How often do you get a chance to pack your bags and go on a trip with your boss and his friends, who neither know you or each other. Well that kinda is the introduction to my trip to Ghale Gaun. I had no idea what to expect, all I could do was trust my boss, who is a very fun person, to clear the awkwardness away. And that he did beautifully. So let me begin sharing my experience of Ghale gaun.
The road trip
The place is not that far away from Kathmandu, we left at around 7:15 am, and reached besisahar around 1:30 pm. Then we took a jeep to Ghale Gaun, which is literally on top of a hill. By the time we were in the jeep, a lot of the awkwardness had already gone away. The only awkwardness there was our driver playing sentimental suicidal songs. We did try to coax him into stopping and we even tried singing loudly to overpower it, didn't work out at all. I slept all the way till besisahar because I was on the wrong side and missed all the view and there was no point staying awake, staring at the trees. We had already gotten closer with the cramped seats in the jeep and on top of that the seats were slippery and facing each other, pushing us closer. You can see how cramped it is below
And after a three hour ride from besisahar we finally reached Ghale Gaun around 5:00.
Night at Ghale Gaun
After arriving in Ghale gaun turns out that we need to register the names of everyone is staying there and they assign us a house for home-stay. We got assigned a house really close by to the entrance of Ghale gaun. But turns out the person who cooks had gone away to a nearby village for a festival there. We were really hungry so we decided to buy some biscuits and drink eat at the nearby shop, but our host who was a 75 year old man was kind enough to make us tea because he thought we were tired. Nepal being a patriarchal country, the man of the house is the bread winner and the women is usually responsible for cooking and household chores. Even though we can see men doing household chores today, we rarely get to see old men doing any household chore. We were very touched by his actions. I think getting to drink tea made by a 75 year old bajey is pretty rare in Nepal.
Let me take a moment to describe our rooms right here, it was awesome for the price we were paying. It had a T.V., three comfortable beds with white sheets, blankets and a pillow. We could tell that it was a room made recently especially for home-stay because the other room that my boss and his friend had was in the main house and was very small. My boss could barely stand in his room, because it was so small but it was good enough.
We went on a stroll of the town just to see if we could get an idea of how the town was, just to explore with our torches and cellphone flash lights and were scared to death by a black bull in the dark. We decided to go back and have our dinner and also bought some beer on the way back. My boss forbid me from having beer because he had seen me high on red bull and was not going to let that happen again especially not on beer.
While we were having dinner, we also learnt that our host was a Women Health Worker. We were almost done with dinner when our host got a call from the 'Aama Samuha' because a group of 20 people had requested a traditional gurung dance performance at 8 pm, and to our surprise they were more than willing to participate and invited us as well. So we decided to join the group of 20 people to experience some gurung culture and followed our host to a performance hall. Unfortunately we ended up waiting there for almost an hour. Because it was just 2 days after a dill moon, the sky was bright and I couldn't see any stars.But one of us stumbled upon a beautiful view of the mountains, yes at 9 pm we could see the fucking mountains, how awesome was that? we were so excited that all of us were cursing ourselves for not owning a DSLR. Like who knew that your cellphone was not going to capture such a magnificent image? Fortunately, Andy's digital camera caught the image and we thanked our lucky stars for that awesome shot.
After waiting for another half hour we decided to ditch the cultural program and go back to sleep because we wanted to wake up early to check out the sunrise.
(...to be continued)
I think this is getting too long. I'll continue day 2 and day 3 in another post :)
Regards,
Prarthana
The road trip
The place is not that far away from Kathmandu, we left at around 7:15 am, and reached besisahar around 1:30 pm. Then we took a jeep to Ghale Gaun, which is literally on top of a hill. By the time we were in the jeep, a lot of the awkwardness had already gone away. The only awkwardness there was our driver playing sentimental suicidal songs. We did try to coax him into stopping and we even tried singing loudly to overpower it, didn't work out at all. I slept all the way till besisahar because I was on the wrong side and missed all the view and there was no point staying awake, staring at the trees. We had already gotten closer with the cramped seats in the jeep and on top of that the seats were slippery and facing each other, pushing us closer. You can see how cramped it is below
(the back of our jeep says 'If your shawl flies away, how is it my speed's fault?')
Just want to mention how lucky guys are in terms of being able to pee anywhere. We had a toilet break for a few minutes, which I find very sexist cause it is specially designed for men.And after a three hour ride from besisahar we finally reached Ghale Gaun around 5:00.
Night at Ghale Gaun
After arriving in Ghale gaun turns out that we need to register the names of everyone is staying there and they assign us a house for home-stay. We got assigned a house really close by to the entrance of Ghale gaun. But turns out the person who cooks had gone away to a nearby village for a festival there. We were really hungry so we decided to buy some biscuits and drink eat at the nearby shop, but our host who was a 75 year old man was kind enough to make us tea because he thought we were tired. Nepal being a patriarchal country, the man of the house is the bread winner and the women is usually responsible for cooking and household chores. Even though we can see men doing household chores today, we rarely get to see old men doing any household chore. We were very touched by his actions. I think getting to drink tea made by a 75 year old bajey is pretty rare in Nepal.
(with the lovely bajey <3)
Let me take a moment to describe our rooms right here, it was awesome for the price we were paying. It had a T.V., three comfortable beds with white sheets, blankets and a pillow. We could tell that it was a room made recently especially for home-stay because the other room that my boss and his friend had was in the main house and was very small. My boss could barely stand in his room, because it was so small but it was good enough.
We went on a stroll of the town just to see if we could get an idea of how the town was, just to explore with our torches and cellphone flash lights and were scared to death by a black bull in the dark. We decided to go back and have our dinner and also bought some beer on the way back. My boss forbid me from having beer because he had seen me high on red bull and was not going to let that happen again especially not on beer.
While we were having dinner, we also learnt that our host was a Women Health Worker. We were almost done with dinner when our host got a call from the 'Aama Samuha' because a group of 20 people had requested a traditional gurung dance performance at 8 pm, and to our surprise they were more than willing to participate and invited us as well. So we decided to join the group of 20 people to experience some gurung culture and followed our host to a performance hall. Unfortunately we ended up waiting there for almost an hour. Because it was just 2 days after a dill moon, the sky was bright and I couldn't see any stars.But one of us stumbled upon a beautiful view of the mountains, yes at 9 pm we could see the fucking mountains, how awesome was that? we were so excited that all of us were cursing ourselves for not owning a DSLR. Like who knew that your cellphone was not going to capture such a magnificent image? Fortunately, Andy's digital camera caught the image and we thanked our lucky stars for that awesome shot.
After waiting for another half hour we decided to ditch the cultural program and go back to sleep because we wanted to wake up early to check out the sunrise.
(...to be continued)
I think this is getting too long. I'll continue day 2 and day 3 in another post :)
Regards,
Prarthana
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