Homestays

We arrived in Amaltari, the village which we are doing homestays in, the night of the 26th. We drove through hours of farmland to get here and this is the closest feeling to home I have had yet. There are crops as far as you can see, but they are rice fields instead of wheat like back home. As soon as we arrived we put our bags in our rooms and walked through the rice fields (which have built up passageways amongst the swampy rice pits). We then crossed a large river to go play soccer with some children in the village. After wandering around, we had our first dinner with our host family. Nepali people do not use utensils so we ate rice, a lentil soup, and a vegetable that the US does not have but is similar to spinach, with our hands (a childhood dream, haha). At dinner my friend Jake and I taught one of our Nepali friends the game rock paper scissors, which I can only imagine seems like an odd game to them. After dinner we explored the village a bit more, and I saw a woman making "BBQ" as a Nepali student told us, and her cooking consisted of a small fire and a then metal mesh sheet to cook on top of. I tried to explain Kansas City BBQ, but it was difficult to explain when it is completely different. As I lay under the bug nets in my bed I am again skeptical of my ability to sleep in a small hut without AC or even a fan, but we will see. We spent about 5 minutes (my roommate, Roseali from TU and I) getting all the mosquitos out from under my net, and we were awoken about 30
minutes later by some loud noises and someone outside talking about a snake. I wrote this the following morning though so it didnt impede by ability to sleep too much after a long day.

may 27th

Our first full day in Amaltari was both long and eventful. We woke up around 5:30 AM to eat breakfast (a banana and some Nepali tea) to then go do a jungle safari in Chitwan National Park, however the tour was delayed for rain. We instead took a hike to the river, hung out around the village, and met some elephants. Around 8:30 AM we met the other ASU group (a group of engineers who arrived 2 weeks before us) so they could show us the work they had done in the village. They had created several bags of biochar, which was a charcoal made from invasive species in the jungle that would generate revenue for the community, prevent the invasive species takeover, and emit less carbon into the atmosphere than coal based charcoal. After this, we ate an early lunch (which has become a quite monotonous rice, vegetable, and lentil soup) before we left to go visit the other engineering project the other group had finished. They had created a solar panel in a neighboring village that would pump irrigation throughout their fields, widening the variety of crops these farmers can grow in the future. After this site visit, we rushed back to Amaltari to do the delayed jungle safari tour, during which we saw several rhino (one of which charged one of the jeeps), many deer, a couple peacocks, and many other animals. Driving through the national park reminded me of cloud 9 (@ mom and dad), and how much I miss home and my family. Even though it has only been a few days, I miss the comforts of home- as well as the variety of foods. However, I am excited to continue learning. Oh, and as an update on the heat, the power finally returned just as I sat down to write this post. Obviously there is no AC here, but the power means the fan works, so it will be much better tonight (if the power remains on). The ending to our night was spent at a cultural show from the villagers, which consisted of performing dances and even joining them in some dances. It was a fun celebration to end the engineering group's hard work, and essentially start ours.

may 28th

Today I was awoken at 5:30 AM by knocking on my door, which was our homestay mother with tea. Sadly, I do not drink tea nor do I like to be woken up at 5:30 AM, but regardless the day was off to a good start. We first walked to a neighboring village after breakfast that is one of the most marginalized groups in Nepal because of their darker skin tone. The children at the local school and all the villagers were welcoming, as well as very helpful to interview/ ask question to help us learn about our respective topics that we are each writing on. After this, we ate lunch then visited the community seed bank, which was very interesting. This seed bank had over 1000 varieties of seeds and they not only dispersed them to farmers, but also provided trainings and other programs that benefit the community. We immediately then drove to the solar lift irrigation site again to participate in the formal ceremony of handing the equipment over to the community, which we only did because the engineering group had to leave the previous day. While we were in the area we toured the rest of this climate smart village, seeing other solar panel powered systems for both drip and flood irrigation techniques. After this long day, we came back to our homestays for dinner, then spent some time just hanging out and getting to know one another better.

may 29th

Our final day in Armaltari was quite a bit more relaxed than the other ones, but it was even hotter than usual. We woke up early to go make a batch of the biochar that the engineering group designed, then we met several members of the community in their community center to ask them whatever remaining questions we had. I asked about the community's usage of the community forest, because I plan to conduct my research over how the government can aid sustainable community resource usage. After we ate lunch we we explored the village's biogas (using cow dung as fuel to power kitchens) and other sustainable solutions like building houses from mud to keep them cooler. In the afternoon we took an elephant ride that gave us another tour of the national park, and we saw some more rhinos up close. Following that, we celebrated a girl in our group's birthday and then ate dinner which was my favorite dish of Roti (pretty much tortillas) and sautéed okra. After dinner we all spent our last night hanging out and getting to know each other better again. We have a really great group of students, and we are all excited for the next two week (which will hopefully feature less bugs and more AC).

