(There is two persons on the cliff)
Yeah, that's where we walked and lived close by for overnight, nice steep, huh?! Now I'm going to think back for few days and trying to get you into it as well. After the first visit at the village Devichaur, we got a one day off before our next visit which was going to start on wednesday 12.5. During our day off I trained my language skills with nepali, we did some shopping, and tried to think hard what we'll need during our overnight-staying in the middle of nowhere, at the CODEF's field office in Devichaur. I was SO happy that my lovely little sister had generously loaned her beloved sleeping back to me for my time in Nepal. Thinking afterwards, that bag was an GOOD idea! Like some juice, a pack of biscuits and sneakers as well.
We left from our apartment, Kathmandu, Patan, around ten o'clock in the Wednesday morning and our lift was a little truck with some furnitures on the platform. The journey went nicely despite bad, sandy and bumpy road. At the office we had some rest and during that time I tried to learn how to use the local latrine, which means basically little, dim and unsanitary hovel with water bucket and the hole on the floor. That's what I'm possibly going to improve, will see, anyway I have to say that human being is able to adapt many kind of conventions in a quite short time if it has to ;) After a while we started our journey, by foot to the places where Jari was going to take some water samples and do some tests of the water which was meant for the households' use (Jari's thesis is going to be about the quality of drinking water in Devichaur). We walked on the side of the river (where the water goes to some households) and during our journey we saw a calf, some kids having a bath and cow's poo on the river, NICEE! Despite those things what we saw Jari didn't find any marks of phosphorus or ammonia and now we are just waiting for the results of the coliformic bacteria (which cause diarrhea) but so far I can say that the results won't be that good, surprise?! I don't think so although I'd like to believe so :/ The journey itself was an experience and I can really say that I like the countryside of Nepal, the traditional agriculture in there (fields are made with the help of bulls etc.), the views, the everything. Jari took samples from the main water source which was in the woods, after that we climbed up in the middle of the embankmented mountainside to the one farm if I can call it so, in Nepal farm means house, couple of goats and cows at the little backyard. There we took some samples from the farm's tap where was used a filter, a piece of cloth on the tap. Our last point was a water tank where the water of two different sources is mixed and where the water goes to the "centre" (to area where the field office is) of the village.
The whole episode took about half a day and after that we were quite tired and hungry. At the field office became clear that we should have taken some real food more with us because we were told by CODEF's staff that we shouldn't eat the local food (made of not-that-hygienic materials and we're not that used to these bacteria yet) but there WASN'T ANY food with taking care of our "needs"! I don't mean that we'd have needed to have some gourmet dinner but I just thought that there would be some kind of dinner made of something else than the local materials or at least a bread (there isn't any shops near by). But no can do. We went in one dim house (the door is little, I need to bend to get in), actually it's a room, which was filled with smoke and smell of food. There we sat down on the floor by the plates and, of course, our plates were already full of rice (maybe 500 gramms) boiled in that same water we tested earlier. With rice we got some spicy potatos, beans and a bit of a cold sauce. It's not that appropriate to leave food on the plate, so… I ate the dinner kindly thinking in every spoonful how many protozoa and different kind of bacteria I'll get… The food tasted good, but…
After the interesting dinner we started to go to bed and we faced to the cruel reality; there was four of us (me, Jari, Hari office worker and Mina our counterpart) and only two blankets on the thin mattresses (which we call almost as a mat in Finland). The thing was that I would share the one room with Mina, two mattresses and a one blanket and Jari and Hari would do the same in another room. Lucky me, I had the SLEEPINGBAG!!!! Actually my night was ok (I dremed and thought to be in Finland, maybe because of my sister's call earlier), Jari didn't feel as good in the next morning, Hari had taken the blanket and snored loudly ;)
Our awakening on that morning was a bit early as well, at 5 am, but I felt quite good with it. Quickly after morning doings we got a lift by a old and rattletrap tata-truck (even worse than my dad's (well-working) 25 years old truck ;) to the some parts of the village where we were going to meet locals and organize the womengroups. Actually the truck was able to go only to one part of the village and from there we had to walk from one place to another. We started the first foot-journey at 7 am and walked on the twisting footpath up and down in the mountainside while the sun was rising behind us. The weather was good for the walking, not too hot… yet, and the views were stunning, mountains everywhere, little houses with chickens, buffalos, cows, goats and corn fields on the mountainsides. But in some places the walking was quite difficult as well while the path was really narrow and under our feet there was some scree and we tried to go down on the mountainside with the angle of about 60 degrees. Omg. After a couple of HOURS we got to the next part of the village (don't ask the name, I DON'T know anything but that the name is same than the plant which they use for making roofs, something which starts with B). We were standing in the front of the small houses and locals started to bunch together and brought some chairs to us and to each other. Funny thing was that the meeting was meant to be for women but most of the people were men :D When we asked about that, we were told that this was the first group meeting and men wanted to be part of it at first and then think about if they let the women take part in later. Fair play. Anyway some women came to the meeting as well a little bit afterwards when they got a time from their dutys. Me and Jari were basically just listeners and I took some photos during the meeting. Somehow my camera pointed most of the time to the total wrong direction, and on most of my photos are buffalos, calf, goats, cat and young goats ;) The young goats were unbelievable adorable, there was three of them and all the time they were exploring something and playing. I was also happy to see some kittens and their mom, two of my favorite animals are hardly on view in Kathmandu valley, cats and horses, but at that place I got a chance to see cats for second time during my staying in here! :) And cats look like ocicats (one breed) thin, spotted, good looking ones.
