I did not want this to happen: I posted my last blog entry three long months ago.
I could write several articles about my experiences of the past months in Nepal, but I don’t want to overwhelm anyone with mountains of text, and I’m also a bit under time pressure writing these lines. The reason for this: In two days I’m off on an almost three-week trek in the Himalayas, more precisely on the Annapurna Circuit.
That’s why I’ll keep it as short as possible and mainly let pictures do the talking.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Saying goodbye to my school in Kathmandu
December 24th, 2021, marked my last working day as a volunteer teacher in Kathmandu. I wanted to end this time with a spectacular Christmas presentation. Class 5 studied cool Christmas pop songs including Zumba dances with me (thanks to YouTube tutorials), while in class 8 we prepared “What does the Fox say” and two theatre plays. Grades 6 and 7, on the other hand, had to bite the bullet and learn for their exams in English literature with me.
In addition to these preparations, there were quite a few assignments from gaming outlets, which I gratefully accepted in order to keep my travel budget intact. Accordingly, I was very busy with work in November and December, and also with some private matters.
The Christmas party was a touching farewell to my career as a teacher. Some classes and students really grew dear to me and surprised me with small gifts and praise. In addition, friends, my parents and I were able to raise a little money for the school, my host family and some staff members through a private donation and thus do some good, which was a nice feeling at Christmas. Many thanks at this point to Maxi, Flo, Sven, Andi and my parents for your generosity, which definitely arrived.
Nevertheless, I was happy when I could put down the whiteboard pencils. My volunteering brought me a new respect for teachers, as I realised for myself how demanding this job is in many ways – at least if you want to do it well and rewarding for the children.
After my work, I was allowed to stay at the school for two more weeks to explore unseen corners of Kathmandu and figure out where to go next. My excursions around Kathmandu included:
- the old city of Bhaktapur,
- the holiday resort Nagarkot in the mountains (which is supposed to offer a breathtaking panorama of the Everest mountain front, but when I was there it was cloudy and rainy with no mountains to be seen),
- „Little Tibet“ around Bouddha stupe (an area in which many Tibetan refugees live),
- the regions Sitapaila and Nagarjun around my school,
- Chandragiri (a place on a mountain top in Kathmandu, which can be reached by cable car, whereby we wanted to hike back and got lost in a cute mountain village)
- and as a highlight a bungee jump including canyoning (abseiling down waterfalls) near the Tibetan border on January 1st, 2022. I wanted to jump again straight after that, awesome!
Freezing on a farm in Ilam
I decided Ilam to be my next stop – a tea-growing area in the very east of Nepal and the neighbour of the better-known Indian Darjeeling. There I wanted to work on a farm and learn more about tea, before planning to explore Nepal clockwise (see map).
The journey to Ilam in the first week of January took a whacking 22 hours on adventurous roads in a dodgy bus that took me to Ilam Bazar – the most city-like place in the area, home to Nepal’s oldest tea garden.
The next day I went by jeep to the “Chintapu” farm about two hours north, which I had found via Workaway. Originally I wanted to stay ten days, but I left after seven.
I was there in the wrong season. Besides tea, the farm specialises in growing kiwis, but in January I could do no more than clean the cowshed, collect and prepare the cow food, and pick up and chop firewood. Moreover, the farm was at an altitude of 2,300 metres and my bed was only surrounded by thin wooden walls, which brought me temperatures of about 5 degrees Celsius in the room at night. As soon as the sun went down, it was freezingly cold! The fact that the toilet, shower and sink were outside didn’t make it any better.
The only source of heat was an open fire in the kitchen, on which everything was prepared. Accordingly, my clothes and hair, the surroundings and also the food always smelled of smoke. The family was very warm and nice, but not too knowledgeable in English, so no deep conversations were possible. To make matters worse, I had stomach problems on the first night and got a little sick.
Accordingly, I struggled through the cold and finally decided to leave earlier and move on to Dharan – a town in the so-called Terai, the southern and warmer part of Nepal at low altitudes. There I wanted to enjoy a little “luxury”: a hotel with air conditioning and hot water.
Self-isolation in Dharan
After an adventurous ride in a jeep filled with 14 people and a goat, I reached the much warmer and busier Dharan.
However, I noticed a complete loss of taste during dinner, which, together with my continuing cold, made me suspicious. A rapid test confirmed it was Covid. The next day, I went to hospital for several tests, but everything was fine – I wouldn’t even have had to be quarantined because of my mild symptoms.
Nevertheless, since I did not want to infect anyone, I chose to self-isolate in the hotel for a week after the PCR test also came back positive. Luckily, I quickly got better and my sense of taste and smell soon returned.
I had almost certainly been infected either in Kathmandu or during the journey to Ilam – fortunately I did not infect the farm family. After my week of self-isolation I felt very well again. Because my infection must now have been two and a half weeks ago, I set off on another eleven-hour bus ride to my next stop.
Safari in the Chitwan jungle
Chitwan National Park is the largest and oldest one in Nepal. In the jungle and steppe area, there are free-roaming rhinos, monkeys, deer, crocodiles, elephants, bears, tigers and lots of birds to marvel at. However, it is better to avoid tigers, bears and male elephants.
