Nepal: Bandipur

Monday 27th March

Travel day to Bandipur which is a small village in the mountains between Kathmandu and Pokhara. Got a fancy tourist bus which was luxury compared to the usual local buses. However we definitely prefer the local bus!

In the early evening we went for a hike up a big local hill with a zillion steps to see sunset. Totally worth it, check these out – it was gorgeous!

When we got back, the kids played football with the local kids – mostly in the dark because the electricity is very hit or miss here! They are in there somewhere! 👇

Tuesday 28th March

Lovely 2 hour walk from Bandipur to Ramkot – a tiny village nestled in the hills. It was 100% in the sun and it got VERY hot – it’s nearly 30 degrees here. We are only at 1,000m atm to not feeling the cooler effects of altitude. As ever, the kids found locals to play with which was cool – having kids really does open up cultural experiences – you always have something in common. I’m fairly sure they rarely have kids, esp those with blonde hair, visit!

This is T at the one village tap that supplies the whole village👆 What’s crazy is there is a secondary school in Bandipur so the kids in this village have to walk 1.5hours each way in the blazing sun to go. And it’s a very steep walk!

We got back and tried some home school – we are struggling with it a bit at the moment. It’s feeling a bit forced and ‘heavy’ so we are taking the pressure off a bit, focusing on some of our physical books. We will be having a family discussion about how we can make home school less of a burden. Also, Henry is really hating reading which is the one thing we are sticklers on, so we are still working through that. Also, sometimes home school looks like this 👇 – they spent hours rubbing rocks down to make pigments. They loved the creativity. I think they are missing more of the art/ crafting side of things – their school is amazing at really cool projects, from sewing felt cases to doing oil paints.

Ice creams and playing with the local kids!

Wednesday 29th March – THE DAY WE LOST (AND FOUND!) CHARLOTTE!!

Did a trip to the local cave – my golly it was 1500 steps down and 1500 steps BACK UP. My thighs will never forgive me, haha! The kids were hardcore and totally managed it. It was really tough, even for me.

After we got back, we went for lunch. Charlotte asked if she could go and find her friends to play with, which had done with Henry last night. We agreed she would take my watch and be back at a certain time. We would never normally do this, but the village is TINY and the kids all know each other and play in the streets. But she didn’t come back! So I figured she’d just be playing with friends so I had a little wander, not too stressed by this point. Didn’t find her so then we did get stressed as it had been around 30 minutes by now and it’s not like her to be so late back.

By this point, T, Henry and I were walking around the village shouting her name, showing her picture to all the locals. T was at the point of going to the police station. It was honestly the most stressed we’ve ever been, ever! We were trying to run around the village, up and down all the stairs – but we’d just done 2 hours on the equivalent of a stair master on max, so it was hard! Finally, Henry went back to the hotel room and found her. She had forgotten where we were, looked a bit for us and then (sensibly) went back. We’d checked but she must have been looking for us at that point. I don’t need to spell out how the experience shook us up! Big tears all round!

We had to walk through the village letting everyone know she was okay, by this point the whole place was looking for her!

So our final night was uneventful dinner and bed. Phew!