First of all I have to tell you how grateful I am for your sponsoring. Total amount reached € 2140. Already three weeks in Kathmandu ! The first week was really a holiday week to improve contact between the members of our team and our cooperation. We are 15 volonteers of Holland and I am the only Belgian volonteer. We went trekking together through an amazing beautiful Nepal. First we went to Chitwan, in the southern part near to India. Climat was very nice and warm there. We had a safari trip by jeep and by foot, elephants bathing and riding on their backs through the jungle, going by wooden canoes on the Rapty river. But I also went to see my first sunrise with Ajay, who is responsable for Cross Borders here. He's also passionated by photography. While the other team members were still asleep, we went through local awakening villages, with the sounds of prayers and music raising out of the little temples. Women preparing the children for the long walk to school. Men going at work on the land. We got hot black tea from the local inhabitants. It was a foggy and strange morning in an unknown world for me. But soon, I felt one with it and the unreal atmosphere dissappeared with the morning fog. Tremendous poverty everywhere, but people seem happy, living from the land and cattle, sharing and taking care of each other. They are so warm and welcoming. I felt guilty to be a tourist !!! After that we went all to Pokhara in the North near to the Tibetian border for a trekking in the mountains. Sunrises and sunsets on the Anapurna ... sleeping in a wooden mountain house, corssing mountain villages with the same poverty and welcoming. After six days we finally went back to Kathmandu to start the real work. Pokhara - Kathmandu is about 210 km by the highway in local busses. It took about 9 hours cause it is impossible to drive faster than 30km/hour. Highways here are simple two directions routes, very dangerous. Busses are in bad conditions as well as the highway. Driving amons trucks, bikers, cars, tchouctchoucs, people by foot, children going to school and cows. We also had damage on the brakes of the bus, so reparation took also two hours.
I'm sending you a few pictures of this first week.
Next newsletter will be about Kathmandu and my work !
See you ... and many hugs
Yvette
