I rounded the building, Shree-Lal was there to greet me with a big smile and a crash helmet for me for his motorcycle. We sped back to Parkside as fast as we could (Shree loved going fast). My welcome back was as warm and friendly as ever. After a late lunch I rested most of the afternoon. In the evening I met up again with Anastasia, whose English had improved considerably since I had been away, and we had a lively talk with other volunteers over our drinks.

One of these volunteers was Alexandra, also French, who was working specifically on Sher’s Elephant-dung paper project and the women’s craftwork project. She was an excellent artist and was using her skills to teach the local women to paint traditional Nepali motifs onto the thick paper, which could then be sold to tourists. Perhaps it’s time I explained what the elephant dung project is. Parkside kept an elephant for its tourists, in a covered hattisar (stable) at the back of the hotel. The mahout slept in a crude shelter beside the elephant. The prodigious amount of dung produced by the elephant was gathered in a pile. It is not smelly as their food is grass and fibres and it is perfectly safe to put one’s hands straight into. Near the hattisar was the production equipment – this consisted of a steel drum raised over a fire, and several racks stacked up beside this. The production team consisted of a young man and a woman – one of them stoked the fire, while the other stirred the boiling contents of the drum. The dung was placed into the drum with plenty of water, to which was added a certain proportion of caustic soda. The boiling dung was stirred continuously for an hour, then more occasionally for a further six hours. [I have explained this process in more detail in my Heading: Volunteer: Nepal: Memories of Working at the EDP factory].By the end of the process, the water had boiled away leaving a thick ‘porridge’ which was then skilfully poured over a rack, which was then put aside to cool. After 2 days, the paper was lifted off the rack in one sheet, and could then be used for artistic purposes. The paper is cream coloured, thick and heavy, with coarse fibres embedded, but perfect for accepting colours. The paper was then taken to the women’s craft premises, located across the road from Parkside Hotel. Here the women cut the paper to careful measurements, folded it and painted the designs. Another woman was making the envelopes, a more complicated measuring and folding process but one which made the whole package attractive and saleable. Sher knew that the elephant dung paper products (such as cards, lampshades, wrapping paper) were very saleable, the foreign tourists were intrigued and fascinated with its unique provenance, and Sher had plans to sell it through his overseas contacts. He was already selling it in Kathmandu and had plans for a big expansion of its production in Sauraha, where he could see it could give employment to the local women, and he wanted to incorporate its production into the compound of land he had bought for the establishment of a school, an eye clinic and a community craft centre.

On my first night back at Parkside, I was disturbed by the croaking of the bullfrogs in the paddy fields near the hotel. This was so loud that I felt I could not continue to sleep in my former room, so I asked to be transferred to another room at the front of the hotel. Here the noise was not so loud – but instead I had to contend with the disconcerting rustling in my wastepaper basket of a small mole that somehow got into the room each night (I never saw it, or knew how it managed to get into the room).

I had eleven more days to spend at Parkside before I was due to return to Salve in Kathmandu.

My time was occupied in pulling together and completing the work I had started.

This involved writing, and spending time on the internet. Both Parkside and Rhada wanted me to write articles for inclusion of their businesses in the Lonely Planet and Rough Guide international travellers guidebooks. I also had to follow up quotations from the American company for the supply of their Glass Crushing Machine, which the Green Society was anxious to obtain, and I was also busy with posting on my Blogger my experiences of the Pokhara trekking, and attached photos. I was not entirely successful at first with the Blogger postings due to the unreliable connections at Sauraha, but I persisted until I had got something posted. By this stage in my time at Parkside I had accumulated a large repository of photos, Nepalese jokes and stories and my own observations, which I was keen to share with my large contact list of family and friends on the internet. Needless to say this took up some time.

I also went to see how Birendra’s road building was coming on. The stone foundations had been laid and rolled, now it was the turn of the tar layers to spread the tar manually, by pouring from a tin dipped from the larger tar barrel by the roadside – as soon as this was done, the boys spread the thin gravel top-dressing from wicker baskets, skilfully spinning the gravel through the air so it landed evenly across the tar. Quite a large area could be covered in a short time. The diesel roller then pressed the whole surface flat before the tar was dry. Birendra was ordering the men and boys about, pointing and shouting instructions – but he was pleased with the obvious progress. While the boys were waiting to do their job, they chewed thin bamboo sticks which they cut from the roadside – equivalent to chewing gum, but free.

In the evening of Friday 11^th July I went to supper with Birendra at his family home. His family were very welcoming. Bacchauli village was only half a mile from Parkside, but it was very different from the tourist area. It was a traditional Tharu rural village of farmers. Electricity was not supplied, the only lighting was by oil lamps. Rice barns and winnowing courtyards surrounded the village, the road in the village itself was unmade and muddy and rutted. After my supper of delicious Dhal Bhat, eaten sitting cross legged on the floor of Birendra’s house with him alone, lit only by one small oil lamp, I gave Birendra’s family and neighbours a big bag of sweets and biscuits. I will always remember this scene in the dark gloom of dusk, with the small children excited and clamouring, hands stretched out, (where had I seen this before?), and above us the stars lit brilliantly like the Nativity scene.

