Food and fun, an evening with the host-family

Written by Steph Payne - GapBreak Nepal, 2009

The family is brilliant, they truly are. They’re all ridiculously beautiful and healthy, with low hesitant words of English and quick white smiles.

I’m loving lunch and dinner which is just sitting together on our mats and grabbing finger loads of dahl baht. Breakfast is a glass of tea, lunch (at 8.30am) is a bucket load of dahl baht and then dahl baht for dinner. I can’t get enough of it, it is meto chha! Once Prem felt sorry for us and cooked rice pudding for us with chunks of coconut and cinnamon and cardommon, I almost cried for my dahl baht. At night Courtney and I play cards with Elina and Pratima (who usually dominate us), last night we had the whole family in our room. Prem was listening to Courtney’s iPod and Courtney, Elina, Pratima, Rita and I playing a finger crushing game of snap. It was lovely, after Pratima helped us to bed pulling our mosquito net out and string it up. Our bed is amazing, Nepalese sleep on a wooden bed with a mat of bamboo and a thick, heavy quilt. We have a beautiful old dark wood bed pushed up against the mud walls painted blue, made from local sand which glitters silver and a beautiful painted mosquito net gathering us into the lap of sleep.