The travels of Lady G.: Nepal - momos and getting into the hills

Next day was another full on one, lots of meetings and places to be and much hilarity to be had.

We started with another team meeting to work out our main priorities for the coming quarter over breakfast, and from there headed out to our lunch spot at an organisation that rescues women from trafficking, support and empowers them and helps them to refocus on new skills like tourism, English skills, paralegal skills ( to help other trafficking victims) and much more. I find the work of this organisation truly inspiring and the ladies who we met here were great fun.

'Stay positive and happy. Work hard and don't give up hope. Be open to criticism and keep learning. Surround yourself with happy, warm and genuine people.' - Tena Desae

We arrived and went straight into making momos – a traditional steamed or fried dumpling type food eaten in Nepal. There were two sorts – round or pasty shaped – all mine looked like blobs!

We rolled out the dough into rounds then filled with a vegetable and spice mixture and packed into the dough wrapper – the ladies were so talented at this and I was simply awful!

Simple veggies made the filling.

All mine looked like little lumpy blobs, luckily I had made a momo making friend who kept coming to my rescue and subtly reshaping mine!

They were steamed and we got a chance to try them, yum.

From here we had a traditional Thali lunch – rice, lentil dahl, spinach, pickles, chutney, a couple of types of curry – very nice and mixed flavours. Afterward we had a great a presentation on their work with lots of good info, which was sure to leave people thinking about trafficking and the good work of the NGO.

'Inspiration is one thing and you can't control it, but hard work is what keeps the ship moving. Good luck means, work hard. Keep up the good work.' - Kevin Eubanks

After this we moved on to another org whose focus was rescue and rehabilitation from trafficking, they also had a few care homes and a transit home for healing and rehabilitation / reintegration time. The staff here were wonderful and had been involved in this field a long time. They talked a little about the first rescue they did when they saved some children from a circus and got chased with a pistol – they now leave the rescue part to the authorities! The founder here had previously been a Gurkha and spent a lot of time in the UK, he was a lovely warm man with a great sense of humour and clearly a lot of stories to tell. The staff took us on to visit the homes and they were really well run and great examples of healing places.

[In order to protect the identity and dignity of the children here I took no photos]

In order to get this organisation we picked up a taxi, the driver thought we were tourists, but quickly learned that was not the case. We drove many, many miles to find the organisation and really struggled with directions. My colleague speaks pretty good Hindi and we were lucky she was able to communicate with the driver – not so sure she was so lucky as he started to get miffed about directions and then when we called the org told them off about their directions! He insisted on waiting for us to take us back to town, which was fine and we had a reasonable price negotiated. Then plans changed as we discovered the homes we were visiting were a half hour drive, on bumpy roads, and it was getting dark, and his engine fan wasn’t working – he went into a serious meltdown and for some reason this gave us the giggles hugely, which likely didn’t help the situation. We drove around down dark bumpy roads with the irate driver for an hour or to the point where he stated ‘I will take you here and then you are on your own’ (there was literally no way for us to get back from where we were at that time and off the beaten track and we eventually persuaded him to stay and wait for us) and we walked to the final place ahead of him driving us back to town.

"I'm a perfect example of the grumpy, old man. I'm really good at it." - Ned Beatty

We eventually got back into town at 730pm ish, just before the driver and the car blew a gasket! We were hoping to catch an NGO talk, but didn’t get the chance, but I did briefly see my friend again before she headed off to HK, which was nice. The day ended with us wandering around looking for winter coats, pictures and a travel agent to firm up potential trips for me at the end of the few days.

After a final morning meeting with an interesting and developing NGO we headed out and up a huge winding hill to the edges of the Shiva Puri National Park to visit a school we have been supporting.

Imagine being educated amidst these views!

The school was absolutely fabulous, especially considering how rural it is, great equipment , motivated teachers, nice environment, small classes, wonderful. We were greeted here with a blessing and a scarf, which was a nice touch. And bade farewell with a short impromptu musical performance that the kids decided to share.

After a couple of hours here we moved on to the hotel nestled in the hillside, with amazing views over Kathmandu Valley. This was a true treat at the end of a busy week.