Long overdue...

Sorry I've been excessively quiet lately, been so busy in life in General. But so much has gone on over the past few months.

OK, so, I'm going to make a series of short posts which just cover some of the bigger events that have happened since I last posted a looooooong time ago. Too much to put in one post really.

Firstly, I want to say I hope you all had an amazing Christmas, this was my first ever Christmas away from my family in the UK, so instead we had a Christmas party here in Sikles with my Nepali family.

It was great, had a lovely roast dinner. I cooked two chickens, 3KG of mash potato, some home made apple sauce (which was amazingly nice), a tin of Cranberry sauce, some lumpy gravy (because I'm not so good at making Gravy, but it tasted great anyway) and some peas. Everyone was intrigued by the idea of a meal which was neither spicy nor contained rice. But over all it went down very well.



OK, lets jump back to what I never got round to telling you about last year.


I last left this blog just before Tihar festival. Tihar was great fun, much more going on than during Dashain. But sadly my party spirit was limited by my stomach being a little dodgey. Ke garne hey? It was inevitably going to happen eventually.

After Tihar we (myself, Tanka, Manny and Kancha dhai) went on a little tour of central Nepal. Starting from Pokhara, we moved on to Sauraha, on the edge of Chitawan National Park, for the compulsory Elephant ride. This was the start of my lack of enjoyment towards Goreh (white boy) tax, when I had to pay Rs.1,000 (around £10) more than everyone else for the elephant ride just because I'm not a Nepali national.

From there we went to Lumbini, birthplace of Siddharta Guatama, more commonly known as The Buddha, founder of Buddhism.

Amazing place, it's the first of the 4 pilgrimage sights in Buddhism, the only one not in India, and the 3rd for me to visit, the other three are Bodh Gaya, the place of his Enlightenment, Sarnath, the place of his first teaching, and the only one I',m yet to visit, Kushinaghar, the place of his death/ascension to Nirvana.



Lumbini was amazingly peaceful, much more spread out than Bodh Gaya or Sarnath, although a lot of it felt unfinished. There's a few new temples and monasteries which are years away from completion.



After Lumbini and night in Butwhal then on to Kathmandu for a very new experience in my life- a Hindu wedding.

WOW are these different to a Christian one.

See, in a Christian one, people are all serious, sit in rows, watch the whole thing, and only open their mouth if they have to sing a song, which is usually a bit of a drone.

Well, see, here, it's a totally different affair, it's set over two days, and basically, it's a party, and the wedding rituals just sort of happen in the corner, if you want to watch you can, otherwise, you can eat, drink (yes, there is a bar) dance and just be merry. It's a two day party. I love it.



OK, that's enough babble for one post. The next one will be all about Sara Parker's visit in December.