I had not forgotten Saraswoti, the lady I met on the bus – I phoned her and arranged to go to lunch with her the following week.

Of course Rajesh Ghimire and his sister Devi were very pleased to see me back, and they invited me several times to their hospitable family for dinner or tea – one afternoon, they particularly wanted me to experience a Nepali tradition of maize pancakes with honey, and drink tea with them. My diary notes that in that same evening, Birendra’s road building committee met at Parkside, and got drunk with a bottle of whisky that someone had ‘smuggled’ in!

In between all this activity I also visited Anastasia’s orphanage and got to know the manager, a very nice young man called Taj (or Tej). Anastasia’s work had been to teach the children how to use a computer but she complained there was very limited availability of such technology, so she resorted to traditional teaching. There was no doubt she loved the children and they adored her.

My final week at Parkside was very quiet compared to all the previous week’s activity. I cycled through the village and across the river to the Elephant breeding centre, passing gold-coloured maize laid out to dry on the roadside. I stopped and chatted to the villagers and took photos. I went with Sher and Birendra and Basu of the Green Society to view the land they had recently bought at the edge of the village for their proposed projects. I wondered what further development and in-filling might take place in the next few years, as the farmers realised they could sell their land for good prices, and the village gradually becomes a town – and the increasing pressure of human habitation drives away the very wildlife, and cultures, the tourists come to see.

On Thursday 17 I viewed a CD that Gopal had made of a Nepalese TV interview with me and various members of the Parkside staff, about environmental issues. This had been made just before I went to Pokhara. It was a good promotion for Parkside and all their environmental work.

The following day I hitched a ride by jeep from Sauraha to Ratnanagar, where I was due to meet my friend Saraswoti for lunch. She met me outside the school where she taught, and took me back to her house. She told me her husband was in the house, but it was soon obvious he was to take no part in my visit – he slept most of the time in an adjoining room. Saraswoti told me briefly, before entering her house, that she had a sad marriage, her husband (also a teacher) was abusive and overbearing, probably jealous of her intelligence and free thinking, and she had had to make her life independently. She put all her energy and charisma into a local women’s group, the Co-Operative Women Development Foundation, designed to bring education to poorer Nepalese women, where she was a busy Secretary. After a very delicious, spicy lunch, Saraswoti took me to her project nearby where I met her fellow committee members. I was struck by how dignified, gentle and noble Saraswoti was, how she was educated and knew about the world, but was trapped by her circumstances like a caged hummingbird that is only occasionally allowed out of the cage – but still imprisoned in the room. She was sitting on the balcony on the first floor of her women’s Foundation and I saw there was a mirror behind her. I thought it would make a nice photo if I took a picture of Saraswoti in her bright blue sari, looking over her shoulder at her reflection in the mirror. I also took 2 more and her expression was of serenity, a slight smile on her lips, her beautiful cheek bones and facial features emphasising her nobility of character. It was here, at the Foundation, that she gave me her gift of a large jar of pure, wild Nepali honey and a little beadwork purse. I was most touched with this very kind expression of her esteem for me. She knew I was due to travel to Kathmandu in a few days’ time, but I didn’t know she was planning to join me on the journey.

Back in Sauraha in the evening, Devi Ghimire wore the sari I had bought her for her birthday. She looked stunning and I took some photos of her and Rajesh in the garden of their home. I also gave Rajesh a green tee shirt with the Timothy Taylor (English brewers) logo printed on it – he was delighted.

On Saturday 19^th July,at breakfast I joined the table of Top and his wife, visiting from Pokhara again. I had asked that Saraswoti’s honey be kept in the fridge overnight – I knew how the Nepalese valued it. We sampled some on toast and it was indeed delicious, clear and sweet with a slightly smoky flavour. Top held it up to the light and pronounced it the very best of Nepali honey. I knew that I could not take it in my luggage to Kathmandu, so I presented it to the staff of Parkside.

 It was planned that I join Shree Lal and Top Bahadhur and his family on a minibus trip down to the south of Nepal, to the Indian border. This was a memorable, and lengthy ,final trip, undertaken in fine weather, which gave me further insight into, and enduring memories, of the country and spirit of Nepal.

Trip to Birgunj (Nepal/India border).

On this day we packed in a lot.

 Animals at park – lotus flower decoration, carved memorial to Nepal ‘heroes’, drinks. Dahl baht chicken lunch – delicious, at roadside favourite cafe of Shree Lal. Smoking barbecues cooking chicken. On to border. Loaded with petrol on plastic carriers on roof (cheaper at Indian border) roadside chickens throats cut, feathers plucked by dipping in boiling water, butchered. Indian border gates – visited by Top etc but I sleep in minibus. Crowds of people crossing back and forth. Wet evening on way back – very dark. Stopped for supper, dahl baht again – gecko eating very large green lacewing fly right by my face.

