Nepal 2017: Day 1

I flew out of JFK after 2 hours of flight delay due to a winter storm. I had managed to take 2 laptops with me for the school but if I was to be questioned by authority, I would suggest the laptops as one personal and one from work. John was carrying 2 laptops as well. One his own personal and another one for the school. It was a bit sketchy but we had to do what we had to do.

Laptop Donations were contributed by the following individuals. Thank you so much for your love and support.

1. Bhim Nath Bhandari
2. Sajan Shrestha
3. Sapna Sapkota

I am so thankful for having a supporting family who also helped donate towards the kids in the school. Shout out to my sisters Sheela DD and Shushila DD. Also, shout out to my Buba (father) and Aama (mother).

I was supposed to arrive at Abu Dhabi a couple of hours before John but due to my delayed flight, he had arrived before me. Finally after 14 hours long flight, I had contacted John via viber and we met up at terminal 3. That moment I saw him, YOOOOOO I couldn’t believe we were at Abu Dhabi. I hadn’t seen John for a good 4 years or so?

We arrived at the hotel probably at 8 PM. We had our flight at 9 am the next morning. A lot happened that night at Abu Dhabi, but long story short  we got to the airport the next morning with absolutely no sleep. On the way back from the hotel to the airport, we saw this absolutely epic mosque.

After one night of stay at Abu Dhabi, it was apparent that the country is unbelievably advanced in technology at the same time astonishingly behind socially. As we left United Arab Emirates, John looked at me and said, “Bro if you told me 10 years ago UAE was going to be the first country I will be visiting outside of United States, you would be nuts.” (not that anything is wrong with UAE). We both laughed. We boarded our flight and Nepal was only 6 hours away.

We landed at Tribhuwan Airport in Kathmandu in the afternoon. We got absolutely no trouble from the airport authority and we both were out very quickly. I was also with my Uncle who worked at the airport and welcomed us inside which helped the case.As we stepped out of the building and saw the sky, it was crowded outside. As I was looking for Som dai, I couldn’t help but notice people waving and hugging their loved ones who arrived from various countries. I called Som dai from my uncle’s phone number and there he was across the street yelling my name. We loaded up his car with lugguge and took off to Hotel Buddha at Thamel.

The next morning we were heading to the school. There was 11 people going to the school all total. We were planning on camping with tents with individual sleeping bags in the school outside in the open sky. With very little plan, I had no idea who I was going to go with tomorrow with only 3 people I knew (John Cinque, Bikash Bhandari, Bibek Bandu Bhandari).

There was a group called Yart from Patan  who would help paint the school, and another group of volunteers with Binod Shahi. I had never met Binod dai but we had spoken in the phone in the past. He is a great inspiration and role model for me and so many other young generations. I had followed his work for a long period of time and was absolutely thrilled with the plan of meeting him. I spoke with Bibek and finalized everything for the morning. John, Som dai and I went out for dinner and went to sleep a bit early since tomorrow was going to be a big day.

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