The Langtang Trek & Other Adventures

January has passed in a blur of activity, with the highlight being a visit from my college friend, John Sandri, for the past couple weeks. We had more fun than I can put words to as we trekked up alongside the Langtang River in a narrow, deep valley full of frolicking monkeys that eventually opened up to high alpine yak pastures and panoramic views of the snowy white himalayan peaks, and then spent some time exploring the hills and ridges surrounding Kathmandu on our mountain bikes. As a farmer back home (a brilliant, passionate, revolutionary one that the world could use a few more of: www.farmerjohnsplot.com), winter is his slower season, and my students had a few weeks off for "cold month" break, so it was really good timing for both of us. Some of the feature moments for me were:

• Rolling into the mountains on the top of the bus, which we decided could easily be made into an Olympic sport
• Climbing up to our highest point of about 4500m surrounded by glorious 360 degree views of some of the world's highest mountains and then running back down the steep hillside
• Spending a free afternoon doing some rock hopping and a little bouldering down by the clear blue rushing glacier-fed river
• Bushwhacking through bamboo groves to make our way back up to the trail after what later became known as "Near Death Experience #2"
• Evenings spent around the woodstoves with the Nepali families at various lodges along the trek
• Searching for (and finding) exciting new trails to ride bikes on within close proximity to my house, though they felt considerably farther on the day we forgot our money and had to ride all across the valley and back to pay off our debt of 50 rupees (75 cents) for tea and snacks
• Seeing the way my nephew immediately took a liking to "John Uncle", who as a role model for a young kid has got to be one of the very best

In general, getting the chance to see more of this beautiful country and share my part of it with a friend from home was great, and again my host family seems to feel they know me all the better for having met someone else from my North American life. Here are the comments I managed to collect from Sandri before he left:

"Nepal has been a wonderful place full of wonderful people! If I had to eat the same food every meal I think I would choose dal bhat. The flora of the country was particularly intriguing to me. I think that I was rather obsessed with pointing out all the different flowers, trees and shrubs to Sarah (Sarah's patience with me was zen like). It was awesome to see Nepalis' winter agriculture and their varieties of brassicas, like mustards and cauliflower (which we also feasted upon daily). My favorite part had to be a combination of biking / agriculture which presented itself in the form of irrigation ditches. Along these ditches we found a network of long and very narrow single track to ride on for hours. The intense concentration to stay on the foot wide trails was addictive; as we maneuvered to keep from falling to one side into the muddy water or off the other side down ten feet abruptly into peoples' rice paddies. It has been two weeks to remember for a lifetime; thank you to Sarah and all the wonderful Nepalis I met along the way!"

As you can see, his passion for agriculture was prevalent throughout the trip, which was, in fact, great news for me as I was able to pump him for information on the subject. I had sort of been assigned the task, by the head teacher at my school, of learning up on the farming situation within Nepal. He had read that agriculture in Canada is a major contributor to the economy and wanted me to look into why that's not the case in Nepal where over 80% of the people are farmers. Sandri, having spent 2 years in the Peace Corps in Moldova (another of the world's very poorest nations) working on an agriculture project, is possibly the very best expert I could have brought in for advice on the topic. And luckily, pumping him for information was not at all difficult as he's very engaged in the subject and loves to talk about it. He gave me some really good insights into the issues and I think I've got a good feel now for solutions or ideas for improvements that I can look into more.

Aside from the past couple weeks of holiday, I'd been going to the school each day to work with class 10, who will have to write their School Leaving Certificate exams in a few months and are studying through the break to become better prepared. They seem to be starting to feel the pressure as they've been somewhat nervously paying much closer attention than usual. And of course, there's still lots of work to be done in the library, which has been easier to get through without as many curious students milling around and trying to de-organize the books any chance they get. I also have a few other projects on the go with the head teacher where I'm helping him to write some teacher training materials and that sort of thing. All of these projects have been moving along well. It was nice to have lots of extra hours in the day to get some substantial progress made especially on the book we're trying to write, but I'm also looking forward to regular classes starting back up on Monday and seeing all the students back at school again.