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Trekking in Nepal, is not just about the high mountains and sitting looking at beauty. It takes time, effort, patience and endurance to get there. You don’t just achieve it, you have to work hard to get there and you learn more than just new words and phrases but your mind and consciousness will grow as well. Do you hear the mountains calling for your tired mind and body.

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Sometimes the best breaks are those little tea shops with hot ‘Sel Roti’ and cup of sweet tea by the side of the trail with your backpack set to the side.

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A happy ‘Shivaratri’, from SelbmarAdventures, the day the great god saved the world from annihilation. This massive statue is located in ‘Haridwar’ on the banks of the divine ‘Ganga’.

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Sangeeta

I met ‘Sangeeta’ a week after the 25th of April, in a village in Northern Gorkha. Something brought me to Gorkha, probably the same something that enticed me to Nepal and continue living here. I saw the destruction that had been brought to her village long before I met her. The place she has always called home, her school where she went to, the houses that lay in ruins and the mountains that were crumbling away under the weight of themselves.

It was probably after 3 weeks of me living in her village that I sat down with her and her toddler eating of a mound of ‘Daal Bhat’ that seemed impossible to finish. It was clean and well-kept though it used to be their cowshed before the earthquake, and with her brilliantly disarming smile, she told me her story; and how much her life had changed.

Having accomplished the impossible task of finishing my plate of rice and accepting a glass of hot ‘rakshi’, I started asking her questions.

“I was born here in this village”, she started, “a girl, and a ‘Magar’ in a village of ‘Gurung’s’. The villagers didn’t use to mix with us in the past as we were not of the same caste and some families would never eat with us, so my grandparents built our house a little way away from the village, that’s why you had to come up the slope to our house” she smiled at me apologetically.

“My parents didn’t really see the importance of a daughter,” she said bitterly, “those days they only saw the burden that I was. I was never going to have the strength of a boy, and as culture dictates I was going to leave the village and be part of another family by the time I was 15 when I would marry.” Her brow furrowed and her thin lips narrowed with determination as she continued, “But I was a good daughter, and I used to cook, clean the house, cut grass for the animals, take the goats out to forage and go to school. This is where my joy was,” her smile returned and her eyes sparkled like her gold nose stud, “I loved studying, I wanted to have the freedom of the books and I reveled in them.”

“Do you want some more Rakshi?” She asked me, and without waiting for a response, tops my glass, and then sits down on her stool next to the fire where she had cooked our savoury food, while I lean against the bags of rice that has been distributed by the different aid agencies whilst sitting cross-legged on the only bed of the house.

“My first problem came when I was 11, my father decided I wasn’t to go back to school as I had to do more work and pull my weight for the family. He also refused to buy me the books, bags, and the basic stationaries that are needed to continue my education. So I would make ‘Rakshi’, this batch you are having now is not what I made that’s why it doesn’t taste as good”, she nodded firmly with a connoisseur’s sureness, though I can never tell the difference between any vintage. “I used to keep chickens as well,” she said smiling again, “and then I would walk around the different villages for hours selling bottles of Rakshi and eggs. This was how I made money to buy my books. Some years I didn’t have enough money so I would stop going to school. When I was 16 I got married to one of my friends who lived nearby. He was kind to me, is very good looking and said he would take care of me, but his parents disliked me because of my caste and so we don’t live with them.”

She wipes her eyes, as they had moistened at the memory of the past. “I’m 29 now”, she says, “I’ve only completed my grade 11, I can’t walk down the mountain one and a half hours to the school and then walk back the 2 and half hour walk back to complete my education because I have my baby and I have got work, but I’m happy to have accomplished so much.”

“I was able to volunteer-teach at the village school and impart education to the children of the primary school and since the days of my childhood, the girls of my village are now able to go to school without fear and the full support of their parents”, she said, with a glint of hope in her eyes. She went on to tell me how in the monsoon the children of the three villages come to their village since its safe for the young ones to come alone, “our path to the school has no floods” she said with pride, “unlike the next village, where every monsoon the stream floods and its too dangerous to go to school.”

“If only the earthquake hadn’t happened,” her eyes had lost their gleam now, “you would have seen our village in its beauty and the school where I used to work in every day would still be standing and I would have been happy but now it’s all gone.”

“I’d like you to tell people about my story,” she looks up from the hearth with fervor, “tell them how much we suffer every year, how we women have no rights, never see our husbands who migrate to other countries for work, how the officials will not help us because it’s too difficult for them to return to our village and start work. Their answer to our plight is to shut down our school and send our 3-6 year-olds to another school where they will have to walk for 20 minutes. Tell them”, her eyes grew stony with determination, “we need education and this is our home no matter what.”

That evening as I picked my way down the path to my tent, I look up at the stars that twinkle down, and took a deep breath of the fresh mountain air I realized her story is not unique but it is one that can be told. The next few months as we all worked together and the village returned back from the rubble and looking at the smiling faces I kept thinking back to the first day when I had arrived, and the smiling eyes that were amidst the rubble of their houses, how fragile life is and how hope is all that keeps it together.

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Nepal might be famous for mountains. But the street art here is absolutely fabulous. I found this exquisite piece in an unlikely small town called, ‘Dhankute’ in Far-East Nepal.