Back to Parkside by 11.00pm. to find Dev arrived from Kathmandu. He was to oversee my departure from Parkside and escort me back to Quest and Salve.

On Sunday 20^th Dev took some photos of me posed around the glass dump behind Parkside’s restaurant, holding a broken bottle. This was for Salve’s records of my environmental work. I then went into the village to work on the internet. Rajesh and Devi asked me to sample some Jackfruit at their house. Jackfruit I had seen growing in several gardens in the village – it is a large, green, spiky fruit that grows to the size of a large football. The flesh is creamy yellow and tastes vaguely like sour banana.

After lunch I toured the village to make my farewell visits to the hotel owners, guides and shopkeepers who I had made friends with.

In the evening there was a meeting of the Green Society with Sher and Bashu, which turned into a farewell party for me and the French girls, and some new volunteer arrivals (who were all asked to introduce themselves). I was presented with a beautiful carved Rhino and some other gifts, which greatly touched me, and I gave the new volunteers the benefit of my 3 months experience. After a very enjoyable dinner with several Gorkha beers, I went with Anastasia to visit her orphanage and say goodbye to the children and Taj. Back at the Hotel we went onto the flat roof and gazed down on the village and the hotel courtyard. The fireflies were dancing among the mango trees. We just stared, silent – words could not express my feelings at that point….

Monday 21^st July. I had packed my luggage and it was loaded onto the jeep. After breakfast, the Pariyar family of Mrs Pariyar (Mother), Sher, Shree Lal and their sister (Didi) gave me a little presentation outside the Reception area, overlooked by the French girls and staff members including Birendra, Gopal and Kumar.They put a garland of fresh flowers over my head, a tikka spot on my forehead, and presented me with a Certificate. I thanked them, hardly able to prevent tears coming to my eyes. I got into the jeep and while I waited for my driver, Shree Lal came up  and I could see he also was almost crying. Then the jeep started and we swung out of the courtyard in a cloud of dust, waves from Gopal and Birendra from the restaurant balcony, and Anastasia smiling her beautiful smile from the foot of the steps. I could not speak.

Kathmandu.

When I joined the bus at Tandi Bazaar, much to my pleasant surprise Saraswoti and her daughter and granddaughter also got on. They were going to Kathmandu for a few days. We had the usual long, hot and dusty bus journey, back out of the flat Chitwan plains, winding up the foothills towards the cooler capital city. Saraswoti and her family got out before we reached the centre and she said she would phone me, which she did, but we never in fact met up again and that was the last time I saw her. We arrived at Quest’s office at 4.30pm. Salve had arranged accommodation for me at the Namsto Hotel, conveniently right next door to her office and which was to a higher standard than my original hotel. After a de-briefing session with Salve, I retired for a long sleep that night.

I was due to depart Kathmandu  for Delhi on Sunday 27^th July. That meant I had 5 days to fill in the city. Mostly this was spent walking around the city centre and Durbar Square. I bought some souvenir tee shirts and stone carvings. On the Wednesday evening I met up with Sher and his girlfriend at the Kathmandu office of his Parkside business. Also with us was Bashu of the Green Society, and Salve and her Nepalese businessman husband. We had dinner, but I was not feeling well and my spaghetti made me sick in the night. The following day I had diarrhoea, which remarkably was the first time I had had any stomach upset. I spent the day in the hotel.

Unfortunately I had omitted to find out that I needed a Visa for India BEFORE I left Nepal. The reason for this omission was that Visas for Nepal could be obtained ON ARRIVAL in that country, and I thought the same arrangement was in place for India. But this is not the case. This mistake was to cause me a lot of trouble and to miss 3 precious days of my short week in India.

When I got to the airport my error became apparent. Being a Sunday the Indian Embassy was closed. This meant that I had to return to the hotel and wait until the next day. On the Monday there was a long queue at the embassy. When I eventually got to see the official, I was told it was not possible to get a Visa immediately – I had to return the NEXT day. On the Tuesday, I discovered there were no spare seats on flights to Delhi. The best I could do was book a First Class fare, departing the following day, Wednesday 30^th July. To say I was frustrated is an understatement but there was nothing I could do but swallow and be patient. On the Tuesday evening there was very heavy rain which flooded the streets around my hotel.

On the Wednesday, thanks to my Travel Agent Anil at Tika Travel, I finally got on board my flight to Delhi, departing at 4.15pm local time. I looked down as the Boeing 737-800 soared over the city and surrounding mountain-ringed plain, and wondered if I would ever return. Nepal had certainly got into my blood.

INDIA

Delhi was very hot. I arrived at the offices of Varun at Service International, my tour operator. He sorted out the necessary paperwork, refunded the difference of my by-now shortened tour, and bought a local SIM card for me. I had a comfortable night in the hotel. The following day I was due to have a city tour of Old Delhi. This was most interesting, despite the heavy rain which fell continuously for about 3 hours. I saw the colonial Government buildings designed by Lutyens and Ghandi’s Memorial Garden, and visited the ancient Minar in Old Delhi. This was surrounded by a temple complex covered in the most intricate stone relief carving on the pillars, columns and lintels.

