Changu Narayan Workaway

As I walk down a steep, rocky, dirt track having no idea of direction, I stop and ask myself "where the hell am I?" Again.

I'm high in the hills of the Kathmandu valley after taking a 30 minute local bus ride from Bhaktapur.

I'm staying with Dhruba and Manuka at their guest house in a traditional Nepalese village called Changu Narayan.

In return for basic food (which never changes), accommodation (a mattress on the floor) and a bucket to bath in (if there's water), Workawayers are asked to assist with household chores such as retrieving water from the well, cleaning, cooking, gardening and odd jobs. My main chores were collecting water and pumping it to a header tank.

Breakfast is served at 7:30am. It's a hard boiled egg and two dry roti.

Lunch is at 10:30am and dinner at 7:30pm. Both meals are Dal Bhat which is rice, a small portion of potato and cauliflower and a sauce/soup. 

My project was to fix the toilets.

They simply didn't work and leaked everywhere.

I tried to use parts from each of them to get one working properly. That wasn't going to happen!

The next day I gathered up all the perished parts and headed into town.

I quickly realised I wasn't going to get any new parts.

It was time to improvise. A difficult thing to do inside a backyard plumbing store with limited products and the obvious language barrier.

Anyway, I bought what I could and headed back home with hope.

There are now two functioning toilets!

One night we were invited to Dhrubar's friends house to watch a traditional Hindu music performance.

A dozen of us sat in a small bedroom, drank Rakci (a homemade wine desthilled from millet), ate papad and curd and enjoyed the wonderful show.

The main village attraction is the Kileshwor temple. It suffered serious damage during the recent earthquake and is slowly being restored. I think it's one of the most ornate, intricate and wonderful temples I've seen. Even with all the supports and scaffold.

It dates back to the 1400's.

As we are in the hills and far away from "city life", there's many places to go trekking...

We walk through vegetable farms and visit small villages that have been damaged by the 2015 earthquake...

and enjoy simple nature trekking where we walk in any direction without care and meet friendly people along the way....

The kids have a great fascination and interest in travellers. They all learn English in school and are keen to put it into practice.

On this occasion I was simply reading a book, then ended up talking for ages to heaps of school kids on excursion. So much fun.