Village Monsoon

The countryside by Nagarkot

After a day in Kathmandu surrounded by a haze of incense we were both excited to escape the city proper for the outlying country town of Nagarkot. Rolling along the rickety road toward the Himalyan foothills, our driver weaved his way through school children and motorbikes and stray dogs. As we left behind the capital, the crowded half finished apartment complexes gave way to single brick and rebar high rises set in the middle of rice paddies.

Our guide said that most Nepalis still own the land the farm and that those who don’t share their profits 50/50 with landowners. Nonetheless, one of the largest challenges in both the countryside and Kathmandu is education. There is a public school system but it is largely discredited by both rural and urban parents. Instead a series of private schools have sprung up. We stopped along the road to stretch are legs and admire the scenery and met a man who had set up such a school. He was in the process of building a public library and was overjoyed to see us. Eyes sparkling, he explained hat in August, the 19th of 1999 he had had the good fortune to meet another American traveler, a woman named Berna Love from Little Rock Arkansas. He had told Berna all about the educational struggles in Nepal and she had sent him books and money to set up his school. The school, he assured us, was now a great success and he hoped the library would be too. Perhaps we could help him by sending some money and some books. . .

As we sipped chai masala in the pouring rain we tried to figure out if we had been scammed. We were waiting to go on a hike through the village but the rain was coming down in torrents. Our guide told us they sometimes get 50 inches in a day.

Slowly but surely the rain let up and we zipped on jackets and headed on our “trek” down a dirt road branching off the main street. There was half built houses along the road and Mom asked if they were inhabited. “Yes” our guide replied, “this is the village.”

Goats at a farmhouse along the road we hiked

Wandering through the village we got a good look at rural Nepal. The animals lived on the first floor of the houses which were built of brick and thatched with straw or covered in tin. There was corn growing along the path and chickens running around and grey and black house crows perched in the trees.  All around these little fields rose the steep green foothills and plumes of smoke from wood fires.

Water buffalo on the first floor of a farmhouse. 

Man brewing rice wine in a cottage still

Perhaps least expected however were the towering cannabis plants casually interspersed with corn and squash. “It’s a weed,” our guide said, trying to be cryptic. We told him we were Californians and Mom noted that she was a child of the sixties. Then we laughed and thought of Bill. We also saw a number of family stills where the villagers brew rice wine. The whole system seemed to sustain itself, indifferent to the lack of an acting government or the persistent rain.