Nepal part 2

The rest of our time in Nepal was rather grating - we didn't do so well with the monastary, and after a failed trek up to the Annapurna conservation area (planned to be an overnighter, and we were told we'd not need a trekking permit for that; but the guy at the checkpoint was new and wanted to charge us double to even stay in the first village, get a nice view in the morning, and go back.. so we walked 25 km in one day, up and down more than a km too!), we went to another project.

The other project is part PhD study part eco-farm - a German woman who spends 3 months in Nepal, then 3 months in Germany, and has partnered up with some Nepali NGOs to create a demonstration project using agroforestry and more thought out farming methods. There were a couple of other volunteers there and we had an ok time. Of course, being Nepal, no doors shut properly, and the tap in the bathroom was set into the wall - with the water running onto the edge of the hand basin, not actually into it!! The food was good, though, and we had a couple of nice walks out to view the Kathmandu valley, mountains, and so on.

Then back to Kathmandu one last time, on a packed bus - we sat at the back, just next to a family of goats. On the day we left, there was a Maoist strike and we feared we wouldn't get to the airport in time, so set out very early.. and actually arrived early. And then airport security wouldn't let us inside, even though we had tickets - we had to sit outside on the concrete for 2 hours.

For a country so apparently interested in tourism, Nepal left a lot to be desired. Bangladesh was so much smoother, despite being "poorer". I can't phrase it right - it's not just Western snobbery, it's that all the walls were wonky, nothing is finished well, there is no craftmanship at all. And so often we'd get "Hello, what is your name, give me money!". Maybe it was just bad luck on our part, but nothing really worked out that well.. anyway, it taught us a lot, I think, both the bad and the good (of which there WAS a lot, despite my moaning - the mountains are beautiful, for example).

I've never been so happy to leave a country...