So what news... M covered quite a lot in the last entry and it seems has left me with just the scraps to report on. Let's start with the cultural bit, after all there's always a festival to celebrate in Nepal. A couple of weekend's ago we had "Janai Purnima" and then "Gai Jatra" on consecutive days. The first of these is the "thread festival" when the high caste blokes change the threads they wear across their chests and everyon...

So we have some new neighbours. Two Australian girls who are also volunteers have moved in downstairs. Their very nice and friendly but they may not be staying that long as their flat got broken into last night and they're a bit shaken up! So much for all Nepalis being lovely people. the suspicion is that it was the plumber - often a bit dodgy, those people! Anyway, he'd been round in the afternoon as they'd been complaining about the low water pressure. In fact ...

Time is moving on - we've been here more than 4 months now. Almost feels like home, i.e. raining a lot and moaning about work all the time! Last weekend was fun. We went to Nagarkot with the hash which is right on the edge of the Kathmandu valley and is the place to go to get a view of the Himalayas, except in the monsoon, i.e. now when the cloud is too low to see anything! But it didn't matter that much as the countryside was still lovely and it was just great ...

So this is where I work (G)...looks alright from the outside but then looks can be deceiving. Most of the building's in the big government compound Singha Durbar are all part of an old Rana palace, one of the biggest and flashest in Asia in it's day but that day has passed and they're a bit faded, creaky and leaky now. We'll stick a picture of the inside of my office on the blog soon. It's quite flash really, especially in volunteer terms...I often sit with the s...

So another two weeks here and what's been happening? Quite a lot of rain to be honest. I guess this is making up for last summer when we were baking in Greece and England was having its own monsoon! Last Saturday we went hashing against my better judgment as it was drizzly before we left. Then we found there was a banda on the way to where we were going i.e. a blockade across the road to stop traffic. This one was apparently as there had been a number of taxi dri...