Our last free weekend before we leave Kathmandu for our volunteer locations, and what a weekend! A bunch of us headed to a goat farm just outside Kathmandu for Shabbas... Where to begin?
The ride there- As always an experience- bus, micro bus, then a 2 hour Jeep ride up into the mountains, 8 of us squished into the back of a “jeep” along with three Nepali’s and all our bags. The journey was surprisingly pleasant, given that it was so packed we had to hold tight not to fall out the back, but the journey like everything here was beautiful, interspersed with broken Nepali conversations with our fellow passengers and even some Nepali songs that we sang along with them having been taught the words by our Nepali teachers. Finally we arrived to the “goat farm”, well actually they don’t make goats, they make cheese, and it wasn’t exactly a farm. Really just a little house and a bunch of goats wandering around with a little factory in the back. As we arrived we were told to sit on a bench on the patio and received our ceremonial tikka on our foreheads and fresh flower lays around our necks (we have gone through this ceremony so many times by now it’s become almost expected.) We were then given a full meal of dalbad, which would be repeated 2 hours later, as we had arranged to eat before sunset because of our “Israeli holiday” as our host put it.
We did a quick Kabbalat Shabbat on the roof of the house (I’m not sure how Im going to get back into doing kabbalat Shabbat anywhere other than on a roof) and then went down for a 5 star dinner with 5 different varieties of goat cheese preceding our dalbad. When we began singing Shabbas songs towards the end of the meal, our host, his friends and family came into the room to join in the excitement (and offered, or rather insisted in giving us, Roksie, (Nepali alcohol), which he also served himself in copious amounts). They were surprised we were not dancing with all our celebrations and so in order to not disappoint our hosts a few people got up and began dancing around Nepali style waving their hands and swinging their hips. Soon the Nepalis joined in and by the end of the night everyone had stood up to dance to a mixture of traditional Shabbat songs, Nepali songs, the Beatles and everything else in between.
But the night’s excitement did not end there, as we began getting ready for bed, 8 of us in the house with 4 others across the stream at his friend’s house. We began to wonder where our hosts were sleeping. We soon discovered they had given us their bedroom and where planning to sleep outside in the unconstructed room upstairs. An argument ensued where we sat there tugging at the mattress as we tried to move it into the second room and he tried to prevent it. Eventually I agreed to go upstairs and see where they were staying which according to him “wasn’t bad”. In the meantime the rest of the girls quickly moved the mattress and all our things and by the time he came down the 8 of us jumped into the three beds and insisted we were quite happy and comfortable together having a “ girls’ sleep-over”. After another 1 minutes of arguing with him telling us “but you are my guests” and us insisting “no we are pariwar” (family) as he had told us earlier on in the evening, he eventually gave in, but not before he had gone around the room and given us all two big wet kisses on the cheeks and a goodnight hug as well as a little speech about how Israelis are just like family, “same heads and hands” and that he felt he had already known us for 6 months already. Eventually after picking up the girl closest to him and rocking her like a baby for his final goodnight, he left the room and left us rolling with laughter.
Saturday began with sunbathing on the roof, playing with the goats and a tour of the cheese factory. We then took a 2 hour hike to a lake, all beautiful, like a story book, passing little houses along the way, Nepalis working in the field, ducks, cows, buffalo. By the time we got back Shabbas was nearly over, our host served us goats cheese and bread and then we began singing that went on way past Havdalah and included every song imaginable from the Lion King, to Little Mermaid in Hebrew to Greece. A perfect Shabbat.
Sunday morning 5 of us went white water rafting- what an expedition: 6am we were picked up by a Jeep which proceeded to continue in the opposite direction for an hour despite the fact that we had told him we were meant to be in the town of Thankort at 7:30am. 3 hours later we arrived, in Thankot where our “private transport” we were expecting turned out to be a local bus that took three more hours to get to the rafting place but probably could have got there in an hour given we stopped about 5 times for chia tea, pit-stops and to fix the bus. (This is the only country where public transport has more stops than my bladder needs.)
The rafting: 6 hours later we arrived! Unfortunately the weather decided not to work in our favour either, I began to strip of my beanie, scarf, cardigan and thermal vest (I am not exaggerating this is what I was wearing) to get into shorts for our rafting. Before we climbed into the raft our guide barked out instructions, given his thick Nepali accent, these were pretty difficult to understand, but he assumed we had caught it because almost as soon as we got into the water he began shouting at us instructions: Left, right, forward, inside. This seems fairly normal but if only I could capture the way he was shouting, screaming at us and shouting at individuals if they got it wrong. A German guy in the boat with us was told that he was too lazy to be in front and told to move. It really felt like rafting boot camp! After the first rapid I decided to try make him my friend and began attempting to talk to him in Nepali, unfortunately I think the Sergeant Major version was a better option. He soon began “playing with us”, splashing water on us, asking if we want to tipple over on the next rapid. If I hadn’t made clear by now- It WAS FREEZING!!! So to have water splashed on you every 5 minutes for three hours really was no fun. One of the Israeli girls who fought back even got thrown into the water. Anyway despite the Sadistic guide, the river was beautiful and we got soaked in the rapids regardless.
In all, a perfect weekend and two days later I have not acquired pneumonia so I guess, can’t complain:)
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