Himalayan Rush, that time I went to the hospital, and a visit from friends!

Peace Corps at the triathlon

Well its sure been an interesting last couple of weeks! When I blogged last I think I had 2 weeks to go until the 10k I was running in. The Himalayan Rush Triathlon was a blast. The atmosphere was really fun and it was crazy to watch people complete the entire triathlon. Two other PCVs, Ethan and Amanda, also completed in the sprint triathlon, which was all 3 sports, but all the distances were halved. Nick and I, the other PCV on my team, met up with our friend Manju the day before the triathlon at the briefing session and got to know our teammate a little better. He had traveled all the way from Hyderabad, in the south of India, to compete! I don’t remember if I mentioned it before but he is training to be a Paraolympic athlete for swimming. The morning of the triathlon I woke up with stomach pains but basically attributed it to nerves and anticipation. Although the tri started at 7am, I didn’t end up running until after 10am so I had a lot of time to sit around and watch and be nervous. I tried to eat peanut butter bread but basically gave up after an hour as I knew it was not going to sit well. We did get to chat with a bunch of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers who now all work for USAID in Bangladesh though, so that was pretty cool. Peace Corps is everywhere. Once Manju came out of the water from his 1.5k swim, he tagged Nick, who grabbed his bike and went off for his 40k ride. It was pretty amazing.....he couldn’t exactly train at site due to not owning a bike, so he basically cold-turkied the entire 40k. About an hour and a half later he came back to the transition area and tagged off to me! The first half mile was great, really flat and on pavement, and my friends were all around cheering and kids were handing out water to all the participants. Then I reached the hill and proceeded to be experience running hell over the next 3 miles. The route the triathlon people mapped out was insane. The first 3 miles were straight up a hill. And when I say straight up a hill, I mean it. There were legitimately no flat parts for the first half of the rice, minus the first half mile. I kept turning corners while running hoping that I would get a small break but nope, the hill just kept on going. It was also about 90 degrees at this point so I dumped as much water on me as possible. I think every participant ended up walking at one point or another; I did twice, which felt like a failure but it was impossible to keep going. Once I reached the turnaround point though it was great! I dumped more water on myself and then proceeded to speed my little legs down the hill and make up some more time. I ended up completing the whole thing in under 50 minutes, which was my goal, so I was really happy! We stayed around for the awards ceremony (Americans swept the mens podium!) and then headed back to Pokhara to eat some food, take a much needed nap, and celebrate that night.

I woke up the next morning feeling like I was running a fever, but thought it was from my sunburn (I got pretty burnt while running) and being dehydrated. Wrong. The next 4 days were the sickest I have probably been in my entire life. I guess those stomach pains before the race were signs of what was to come. That stomach bug I got when I got back from India? This was about 10x worse. The worst part was that I was in Pokhara so I didn’t have access to my medical kit with all my meds and couldn’t take my temperature. I waited a day to call the doctor to see if it would pass, but then I almost passed out in a restaurant, so I knew it was not going to go away. I literally was lying on the table because I was so dizzy. I ended up at the hospital the next morning to try and figure out what stomach bug I had. It was a terrible experience. The hospital looks like a train station when you walk in, and there were atleast 20 pigeons flying overhead crapping on everything. I waited half an hour just to register, and then got sent upstairs to wait another 2 hours for a doctor to see me. I may or may not have cried to the nurses a little bit to expedite the process, and ended up in the pathology lab 15 minutes later after a hellish experience in the hospital’s public bathroom, which had no soap and no running water. They told me to come back the next day for the results, which also made me mad because that meant another 24 hours of not leaving the bathroom. Long story short, the results somehow came back negative and the PC doctor ended up putting me on antibiotics, which were literally MIRACLE DRUGS. After 2 doses I felt so much better, just in the nick of time, because my friends from school were arriving the afternoon I started my meds.

Baby Riwaj

My friends Daina and Jilli and Daina’s boyfriend Zach came to visit me for a week! I lived with Daina and Jilli my senior year at Bucknell. Daina and Zach both live in Seattle now, and Jilli lives in Switzerland. Because I had just been so sick, we re-arranged our plans a little so that we went back to my village first instead of trekking, since I was just starting to eat again. We had a nice teary reunion at the airport, spent the evening catching up, and then headed to my village the next morning. We got caught in an insane rain/hail storm while getting back so we rolled up to my house soaking wet. Also a shipment of books for the school from the states had just arrived at my local post office so we were lugging that around in the rain as well. The next day we took a tour of my village and I introduced them to people and showed them the collection center, the school, and all the places I normally hang out. When we got back to my house, my neighbor was having a puja for her 6 month old baby. When boys turn 6 months old, and girls turn 5 months old, they have a ceremony where they eat rice for the first time. Everyone gives the baby a bright red tikka on their forehead and then feeds the baby rice. The rice is then wiped off the mouth with money, sort of a good luck. Pretty sure the baby made more money than me on my birthday. They made a huge feast, so Daina/Jilli/Zach got to experience a lot of different Nepali foods, and Zach even tried the goat, which he liked, even though he’s pretty sure there was a tongue on his plate. That night there was the usual dancing and singing and partying late into the evening. My village made my friends dance and in turn, we showed them some American moves. Jilli and I busted out some partner swing dancing, and Zach showed everyone the Bernie. It was great, and I’m glad they got to experience a little of the culture.

