A Broken Down Day

This morning I met with the National Democracy Foundation and was very impressed. This is an organization dedicated to promoting democracy around the world. The Nepal office works with Parliament to educate and offer guidance where needed. They have specifically worked with the women in Parliament. I hope to be able to work with them in some capacity, but again it is difficult given my short time in Nepal. One area that was suggested was coaching in conflict management.

After meeting with Mark at the NDF, I went with three of the college students on a real adventure. Since they do not have much money, we were going to take a bus to a village at the top of the mountain overlooking Kathmandu. First, this bus was amazing. It was very colorful but also very old. After waiting one hour for the bus to take off, it went two yards and hit another bus… not sure how this could happen.

Now the amazing thing is the Nepali people just sat in their seats. No one seemed to get up to see what was going on and how it would impact our trip. If this was the US, we would all be out of our seats yelling about the situation. Crowds were gathering outside and I kept saying that this could be serious. Again, we sat. Finally after 45 minutes (yes, I was trying to be patient), we asked about the situation and found they were fixing the bus and should be done in 15 to 20 minutes. Now this is a very steep and winding road. The bus was already old… what if it breaks down. I convinced the group to take a taxi.

We negotiated with 5 taxis, before finding one at a reasonable price (or what we thought was reasonable - $18 for a three hour trip). This was an off road type of road with rocks and ruts and a very little, low riding taxi. The taxi made it half way before we had to get out and push because it overheated or was stuck in the road. And every time we had to push, we would have to walk up the hill to the flat area to get back in the taxi. We did this three times.

We finally reached to top and the air was so bad that we could not see much. Oh well, it was an interesting day. I think I may stick to Lonely Planet for my sightseeing adventures next time.

Tomorrow I will be spending the day at TEWA, another NGO that I will be working with.

Namasti