A bit of Tourism

Sept 14 (Fri)

I woke up around 3am, probably due to the jet lag, and was up for about an hour. I went through a bunch of emails and facebook notifications, and got back to bed around 4:30. I got out of bed for the morning around 6:30 and made a quick call home for Katie’s birthday (right before bed, ~8pm central time on Thursday). Breakfast was at Manny’s downstairs, and we headed out to Sahara church once again. There were supposed to be forms delivered to box in the columns and bond beam around the top, but were nowhere to be found. We had plenty of work to do, though, so we busied ourselves finishing the rebar to go up the columns and tying everything together. Whereas yesterday I was digging holes and mixing concrete, today I was totally focused on bending the rebar. Not only the long sections with a single bend on one end, but the harder task of bending small clips to tie the verticals together as well as tie these into the existing walls. This was done by hand, 3 bends per 12 inch section of bar, bent by hand with a length of steel pipe. We finished up the rebar work so everything is ready for a different group to install/build forms for the concrete work and to pour said concrete within the forms.

We had taxis meet us back at the jobsite at 12, and showered once again. Today’s adventure was a tour of the city, mainly a Buddhist and then Hindu temple. The first was Boudhanath, a Buddhist stupa, one of the largest in the world. Within the boundary of the temple we ate lunch at a restaurant called I think “Stupa View Cafe” or something. I ordered a Tomato Spinach pizza that came with yak cheese; however a fellow teammate John started to have an allergic reaction to his curry chicken (nut allergy) so I ended up eating that instead. He did let me have a piece of my yak pizza, which was AMAZING. Our driver/guide was Buddhist so he was pretty knowledgeable about the stupa as well as the traditions taking place among the stupa grounds. It was very interesting to see the locals practicing such different acts of their faith.

The Hindu temple was architecturally interesting, but felt very much like a graveyard. There were all sorts of little mausoleum-like structures which I assume are dedicated to different gods. If the guide was familiar with this temple or the history and meaning behind everything, I did not hear it. It was almost like this location we were on our own to explore at our leisure. Sort of. My favorite part about this temple, other than the carved stone structures, was that there were monkeys running all over the place. It might have been the first time I’ve seen living monkeys outside a zoo. They also had 2 different bodies they were preparing down near the river, part of their beliefs mean they burn the body on a pyre along the river bank and then scatter the ashes in the water. Luckily we didn’t have to smell any burning corpses.

Remnants from structures destroyed in the 2015 earthquake 

Anyway, after the tours we headed back to the Shaligram where we ate dinner at Manny’s (I had fish & chips, with a fresh lime soda) and then packed up our bags. We are leaving in the morning to head to our next destination, Trishuli. We will be building some homes in Gerkutar (sp?) for some of the lowest class of people in Nepal.