Me, Daina, and Jilli in my village

We headed back to Pokhara after 2 nights in my village and then set off for our overnight trek! We trekked up to Panchase, about 6 hours walk from Pokhara. We took a taxi for about an hour to the end of the lake, and I’m actually surprised our taxi made it. It was the bumpiest hour ride I’ve probably ever had, and we kept bottoming out in potholes. Once we reached a small village called Ghattechinna, we set off! It was a beautiful little trek. It was basically stone stairs the entire way so our muscles were burning, but the scenery was great. We trekked through many different villages and I guess word got out fast that a white girl could speak Nepali, because we reached a village and sat down to take a break, and some lady was like “Oh, you live in Syangja?” and I was like how in the hell do you know that. But apparently some lady from a lower village had already told this village who we were. On our way up we also got legitimately charged by a water buffalo. It was terrifying. We were hiking up a particularly steep rocky section when we looked up and saw a water buffalo charging down the hill. Then we quickly realized it was coming straight for us so we ran screaming to hide under a huge boulder and had to grab some big sticks and make a large circle to bypass the buffalo. Whats weird is that water buffalo are normally pretty docile, so I concluded that this one had rabies. The best part of this thing was 3 Nepali women standing high up on the hill with baskets of grass on their heads watching 4 white people scream and run around boulders to escape the buffalo. So that was a little bit of excitement. We reached the top after about 6 hours, muscles aching, and were greeted with absolutely no view whatsoever. The weather was pretty bad when my friends were here, and it was so hazy that you couldn’t see any mountains at all.

Our hostel was an interesting experience. We stayed in a village called Bhanjyang at a little guest house called the Happy Heart Hotel. The guests were quite an eclectic mix. Our next door neighbor was a white guy from Zimbabwe and lit up approximately 4 joints in the 30 minutes we talked with him. We met some Australians and Israelis as well. Everyone had dreadlocks and was doing yoga, 2 things of which I know nothing about. I think some people had been up there for a couple weeks, doing who knows what, as Bhanjyang was only comprised of tiny guest houses. We ate some daal bhat and tea and passed out pretty early as we were tired from our hike. We tried getting up at sunrise but went back to bed after we saw how hazy it was. The hike down was super fast the next day, only about 3 hours even with a stop for snack. All of us were really feeling it in our knees and calves when we reached the bottom though. Its been 3 days and my calves are still extremely sore.

Jilli unfortunately had to fly out early, so we sent her back to Switzerland, where she lives, and then I took Daina/Zach up to the Peace Pagoda, where we had some beautiful views of the Annapurnas for a couple hours. It was the only time that week that they came out from behind the clouds. Jilli actually got a nice view of the mountains from the airport which was good, and I’m glad she got a little peek at them before she left Nepal. Daina and Zach and I spent the rest of the day hanging out and rowing a little boat around the lake. Well Zach mostly did all the rowing, Daina and I attempted it but failed. I sent them off to Kathmandu yesterday, and now I’m back in the village writing this. I had such a good time with them and am so lucky to have friends willing to come visit me all the way in Nepal! Thanks guys!

During this whole trip I also received 2 pieces of amazing news. First, my grant finally got approved from USAID for my collection center, which means we get $5000 to put towards construction and management training!! This was fantastic because it had been in review with USAID for a while, so I was nervous it wasn’t going to get approved. Also, if it wasn’t approved, that would have meant that I would have had to hit up family/friends from donations, something I wasn’t really looking forward to.  I have a man coming from iDE Nepal (an organization started by a RPCV in Nepal) next week to talk to my group about selling our produce in larger bazaars, as well as figure out a time to hold a management training so that my group can more effectively run our collection center once it is completed. I think this next month will be pretty busy now that the money should be here within the next 2 weeks. I have to get receipts and carefully record everything we spend the money on, so its going to keep me busy.

The second piece of news is that my twin sister, Taylor, is coming to Nepal for a whole month this summer! She’s getting her Master’s degree at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, Switzerland in International Relations right now. One of her friends there is Nepali, who happens to be from a village 45 minutes away from me! Herself and 2 friends applied for and received a grant to build a large library/multi media resource center in her friend’s hometown, so she’ll be coming in either June or August to work on her project. I can’t believe how close she’ll be to me, and I’m already looking forward to seeing her and helping out with her work.

When I got back to my village yesterday from Pokhara, I had numerous people ask me where I’ve been the past week and a half. My neighbor even told me he thought I got lost. I was supposed to come home for 2 days in between the triathlon and my friends coming, but because I was sick I ended up just staying in Pokhara. It was nice to see everyone so concerned.

That’s about it from Nepal…the new Nepali year starts in 3 days, so I’m sure people will be celebrating. I’ll probably be in bed by 9. Its going to be the year 2071! I don’t really have anything happening in the coming months that I have to leave my village for, so I’m hoping to have some really productive weeks in April/May. Check my facebook for more pictures from the triathlon and the trek!