On Friday 1 August I left for Agra with my personal Sikh driver, Mahinder. We arrived in the evening and climbed to the impressive and massive Red Fort and Palaces. In the distance, from the parapets of the palace, I caught sight of the Taj Mahal which was due to be visited the following day. My hotel was situated close to the Taj Mahal – it had a revolving restaurant, but the food was disgusting, as I discovered was the case throughout my brief tour in India. This surprised me as I had been under the impression that the food was excellent in the tourist hotels in India.

Saturday 2 August up early and walked to the Taj Mahal. There was a queue but it moved quite quickly, and soon I had my first sight of the magnificent tomb, ghostly and ethereal through the morning mist. We were able to approach at our own pace, unhurriedly, so that at each step the whole breathtaking monument revealed itself. I could hardly believe that I was here, at one of the seven wonders of the modern world. I spent as much time as I liked, walking around and into the tomb of Shaj Jahan and his wife. The white marble is inset with semiprecious stone decoration, beautifully set flush with the smooth white marble. I took many photos. It was a real anti-climax to leave the grounds of this indescribable building.

After the Taj, we drove to Jaipur, the third point of the Golden Triangle of tours most desired from Delhi. Jaipur is the ‘Pink City’ so named because of the pink stone of the city. We visited some palaces of the maharajahs, again very impressive. After this I was taken to a gemstone factory, (Jaipur is famous for gemstones) where I was shown similar stone carvings to those seen at the Taj, still made in the traditional way with hand-powered wheels and grinding pastes. Although I didn’t want to buy these examples (too heavy), I did buy a beautiful amethyst stone which I had asked to be set into a silver ring – a combination of colours I had always thought looked good. The ring was promised to be ready the next day.

The next day we visited the Amber Fort, situated on a high bluff overlooking the city, an impregnable fortress. Many elephants, caparisoned in crimson rugs edged with gold braid, were carrying tourists up to the Fort. One of the elephants as she lumbered past me, swiped me with her trunk as I attempted to pat her, and I was pushed backwards by the unexpectedly powerful blow. After my visit I collected my amethyst ring, which was as attractive as I had envisaged. We saw other craft works, including a block printing shop and a carpet-weaving factory, but I resisted the persuasive sales pitches. Mahinder drove me back to Delhi in the afternoon.

The following day I flew back to London via Air India on a Boeing 777. I had some business to attend to. I had 10 days in England, basing myself at Margate in Kent. The culture shock in reverse was quite something. Finally, having arranged my personal affairs, I flew to Malaysia via Delhi, arriving at Kuala Lumpur at 5.30am on Sunday 17^th August.

MALAYSIA

My 3 week holiday in Malaysia was entitled ‘Borneo Unearthed’ and proved to be a disappointment.

The tour organisers had not seemed to realise the immense amount of time spent travelling between destinations – logistics was a major problem. Secondly we did not see very much of the jungle or wildlife – in fact we saw mostly palm oil plantations, the small areas of forest we did see were heavily patrolled National Parks and devoid of wildlife. We did see monkeys and the occasional crocodile, but all from a distance. An orang-utan sanctuary was visited at mid-day in the searing heat, the crowds of tourists on the viewing platform prevented a good look and anyway the orangs were not active at that time of day. There was a day-long river trip spent sitting in an uncomfortable boat enclosed by a roof with no adequate window – this seemed a waste of a day.

A highlight was a very difficult climb up the limestone crags known as The Pinnacles, a tiring climb but worth the effort to see the amazing landscape from the top.

The final few days were interesting – approaching the southern city of Kuching in Sarawak, we spent 2 nights in a traditional long-house deep in the jungle with a tribal group, who used to be Headhunters in past times. We approached by motorised canoes up a wide river. Here we experienced tribal life, swam in the river, trekked to a waterfall where some of us bathed in the cold pool, and ate traditional rice and chicken dishes which were quite tasty. We played with the children.

I had a much more enjoyable time after the holiday, spending a week in Kuching with my friend David Topping and his family. We visited restaurants and bars with his friends, swam in the warm ocean at his seaside club, saw the Semenggoh Nature Reserve early one morning which was the best time to see the orang-utans being fed. I took many photos of these endearing creatures. I also visited a crocodile farm and aquarium. I also enjoyed exploring the fascinating ancient Chinese trading town of Kuching, with its art and antique shops, its bars, restaurants and several highly sophisticated modern Hotels.

On 14 September I flew to Kuala Lumpur where I had 3 days to spend before travelling to my next destination of Makassar in Sulawesi, Indonesia. It would have been a much shorter trip from Kuching but there is no direct flight from there to Makassar. However I enjoyed my brief time in Kuala Lumpur.

On Wednesday 17 September 2008  I finally flew to Indonesia.

