Last week's outing

Woke up yesterday to drip, drip, drip, perhaps not unusual for a summer day in England but our first wet Saturday morning for a long time. Last Saturday was a beautiful day and knowing that monsoon was likely to start on 6th June, we (well I) decided we needed to get out of city for a few sunny hours. Easy bus ride, 9rupees, took us out of city south and wound up a hill past the village of Kirtipur, to the bus stop nearest to Chorbar. Walking up a winding road then took us up the hill to the village.

Great views of Lalitpur beneath us, although that day no distant views.

We were heading for a Newari farmhouse converted by a Frenchman and termed a "resort". Although not exactly my idea of a resort, it is a beautiful building, with three lovely rooms for residents and what may have been and will be a lovely garden. At present some of it is a building site for another dwelling. Leaving Roshan with newspapers and cold drink, I wandered round the village of narrow paths, I would be exaggerating to call them streets, between houses, several with tiny shops in their front rooms.


Rounding corner it was bizarre to hear a little voice singing "ABCD, EFG" to a very familiar tune. He, poss 6yrs, was sitting by his mother piling up sticks as she cut them with an axe, safety regulations not a priority here. Away from the centre, it was as if .I was surrounded by allotments, vegetables, corn, beans, tomatoes, peas, onions, so many varieties of greens, everywhere on tiny bits of land with hedges and interwoven fences. Although daily, I see this sort of veg, growing, as I travel on buses, here it was different as I was close, on sloping paths that wound through these beautifully looked after vegetable plots. Every few yards there were ducks or chickens, many of them followed by tiny offspring.


Passing women washing at a tap, a young monk, maybe 8 yrs old dashed up the path.


Seeing the prayer flags, I followed him up to the monastery wall but the wall was high and gate shut.

Re joining Roshan, we enjoyed a toasted tomato and ham sandwich, with a plate of warm new green beans and a sour cream sauce and some delicious chips ….yes the kitchen at this farmhouse definitely had a french influence too.

Wandering down the hill, we past a pickup truck which seemed to have died on the bend on the steepest part of the path, a group of monks carrying carrier bags laden with tomatoes and potatoes

and then a grave yard for lorries.

Back to KTM on one of the fullest buses I have ever been on and this was a big bus. One foot

on a huge sack of recycled bottles and the other sometimes on the ground, I had a window frame to grab when needed. As the bus began to empty a little, Roshan was encouraged, with lots of grinning from those involved, to make his way to an empty seat at the back. The seat had been vacated, although not quickly enough, by a poor girl who was by then hanging out of a front window and still throwing up!

A good relaxing sunny day before 6 busy, well by volunteer standards, days of work.

Sheila