Chitwan

We begun our trek to chitwan via bus. Exiting the kathmandu valley took about an hour and a half because of road construction, which also causes immense pollution (in the form of particulates like dust). Once we left the valley driving through the mountains provided amazing views into canyons and the hillside was filled with terracing for farming. We soon started on the long stretch of road that was under construction towards Chitwan and Pokara; it was almost impossible to see more than 30 feet ahead because of all the dust from the passing cars. This also meant that roadside towns and homes were constantly dusty, which was something that was hard for me to imagine. There were many roadside towns, but nothing like what we have in the states. Instead, they were just a few connected shops and a home or two. These would often be connected to another community across the river that could be reached via bridge. Once we arrived in Chitwan we first drove through the city which was much smaller than Kathmandu, but still had a variety of homes, shops, businesses, and schools. We stayed the first night outside of Chitwan in a hotel called the adventure lodge, which was quaint, but also quite warm because of "load shedding." Load shedding is when the power is turned off at certain time increment to save power and help support the weak grids in the area. While this is a great idea, it created some discomfort in the heat and humidity which made it very difficult for me to sleep (but hey, at least that gave me plenty of time to write majority of this blog entry and the past one!).

Kathmandu Part 1

Once we arrived in Kathmandu, we went to the Radisson hotel, where we stayed the first two nights. The Radisson was quite nice and helped to not create a completely sudden shift in culture for us. We explored the city the day we flew in, and we got to see sights from famous temples to wild monkeys in a local vendor/ temple area. Considering I have never been to Asia, I was taken aback by the cultural differences I saw right away. The prevalence of religion is obvious by the temples and culture in the city. There were beautiful buildings amongst the less developed buildings, showing the diversity in income as well as lifestyle in the city. Kathmandu was also hit 2 years ago by a widespread and severe earthquake that left many buildings severely damaged, which is still apparent today. The following day we met up with the students from the largest campus in Nepal who will be studying with us for the next few weeks. Their college has almost half a million people in it (and I thought ASU was huge!). The 8 students from TU are all amazing and extremely nice, and I am excited to get the opportunity to work with them for the remainder of the trip. We also visited the Resource Himalaya NGO in Kathmandu, which plays a critical role in creating the country's public policies, which I was very interested in. We also got to spend some more time exploring the city and shopping around for cheap, local goods. Overall, my impression of Kathmandu was that it was a city that had a unique opportunity to approach sustainable development that I am excited to learn about. While factors like the lack of infrastructure may have been a struggle for me to understand and relate to, I am looking forward to learn more about Nepal and the other cities around the nation in addition to Kathmandu.

Flights

may 21-23

To start, I believe we skipped the 22nd as a day in its entirety, so that is why this entry applies to several days. I have spent the past 2 days traveling to get to Kathmandu, Nepal. I started the trip by flying from KC to LAX, where I waited several hours until I continued on to Guangzhou, China with my friend Nick. The flight to China was quite an experience. We boarded the 15 hour flight anticipating to be out of our comfort zones, but a broken AC system in the plane is not quite what we meant. After the flight was delayed an hour for the sauna-like temperatures, we, along with the hundreds of other people on the huge double-decker plane took off for China. Thankfully I was able to sleep for a couple hours of the flight, otherwise our time was spent playing random children's games on the in flight system and watching Shrek. I'm still appalled that there was no wifi on any of my flights, but that was likely for the best. Another interesting occurrence on Chinese Southern Airways was the meal situation. We were served "dinner" immediately after our flight departed (so 4 AM Kansas time), which consisted of rice, fruit, and other basic staples. We had "breakfast" right before the flight ended as well. After a lengthy de-boarding process, we rushed to our connecting flight in Guangzhou to Kathmandu, which was also with China Southern. This second flight seemed much more normal, was significantly less full, and much shorter (5 hours) than our previous flight. We landed with a view of the Himalayan mountain range, and after pointing out several different peaks I thought could be Everest, I gave up on guessing. Overall, these flights definitely taught me that I should probably learn Chinese, or at least conversationally, in addition to English for general travel and communication purposes. I also realized that international traveling is less scary than I anticipated, while certain parts may have been slightly stressful. As I write this entry on the last hour of our final flight, I am very excited to be done traveling for a while and to start learning about the culture and views of sustainability in Nepal. From what I have gathered from previous research on sustainability in the region, primary obstacles are poverty, population, and development. However, Nepal has a unique culture and opportunity to create a sustainable community system. I am excited to observe where these possibilities could take hold.

About the Blog

This blog will be used to document my trip to Nepal and Thailand. I will be spending three weeks in Nepal while I study abroad with Arizona State's School of Sustainability, then I will spend the following week in Thailand. Please feel free to contact me through Facebook messenger or Gchat while I am abroad!