INDONESIA

September 2008 to March 2009

I have written several pieces about my work and extraordinary experiences as a Volunteer in Indonesia. You can read this in my blog www.timmyblog.org under VOLUNTEER WORK – INDONESIA

I now skip six months to 14 March 2009 when I departed Makassar on Garuda Airlines for Australia via Bali for the second stage of my volunteer work booked through Twin Work and Volunteer (WAVA).

AUSTRALIA : CVA (Conservation Volunteers Australia)

I had arranged to stay 16 days in Sydney with Vivi Martin, a distant relative of Zabia whom I had met in Indonesia, before travelling by overnight train to Melbourne on 1^st April. Vivi is a wonderful person, very warm and hospitable, generously allowing me to live in her delightful flat in the Cooks River area of south-east Sydney. She shared her interest in education, Aboriginal indigenous culture, arts and crafts, the environment, geology, travel and food, so many things dear to my own heart. She also assisted at a women’s centre for Indonesian women, which of course interested me after my experience there, and I was so pleased to be able to participate in a session where we celebrated a birthday and had a lovely party. I had a wonderful time in Sydney, which is such a beautiful city in one of the most spectacular settings in the world (to my knowledge). I had visited once before for the Olympics in 2000 but now I had time to see more of the city’s CBD (Central Business District), meet up with my friends Nick Durrant and Warwick Barnes and attend a breakfast meeting of the Sydney Darling Harbour Rotary Club. I got to know the Australian culture more with Vivi, eating out in Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese restaurants, walking in the parks, looking at the flora and geology of the area and going to her school in Marrickville West where she worked as a Project Director. I owe Vivi such a lot.

I was due to start my volunteering at the Melbourne office of CVA (Conservation Volunteers Australia) on Monday 6^th April but needed to get there a few days early to have my Introduction and settle in.

On Weds 1^st April I met Vivi in Sydney central near the station and we had an enjoyable meal in a Vietnamese restaurant. Vivi kindly accompanied me to the station and I caught the 8.40pm overnight train to Melbourne. I arrived at 7.30am the following morning and made my way to the CVA office. Having introduced myself and met some of the CVA staff I was told I could not stay at the CVA hostel until my volunteering period officially started so they pointed me towards a Nomads backpacker hostel nearby. This was a very clean and pleasant hostel and a comfortable bed, and gave me a good base for 4 days for shopping and sightseeing before I officially started on the Volunteering.

Among other things I went on a river and harbour trip to see the beautiful architecture of Melbourne. On Friday 3 April I went to CVA and met the office staff and was given my Induction, with all health and safety instructions and my proposed work programme for the next six weeks.

On Saturday 4 April I went to Cape Shancke for a walk with some weekend volunteers of CVA.

Mon 6^th April 2009. A 4- hour journey in our minibus, towing our equipment for the week, to Lake Bolac via Ballarat with our leader Jessie, a tall young Aussie girl. Our team: 3 Koreans,1 Taiwanese girl, 1 philosopher Frenchman with a ginger beard, 2 Aussies (Chris and Gary). We stayed in a campsite near the Lake – but what Lake? Lake Bolac is no more a lake – it is a huge dried up dust bowl, the victim of climate change, rising temperatures, no rain, winds blowing all the water away. It really is an horrific sight – only 4 years previously it had been a popular sporting centre, with fishing, water skiing, motorboats and sailing. Now it was deserted, and the local economy for the tiny hamlet had been left literally high and dry. No weekenders coming for the sport, most of the mobile campers had been removed and a forlorn silence pervaded the spot. Our team was divided between 3 of the permanent wooden homes – the 2 Aussies together; Jessie, the Korean and Taiwanese girls in another; and the rest of us males in a third situated near the entrance.

Our task for the week : Fencing on a sheep ranch at Hexham, an isolated spot an hour’s drive away. The weather was cold, blustery and wet. We met the farmer Andrew, a very nice, typically rugged sheep farmer, who explained what we had to do. His farm had obtained a Government grant to fence a large area of his land from the river (no more than a creek when we saw it), to prevent the cattle and sheep wandering in damaging the banks, polluting the stream and clogging the waterflow. The sturdy fence posts had already been piled into the ground – our job was to lay 3 or 4 strands of heavy duty wire along the posts, attaching them to the posts with plastic guides, and then stretching each section tight with heavy wire-stretching chains. Because it was Easter at the weekend, we only effectively had 3.5 days to do this work so we had to work quickly. We worked efficiently as a team, with Jessie unwinding the wire rolls behind her jeep, steering it as near to the line of posts as possible. We were each responsible for a section, nailing the guides into the posts at measured points and slipping the wire through each guide. We got quicker with experience and only had one or two tangles – these were sorted out quite quickly! We had 3 days of this work, finishing at about 3.15pm each day and driving back to camp for dinner which we all took turns to cook.

We all got along well together, learning about different cultures, laughing and joking at breaks, Gary showing off ostentatiously with his crude Aussie humour.

