The following excerpt is from Day 1 of my diary. I led a volunteer wildlife conservation project in partnership with BTCV and RCDP in Nepal over the last month.

I do these projects in different parts of the world once a year, its a fantastic way of meeting people from all walks of life.. Certainly more than just travelling the normal backpacker route:

The volunteers arrive slowly one by one from the Airport to the guest home in the Thamel area of Kathmandu..

Some dive straight into the local food, others enjoy the spirit of South Asia and get lost down all the winding lanes of the capital city. Shops, rickshaws and temples..

Emerging from the hotel, onto the streets you get offered everything the traveller could ever need. Whistles, kites, trinkets, and tiger balm ointment.

The first night of the project we toast to a successful time together, 6 volunteers, and myself the project leader on behalf of BTCV. We drinking Tibetan ‘hot’ beer, which is called ‘Tungba’. A cloudy mixture of hot water that is extracted from fermented millet rice..
Just as well the volunteers tuck into this now, as on the project the host families we are staying with request that we do not drink alcohol in the village. An opportunity to abstain and detox, I’m looking forward to this..

On the way home from the restaurant, some looks for chemists (side effects of the local food), whilst others wander up to rooftop bars to look for graffiti they had written 2 years previously.

The chemist is closed, spare toilet roll? and the bar graffiti has been painted over, once we all regroup and return to the hostel.

In my room I drift off to sleep with the sounds of a thunderstorm passing over the Kathmandu valley, and ‘Shivkumar Sharma‘ on the iPod.

I have arrived

Photos of the Nepal BTCV Projects

This entry was posted on Friday, September 21st, 2007 at and is filed under geekery, about us, travel, volunteering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.