After the meeting, which took couple of hours and photographing was time to eat, first time after my morning biscuit :) And what was the lunch?! Food by locals in even worse conditions than the dinner in the evening before! OMG! I felt very uncomfortable but I really needed to first ask just a tiny weeny bit a rice and later I had to refuse to eat everything. I didn't get any problems because of the food last evening but I didn't want to push my luck either. I don't know what the locals think about me now, but in that case my health is more important and they have to understand it (and I didn't feel comfortable thinking about running between bushes during the whole day in the middle of the nowhere). Luckily I had that pack of biscuits and a pottle of water with me so I somehow survived the whole exhausting day. After the lunch we had another meeting with another group quite near by the first one. At that place were only couple of men and all the others were strong minded women because their husbands were earning some money in the city, Kathmandu. I heard that the women were very interested about making so called women group and think about things they want to improve. But there was some misunderstanding as well, they thought that they get some money for that and then they doubt if they'll be stolen some money. And when those things became clear there was a little problem; how they can write things down, if they don't know how to write?! Anyway they figured something out and it was time to us to start the last journey by feet.
It was about 2 pm so the sun was shining from the clear sky (hot hot hot) and we started our up-and-down-walking on the small paths again, in some parts of the journey I thought if my flip-flops were the best shoes for that kind of trekking (I think our trek was even more difficult than the Mt. Everest trek for tourists and people wear the best trekking costumes during that). The route was even more dangerous than any others what we've had tried before, under our feet was scree, in our left hand side was about 1 to 1,5 km drop and our right hand side was a vertical mountainside where you could see the marks of landslides. At some points I really thought what if… But anyway it was the once in a lifetime experience (I really hope that there isn't too many of those anymore) and I liked the views and pushing myself really to the limit. If somebody had shown me the place and asked whether I want to go there or not I would have thought twice but at that time I didn't have options. I'm happy that I didn't sat down and would have been satisfied just with waiting a helicopter. I did it, I made it, yeah! It also became clear, that I don't need any trekking shoes, flip-flops will do :D
After the dangerous, two-hours-trekking we got a lift to the field office by MOTORBIKES, WITHOUT helmets (I have always wanted to get a lift by motorbike, yeah! But I prefer a helmet). At the office we took rest of our stuff (I changed my shoes from flip-flops to the sneakers, very good idea!) and hopped on the motorbikes again, the road was, surprise surprise, very bumby and the sand underneath the bike tried to run away, so the bike was a bit difficult to handle, but my driver did it quite well although he could have driven a bit more slowly and cautiously at least when we got finally to the main road which was paved. It felt like we were on a very hurry and we had to pass all the cars we saw in the front of us. But I wasn't scared, I somehow trusted the driver and kind of liked it, it was fun and I just smiled. Although I want to wear at least a helmet at the next time (good leather motorbikecostum wouldn't be an bad idea either ;)
So, So far so good, I'm still alive and not feeling any signs of food poisoning, but I've been thinking to go to laboratory after this trip, if I'll survive till august :)
Now we are just having a rest before the next trial (don't have any clue what's the next one, better so) And it's very hot in here!
And before this text is going to the end I want to congratulate the stallion and the owner of him (and the stables where I used to go before I came here) from the bottom of my heart for reaching the finnish record points at the Icelandhorseshow during this weekend, I wish I were there! Congratulations once again Liisa and Bragi frá Austurkoti, you have done a GOOD job and earned your place as the BEST!!!! :)
Hopefully you were able to read the text to the end, this was a long long journey :)
-Heli-
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