Friday 10^th April being Good Friday, we set off back to Melbourne. I had arranged to see my friend Laura, whose family lived on Mount Dandenong about an hour to the east of Melbourne. She had invited me over for lunch on Easter Sunday, where I met her family, and I stayed the night. After breakfast Laura showed me her horse and then she took me with her mother and stepfather to the Healesville animal sanctuary, within the Yarra Valley wine-growing region of Victoria. Here I saw many of the famous indigenous Australian fauna such as emu, kangaroo, wallabies, dingos, crocodiles, echidna, pelicans and many other interesting birds and animals. I took many photos. We had an enjoyable lunch at a vineyard, tasting some of the delicious red wine of that area.

Tuesday 14 April 2009. Week 2. Calignee at Traralgon, SE State of Victoria. Leader: Rodney (bluff, bearded, ex-taxi driver). Just 3 of us – Jasper and Nicholas (young Frenchman) and myself.

Rodney drove us out to Calignee. Still cold and blustery, threatening rainclouds. Our task: helping in the aftermath of the terrible bushfires which had devastated that region only 2 months previously – it was one of the worst disasters ever to occur in the state of Victoria, with nearly 200 people killed. Our work was part of a ‘disaster recovery’ programme, going through an area of privately-owned acacia forest and clearing debris from footpaths and putting logs at 90 degrees to the pathways so that rains would not further erode the paths.

It was a very sombre sight – a thick carpet of ash and cinders, charred and splintered stumps pointing skywards like broken pencils, no animals or green leaf to be seen, the occasional calcined skeletons of wombat, wallaby or bird, and at one point an underground brown-coal seam still smouldering 2.5 months after the fire had swept through. I photographed my ‘carbon footprint’, literally – my boot sole imprinted on the ash left a vivid picture.

 It was eerie, with no sound, no colour, no movement – just dead (although there were signs of shoot re-growth from the huge gum-tree boles, activated by the heat, which is their natural way of regeneration). It looked like a scene from a nuclear blast, or a World War 1 battlefield, and it looked as if it would take years to recover (I must find out what it is like today).

There was very little we could do. As we drove away we could see crime-scene tape still surrounding the bare remains of foundations, where the fires had killed the occupants – it had spread so devastatingly quickly people had not time to get out. The owner of our piece of forest, (an emigrant from Nottingham), told us a remarkable story of how he had survived in his sealed garage as the fire completely destroyed his newly-built house just a few yards away. It must have been terrifying for him as he endured 2 hours of darkness in sweltering heat, hearing his house and his forest nearby burning. The ruins of his dream house lay crumpled and shattered around us as we talked. I saw a strange shape and peered closer – it was a plastic trash bin that had melted, embedding the empty soft-drink cans at various points in it, producing a peculiar sculptured shape.

Weds 15 April: my birthday. Cold and wet – we had to watch the weather for Health & Safety reasons in case the winds blew down broken branches on our heads. Rodney decided it was too dangerous to continue so he drove us down to Port Arthur for lunch, and we stayed the afternoon wandering around the little harbour, feeding the seagulls, visiting a little maritime museum and sheltering from the wind and rain. In the evening, as it was my birthday, we went to dinner in a local pub and had an enjoyable time.

Week 3 was at Halls Gap in the Grampian Mountains, western State of Victoria. Leader: Jessie. This was a most interesting and enjoyable week. We were helping Natasha and Justin conduct a scientific Mammal Survey for their University PH.D’s, to discover whether the small mammal population had recovered after the bush fires that had affected the region 3 years earlier. This involved setting out traps in marked sectors over specified areas of the mountain and seeing what had been caught the following day. Any animals caught were weighed, sexed and tagged by a tiny metal tag through their ear. Most were common mammals (rats and mice) and the population seemed to be recovering – at one point we caught a pygmy possum (marsupial) which caused a lot of excitement. It was as small as a shrew and had a similar pointy snout, but carries its young in a pouch. We couldn’t see much of it because it kept itself very tightly curled up, but I think Natasha managed to determine its sex. Not every trap contained an animal, but the work was enjoyable and the company good. Our final day, it poured with really heavy rain and we all got thoroughly soaked.

Week 4. Rosebud at Mornington Peninsular for planting and weeding. Leader: Jessie.

This was not such an enjoyable week. The weather was still dull and wet, blustery and cold. We needed a wood fire in our stone-built cottage on a private estate near the coast, where we were to plant plants on a car-park site. I was not feeling well and had a temperature, so I did not work one day. Our accommodation (bunk beds) cramped and uncomfortable, unhealthily close to 2 Koreans sharing in my bedroom. Had to walk some way to showers and toilets (cold water only).

My diary is blank for this week which gives an indication of how I felt. Nothing memorable except seeing a rainbow out over the hills in the distance, and a few wallabies grazing in some fields near the cottage.

