Day 5: School Tests and a Hike to Besishar

Good morning Gaunshahar

This cloud-free morning Shamser made Chris, Timmy and I the garden committee. After a breakfast of milk tea, omelette and toast we were to plan the parking area, landscaping and everything else garden related for the new restaurant and the front yard of the new house. We set to work throwing ideas around, battling Nepali logic and a lack of equipment. We came up with a decent plan though and even managed to convince Shamser to include a fire pit in the design.

As the stone masons were coming this afternoon we needed to finalise the measurements for the restaurant walls. Having lost the paper from a few days ago which had measurements written on it and with the stakes having been squashed in the process of demolition, we were pretty much starting from scratch. We put our heads together though and got things done quickly as school time was creeping up.

Throughout this morning of confusion we did manage to squeeze in a cooking class. Kopana taught us how to make the chilli and tomato 'pickle' that she serves with each dal baht. For a simple side dish it had a load of ingredients which I guess explains its deliciousness.

Chris the teacher

A bit before 10am, the five of us volunteers began the walk to school loaded up with exam papers for the students' final exam. Shamser had a meeting in Besishar so it was left up to Chris and I to unlock the school, introduce the other volunteers and manage Shamser's class during the testing.

Thankfully the class we were supervising consisted only of ten kids and they were relatively well behaved throughout the morning. Ironically, the son of the principal and the child who probably hears English the most frequently was the last in our class to finish the Maths test which was written in English. There was slight confusion over us holding onto the students' question papers as well as their answer papers as normally the question papers are usually left with the kids. We weren't sure how this would go when a child was absent and there were test papers floating around the village but never mind. It was a pretty chilled out morning and was made more enjoyable by a delicious lunch of more dal bhat back at home.

In the classroom

The path to Gaunshahar

Chris and I were then on a mission to finish what we attempted yesterday...a trip to Besishar. The 4km walk down the steep hill was painful on already sore muscles and took almost an hour. Once in Besishar we were on a quest to buy a SIM card. This proved difficult when they wanted to see Chris' passport rather than the copies we had with us but the passport was back on the hill. They couldn't believe that our passports did not include our fathers' names but eventually we worked something out and got a SIM out of them. It was a regular sized sim however and we needed a micro SIM so the next mission was to get it cut down to size. While originally quoted 100 rupees when we dropped our jaws in disbelief the shop keeper eventually dropped the price. We're getting good at this bargaining thing.

We bought a few snacks and treated ourselves to some creamy cakes before trying to use the wifi that Ram at Hotel Tukuche had offered us a few days back. Unfortunately the wifi was down (no surprise) so we used up our entire mobile credit amount on trying to post blogs and contacting parents. Apparently Nepal hasn't quite caught on to the idea of a SIM card that has data on it separately to the other credit. Oh well...we purchased some more before beginning the trek back up to our home of Gaunshahar.

The path to Gaunshahar

Even without our heavy bags the 4km climb back up the mountain was almost as tiresome as our first attempt. However, feeling a little lighter than a few days back, we enjoyed the views more and really took in the beauty of the simple villages that line the ancient path back up the hill. We saw the old waiting posts that are situated along the path for people to rest at and it was amazing to think that people have been walking this same path for so many hundreds of years.

Once in the bottom part of Gaunshahar we ran into Scott, an American who lives with his wife in Kathmandu and takes groups trekking and volunteering around the mountains of Nepal. Not a bad gig we thought.

We arrived home red and puffed and even the cold water bucket shower felt good before dinner and yet another early night.