Nepal 2017: Day 2 | Impact Everything

Nepal 2017

When I woke up in the morning around 5:30 AM, John was up and looking at the view from the window already. He is someone who sleeps roughly 4 hours on a good day. I proceeded towards the rest room to freshen up. We packed our bags for the trip. We packed 3 days since that was total time we were anticipating to stay at the school. The agendas at the school was as follow.

Paint the school
ClassDojo Curriculum workshop for the teachers (Details to follow)
Find a tailor to sew new School Uniform for the all the kids
Figure out to bring electricity to the school to operate the donated laptop (Details to follow)

Note, none of the volunteers knew what we were going to the school for besides their own expertise. No flyers, no itinerary, nothing. We all came together not for ourself, but for something more.To be honest, I was a bit nervous. Didn’t really know what to expect. Below are the groups:

Group 1: Yart from Patan

Aayush Bajracharya
Sailesh Maharjan
Nikhil Shakya

A quick story about Yart. They have painted six school in Nepal. They believe in art and giving back to the community. I had not known anyone from the group or the group. My cousin Bibek and Bikash had managed to get them on board.

Check out their work on the this link here. Really cool stuff!

Group 2: SnowYak Foundation (http://snowyak.org)

Binod Shahi
Subash Lamichhane
Sahib Baidya
Saroj Katel (see Saroj is a common name in Nepal)

Binod Shahi – Founder of SnowYak, “Sir of the Himalayas” and hell of a guy. Not only I don’t get to spend time with person like him ofter, even god doesn’t make too many people like him, and the idea of him coming joining us was so hugeeee. He had mentioned that 3 people would join him to come to Ramche. I had no prior knowledge of them before the trip.

Group 3: Haude

Saroj Bhandari
John Cinque
Bikash Bhandari
Bibek Bandhu Bhandari
Basu aka Floyd

Bibek – He was coordinating a lot of the work in Kathmandu. He had also mentioned he would come to Ramche with a friend.

I was very eager to meet everyone. Still in our hotel, I called Binod dai and he said he is on his way to the hotel. I called Bibek after, he also said that the artist group will come to Koteshwor and we will pick them up there. He said he will come in a motorcycle with a friend.

I also thought to myself, I have landed yesterday and haven’t informed any of my relatives of my arrival. I began calling my Thulo Buba first (uncle). I found out my other uncle is in the emergency at Bir Hospital. I was shocked and didn’t know what to do. We were suppose to leave at 7 am. It was roughly 6:30 AM. I gave Bibek updates on the incident and decided to stop by the hospital prior to picking up the artist in Koteshwor.

Me and John went down to get our complimentary breakfast. I wish I took a picture of the breakfast, it was BOMB!!! So good!! I would highly recommend staying at that hotel just for breakfast alone. Binod Dai arrived with Subash, Sahib and Saroj (not me another Saroj). Thankfully the vehicle had arrived at the hotel as well, so we all proceeded to load up in the car.

The drive to the hospital was about 15 minutes. Upon arrival, I went running inside the emergency with Binod dai and John. They said only one person can go in so I went in while they waited outside. I saw my uncle laying down in the bed while Bikash speaking with the doctors. Shocked and happy, they couldn’t believe I was at the hospital. I greeted and asked how was feeling. Turns out, he was getting ready to be discharged. I hang out for couple of minutes and said goodbye. Bikash was suppose to join us however, at that situation it was best he was there for his father.

We were now going to pick up the artist in Koteshwor. On the way out of the hospital we passed Sahid Gate (Fallen Heroes Gate) where there were statues of brave fallen men who had lost their life for the country.

We had arrived at Koteshwor. The Artist were running behind schedule and so we decided to pull over the car for some tea while we wait. The group arrived, we introduced each other, loaded up the paint materials and hopped on the vehicle and one last stop was to be made at Bibek’s house.

We got there, loaded up the tents, sleeping bags and off we headed towards Ramche. We had one more super last stop to make in Banepa to pick up the clothes for the kids to sew school uniform.