Kathmandu: First Impressions and Expectations

 

 COUNTRY: Nepal
PROGRAM: UniBreak - Kathmandu
PROJECT: Health projects
WRITTEN BY: Sylvia Qiu

The first day of arrival was a pretty amazing experience. We got picked up by Rajesh from the ariport with our luggage packed up in a small van and drove through the streets of Kathmandu. The drive was the time to take everything in. The dust, humid weather and the traffic were the first couple of things that was really really different to us. The roads were packed with small vans, buses, motorbikes, cars, bikes, and people. We could see buses and vans with people just barely hanging on an people just jumping onto them right in the middle of the road. The amount of noise was just the honking of cars, vans and motorbikes. There was no real directions or markings on the streets, whatever transport was on the road would just swerve n and out to get where they wanted to go. There were cows on the side of the streets, and dogs everywhere just lying outside the houses and shops.

There were nine of us altogether from the Antipodeans team living at a hotel in Thamel. The town is a tourist destination where western food was available and people knew some English. The first couple of days we tried to fit as many tourist sites as possible, but the weather is quite unpredictable which made it a little difficult to plan what we wanted to do and when. It was definitely great to have those couple of days to get to know each other and we met up for breakfast and dinner to sort out our day or just spend the night together.
One of the most fantastic things in Nepal would be the rooftop gardens. At our hotel there was an amazing view of the houses and always mountains in the background. We ended up just staying up on the roof for quite some time since it definitely felt like we were in a totally different world. No picture or words could really do justice to the things we;ve seen. We just stood mesmerised just staring out and appreciating the fact that we made it to Nepal.

Finally we got picked up to go to the program house which was Rajesh;s house. We got dropped off 15-20 minutres from the house and followed Maya around to see the stores that we would need to go. It was bigger than what everyone had been telling us. Our imaginations did not live up to the reality of the house. We ended up being a team of 10 and Rajesh had finished making a mini house next to his backyard, which was an environmentally friendly project using glass bottles to build. The first night was just settling in and we learnt to eat with our hands and just the schedule for the next two
days. We passed our time by playing lots of card games but that definitely brought us all toegther.

The introduction session we had with Rajesh, we got blessed and received out Nepali name. We learnt about the reiligons and the cultuer by understanding the do;s and don'ts, and then a very quick and thorough language lesson. I would recommend learning as much as possible. Then we all went and bought traditinal Nepali outfit, and some of the girls ended up dressing in saris as well. Rajesh;s house was full that night with 9 Dutch students joining us for dinner, again we spent the night playing card games. The food has been absolutely fantastic and we have been careful with drinking water and eating out.