Since hotels are no longer allowed in the national park, the adjacent town of Sauraha is the starting point for safaris. After having spent some time in very authentic Nepalese areas, I was a bit fed up with being stared at (and sometimes almost harrassed) like an alien. So I was very happy to be in the more touristy Sauraha, where people were more used to see white persons.
On the first day, I booked a walking safari with two (legally required) guides, which started with an exciting early morning boat ride through the jungle. In our twelve-hour tour through the bushes (my mobile phone counted 36,000 steps, at the end I counted every single one of them) we saw lots of animals and also fresh tiger tracks. But what I enjoyed most was the soundscape, which was filled by the songs and calls of thousands of birds. This conveyed an almost primeval flair.
On the second day, I took it more easy. I enjoyed a half-day tour in a jeep and got a far-too-short haircut at the barber’s (it only turned out later that he didn’t speak a word of English apart from “Okay Sir” and “No problem”).
After three nights in Chitwan and a subsequent six-hour bus ride, I finally reached Lumbini.
Following in the foodsteps of Buddha in Lumbini
Lumbini is (scientifically proven, as it seems) the birthplace of the first Buddha, who found enlightenment and passed on his knowledge, which accumulated in Buddhism.
According to tradition, the heavily pregnant mother of the future prince Siddhartha Gautama was bathing in a pond when she went into labour and gave birth to her son a short time later at a sal tree standing next to it. A few hundred years later, an Indian king located the place. He laid a marker stone and erected a pillar and a temple complex.
The temples were destroyed over the millennia, but the pillar and the stone defied time and were rediscovered in the 19th century. Scientifically, it is probably quite likely that Buddha was actually born on the exact spot of the marker stone, which is why it became one of the most important pilgrimage sites for Buddhists. The Maya Devi Temple was built around the stone in honour of Buddha’s mother.
In addition, the Japanese built a kilometre-long park around it, which now houses Buddhist monasteries from all kinds of countries – there was also a German temple. Finally, a “World Peace Pagoda” awaits visitors at the other end of the park.
Unfortunately, my day in Lumbini was marked by pouring rain. Actually, I had planned to attend a meditation school at this holy place, but Covid and the cold ruined my plans – everything was closed. At least I met a German couple from Leipzig in my hotel, with whom I could exchange experiences over dinner.
As my hotel room was also a bit uncomfortable and offered neither stable internet nor hot water, I decided to move on to Pokhara after two nights and thus earlier than planned.
Pokhara – a dream at a lake
After eight hours of driving north through impressive mountain landscapes, I reached Pokhara and my heart beat faster. Pokhara is the second largest city in Nepal and is located directly on the country’s second largest lake. While the actual city is similar to any other in Nepal, a tourist recreation area extends directly on the lake with the “Lakeside” district.
I had never experienced Nepal as beautiful as here before. The lake and the surrounding mountains are magical and calming; moreover, the hotels and restaurants have almost western standards and there is hardly any rubbish here – a real blessing. On a clear day, the view of the mighty Himalayan front is literally breathtaking. In just a few kilometres, the earth rises by over 7,000 metres; a sight unique in the world.
I took a few days to recharge my batteries, to enjoy the view of the lake and the increasingly warmer weather. The uncomfortable thing about Nepal in winter is the fact that there is no heating or isolation here. It is almost as cold indoors as it is outside, which after several weeks of daily cold literally gets to your bones.
During my holiday, I also treated myself to a paragliding flight (very cheap compared to Europe), which is almost a must for a visit to Pokhara. It was an amazing experience to fly together with the birds, which I definitely want to do again someday!
After not being able to pursue my wish of a meditation school in Lumbini, I booked a one-week meditation and yoga retreat in Pokhara in a somewhat secluded location – which turned out to be an extremely educational, relaxing and spiritually enriching experience. One reason for this were the other course participants Giulia, Melina, Simone and Tim, who became dear friends to me.
Crazy: Among the other three participants (two from Italy and one German) was a former employee of Nintendo’s German PR agency. What are the chances of meeting a colleague who has also left the industry here at the other end of the world? By now, I no longer believe in coincidences.
As the retreat is family run (like almost everything in Nepal), we were even invited to a Tibetan wedding by acquaintances of the family.
More than a week has already passed since the end of the retreat, and I now know a few people in Pokhara as well. The past few days I have mainly been working as a freelancer, dedicating myself to my new meditation and sports routine, enjoying the increasingly spring-like weather and preparing for my upcoming trek mentioned at the beginning.
I am already very excited about the hardships and wonders that await me deep in the Himalayan mountains on the Annapurna Circuit. After that, I have about ten days until my visa in Nepal expires.
Where do I go from there? Maybe I’ll travel on to Thailand, or maybe to Sri Lanka – depending on whether I’m allowed to enter the country and how much money I have to spend. I’m sure I’ll know more in my next blog post.
Bonus: Model pictures and published articles
In November I was hired by the fashion brand Harrington as a model. After a breif casting there was a ten-hour shooting day for pictures and videos in a luxury hotel in Kathmandu, which was a lot of fun. Below is a selection of some of the pictures published so far. You can find selected videos on my Instagram profile in my story highlights. More footage from the shooting day will probably continue to be published successively on Harrington’s social media channels.
This was a very long article. A big thanks to everyone who made it this far!