So long, farewell

image(s): 
checkmate
flower power
Nepali dance
colleagues
family farewell
heavily laden in front of the school
hold on tight
relax party bird
Drew's letter of appreciation

During the last week the cables finally arrived so Drew had the computers networked in no time and the teachers were wowed by a document created on one computer miraculously appearing on the screen of another. Drew also managed to get the internet working nicely (more techie details to follow), although it then turned out that the teachers' excitement about the internet was based on being able to make internet phone calls – we were presented with phone numbers of relatives in Israel and Hong Kong and had to break it to them gently that the set up did not constitute an internet phone facility (they had no microphone and calls from the web to real telephones are typically not free anyway).

We were planning on leaving on Friday, but were then told that Thursday was - yep, you guessed it – a holiday! Seeing little point in hanging around not doing much right at the end of our stay, we decided to leave on Thursday (as apparently the buses would still be running). We had a busy start to the week teaching, and were just starting to get the teachers up to speed with the IT set up when the power went off on Tuesday afternoon. We kept our fingers crossed that the outage would be short but sadly that was the last electricity that we had in Garimudi. Unfortunately this left a few loose ends, and we are going to have to finish off some documentation and email it to them. We just have to hope they can figure out how to get at their email as we were in mid-demonstration of this when the lights went out!

On Wednesday afternoon, we arrived back from Tiffin to find a table laden with flowers and were then treated to a moving presentation to bid us farewell. This included some traditional singing and dancing, some speeches and being garlanded with more flowers than they could fit round our necks. We were also given smears of bright red tikka on our foreheads which we were told is a mark of respect. We were given gifts of a traditional Nepali hat for Drew and a shawl for Heather plus a framed letter of appreciation each. We certainly looked a picture by the end of it and had to try not to laugh at each other too much, asking “Do I look as silly as you do?”.

It was an early start on Thursday (5.30) but luckily Devendra was also heading to Kathmandu so we had an escort. Walking down the slippery paths was difficult enough, but laden with heavy bags made it terrifying! Heather adopted an amusing technique which appeared not dissimilar to Olympic walkers but that did the job of getting her to the bottom without any calamities.

For the first time in several attempts, a bus actually appeared at the bottom of the hill; although there was only room on the roof along with luggage and goats. We had to hold on tight but there was a lot more air up there than in cramped conditions inside. We changed onto a 'super express' bus in Charikot and after only one breakdown on the way, this got us into Kathmandu around 12 hours after we had set off in the morning (we'd covered less than 100km).

We had a slight scare when we got back to our hotel and we didn't recognise any of the staff. When we told them that we had left a bag with them a month ago, they looked a bit uneasy and explained that the hotel had been acquired by new owners on the 1st August (as we described in an earlier post we had deserted our bag at the reception when there was nobody around at 5.30am on the morning of our departure). They started talking about phoning the previous owners to ask after our bag. Luckily it turned out to be simpler than that when we described the hold-all and told them it had 'Webber' written across it in big letters and suggested that they have a look for it in the store room. Smiles all around when they produced it seconds later.

After badly needed showers, we headed out for the cold beers we had been promising ourselves all day.