Week 5. Beechworth, northern State of Victoria. An interesting, enjoyable week. Leader: Jessie. Beechworth Park Warden: John McDonald. Gold digging area in past times. Gold light, rusty leaves (beech trees), rusty steam engine near our site. Still feeling effects of my cold from last week, but accommodation better and more comfortable. Our task: clearing debris from pathways through the Park. We learned about the history of the place through John, who was a most kind and knowledgeable man. The weather was much brighter this week. A real highlight at the end of the week, when John took us to Yaddonba, a sacred aborigine site with ancient aboriginal paintings. He told us the tale of Eddie Kneebone and the Kookaburra. We climbed Mount Pilot, the highest mountain in the area with spectacular 360 degrees vision all around, overlooking Australian bush country that had changed little over millennia.

Week 6. This was due to be my last week working as a Volunteer with CVA, but as it entailed returning to Hexham which I did not wish to do, I decided to finish a week early (I had paid for my 6 weeks so it was a choice entirely up to me).

 The only thing was that I could not stay any longer at the CVA hostel, so I booked at an excellent backpack YHA, the Metro Melbourne in Howard Street. This allowed me to explore Melbourne more fully and relax.

At the end of this week I was due to fly to Auckland for my work with CV New Zealand, but I wanted to see Laura before I left so phoned her and arranged to meet her for a meal on the Friday night. We met at La Porchetta, not far from my hostel, for a pizza. I showed her my recent photos and she transferred a lot of them to her flash drive, unfortunately my computer caught a virus in this process which had to be sorted out in Auckland. I was very sad to say goodbye to the beautiful Laura who had been such a good friend to me in Indonesia as well as Australia.

Sat 16^th May 2009. Fly Qantas to Auckland, dep 11.00am. The driver to the airport was drunk and nearly collided several times with other cars. I read a story in one of the free airport magazines of the cargo airliner that tried to lift off at Melbourne airport too early, with not enough thrust, so the pilot tried twice more, each time bumping his tail. Finally in desperation as the plane went into the rough at the end of the runway he rammed full thrust on and took off just in time.

I saw a picture of the damage to the tail.

Luckily my take-off was much smoother.

NEW ZEALAND : CVA

Arrival in Auckland – achieved an ambition to get here. The more relaxed atmosphere, a friendly minibus driver helpful on the long drive into the city centre. Drop off in Queen Street, very close to my backpack hostel. Help with my cases. The evening lights of ACBD. My small room, double bunk but I am on my own. Very tired. Centrally placed, a huge Maori male receptionist, also friendly.

17^th May Sunday. A grey, wet day, did not dampen my spirits. I walked to the Harbour only 5 minutes away and took many photos of the spectacular views. After wandering around in the morning, I found my way to the Victoria Market in the afternoon, a covered old tannery converted into individual units selling antiques and bric-a-brac. I bought a lovely piece of sculptured Maori greenstone, twisted in a figure of eight, symbol of eternal love. (Aotearoa?)

I had the best part of a week in which to explore Auckland, including seeing the wonderful Auckland National Museum with its collection of Maori artefacts and the Gardens surrounding it called The Domain, before starting with CV NZ on Friday 22^nd. I went up to Mount Eden, the offices of CVNZ, and met Fiona McLoughlin the volunteer programme manager. She is a delightful Kiwi, tall with a warm and friendly personality.

On Friday 22 May at about 5.30pm on the seafront at the Harbour I met my fellow volunteers and we embarked on the ferry to Rotoroa Island, a 50 minute run. Our leader was Bruce Eade, a gentlemanly New Zealander ex-Scoutmaster, who met us on the pier with our other volunteers who had already spent a week on the island.

The weekend was spent exploring the island, walking on the beaches and climbing over rocks, the crystal clear rock pools full of crabs and clam shells, climbing up to the highest point overlooking the other islands in the archipelago.

Our accommodation a large wooden shack set just up the hill from the little hamlet, under 2 tall pine trees. Our task for the week was to clear the island of pine seedlings so that the ground could be re-planted with native NZ flora in an effort to provide a natural habitat for re-introduced animals and birds, which were completely absent currently. The island had been owned for nearly a century by the Salvation Army Youth Offending project, and had been allowed to grow many macrocarpa pine trees which had entirely dominated the ground. Over the preceding few years these huge trees had been clear felled, leaving stumps, which allowed light to penetrate and now seedlings were emerging. It was our task to eliminate these in the final phase of the project, and build a pathway up a steep slope as part of the route around the island for the people to enjoy the new wildlife.

Hard physical work of building the steps using railway sleepers. Measurements , grading, infilling, rolling. Bruce’s woolly bobble hat and ribaldry between the group. Jace – Korean, English boys and Elizabeth girl, cooking in the hut, supplies from mainland. Cleaning the hut. No phone signal. Mostly wet cold blustery weather.

Back to Mount Eden for the weekend. Explore the area, climb Mount Eden.

Week 2. Andy Roberts leader. To Waitekare ranges on coast, west of Auckland.  On the Monday afternoon we walked along the flat sandy beach, watching the dramatic rollers running in with foam whipping off the top. We explored some caves and saw signs of old Maori midden shell dumps (these were ancient dumps of shellfish left by the Maoris on the coast, often they were discovered when paths were cut through down to the coast).

Here we were to clear a parkland creek (Meola Road, Western Springs) of rubbish and plant the riparian edge with grasses and shrubs to prevent erosion. This work was enjoyable and we all worked quickly, the weather had improved and it was mostly sunny all week. We enjoyed our picnic lunch at Meola Reef, an ancient volcanic lava flow that had once been a landfill site for Auckland but had been partly restored when its geological and environmental significance had been realised. Fine views of the harbour could be seen. One day at Churchill Primary School we planted a swampy area with reeds and grasses, and we covered a lot of ground in one day. Our work was supervised by the Auckland City authorities Parks Department and they were pleased with our progress.

On the Friday 5^th June we returned to Western Springs at Meola Road for a clearance of the dreaded moth plant. These were hideous invasive alien creepers and vines with large green pods which split open and scattered their prolific cotton-like seeds over a vast area. They were very tough and stubborn, and had to be hacked down using loppers and machetes. The danger was the milky-white sap which was poisonous and caused skin blisters and inflammation if touched, so we had to wear masks, goggles and protective clothing to prevent it getting on our skin.

The pods were all bagged up and left at a collection point for later disposal.

This final day was marred by the dull and drizzly weather, the monotony of the work and the fact that Andy’s bag was stolen – he had left it on the front seat of the van parked in a lay-by, and someone had smashed the window to grab it. Andy was furious, although he well knew the liability of this event.

At the weekend 6^th June I went on a very interesting ferry trip to a bird island called Tiritiri Matangi. This was a special reserve managed by volunteers dedicated to the preservation of some of New Zealand’s most iconic and rare native birds. The island had been planted with suitable forest and undergrowth and the birds had been introduced over many years and was a famous tourist site. I took many photos and found the whole experience absolutely fascinating. On the return ferry trip I talked to a very nice elderly couple who had come up from Wellington.

On Sunday 7^th after doing my laundry and writing postcards, I walked leisurely down to a suburb and had a roast beef lunch in an Irish pub called Clare Inn. After that I went to the Auckland Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT) which again was a most interesting and enjoyable visit, with several historical airframes out in the open, a Sunderland flying boat, a Lancaster bomber and examples of the trams and steam trains that had once been used in New Zealand.

Week 3. Monday 8^th June 2009. This was a whole week spent at Matata in the Bay of Plenty about 3 hours drive from Auckland. This was spent planting spinifex coarse grass in the sand dunes, to prevent erosion and stabilise the dunes. We stayed in a holiday camp right on the beach, but the weather was wet and cold all week and frankly not very enjoyable. I personally did not feel well and spent one day ‘in camp’ to try to recover from a cold. The highlight of the week was a trip to the famous Rotorua hot sulphur springs, where some of the more intrepid members actually bathed in several of the spas with different water temperatures. I did not get in as I was still not feeling well.

We completed all our spinifex planting as planned, working quickly as a team.

Weekend 13^th June – I had my first ever tattoo on my back! Based on a Maori design, it was done by a little man who looked like the jockey he once was, weathered and wrinkled but with 40 years’ experience of tattooing. He was very good and I was delighted with the result. My fellow volunteers were impressed. That evening in a pub in Queens Street I watched the All Blacks rugby match versus France, which France won in a very entertaining match.

Week 4 – Waiheke Island. Andy Roberts again leading. This was a not very enjoyable week, especially as our task was to clear an area of the island of the ubiquitous poisonous moth plant. It was difficult working on the steep slopes of the coastal edge in thick undergrowth.

At the end of the week we returned to Mount Eden and had a party at the hostel, where we drank a lot of wine and had a lot of laughter.

Weekend 20^th June – watched second test match France v All Blacks, which the All Blacks won after much criticism of their performance the previous week.

Week 5. This week I was based at Mount Eden HQ to help Fiona with office administration duties. This included updating volunteer records of work done on various projects, clearing and sorting office files and cleaning and storing tools and equipment. It also gave me the opportunity to visit a local doctor to seek medical attention on a painful pressure point on my foot, for which I was prescribed some steroids.

Week 6. Mon 29 June 2009. This was to be my final week with CVA NZ. Our leader for the week was Leigh Marshall. This week was spent in planting trees and shrubs at Omaru Creek and 2 parks within the Auckland City boundaries, pleasant work in fine weather and a very nice way to end our volunteering work. On the final day we returned to the volcanic lava-flow reef of Meola Creek, with its wonderful hexagonal crystal shapes, for more moth-plant weeding.

Several of our party had already left at the end of their bookings, but the remainder of us had a wonderful final farewell meal at the Belgian restaurant ‘De Post’ in Mount Eden, where we ate steaks and seafood (I had some excellent and juicy Green Pacific mussels) and drank the flavoured Belgian beer. It was a memorable send-off. We all departed for our next destinations at various times over the weekend – I was due to fly back to Sydney on Monday 6^th July.

C. Tim Taylor (written FROM NOTES, DIARIES AND MEMORIES between 2008 and 2012).