Trekking and teacher training

Hello everyone... i'm afraid it's another long one... though with some good pictures to break it up!

Since we arrived in a holiday period it has not been possible to visit any more schools to date but we have kept ourselves busy.

The night before Alan and Elaine left for their trekking trip we celebrated Elaine’s birthday with a little surprise party on our homestay balcony with some balloons, chocolate cake and beer!! We were joined by our host family, Dhani, Janeke and their ten year old son Abbi. Julia, a German girl, who was also staying at the homestay, joined us too and invited me to join her on a trek she was doing the following day to Rani Ghat, which we had been told was a 7 hour day trek.

I woke at 5am and bleary eyed got ready to head out. A short while later Julia and I followed Dhani, who often goes on early morning walks, up the track to the top of the hill in Tansen, in amongst a pine forest. After about 20 minutes of walking at a frantic pace to keep up with Dhani we came to a concrete lighthouse shaped structure and climbed the seemingly never ending spiral staircase but were rewarded at the top by a fantastic view of Tansen and the cloud sitting in the valley, giving rise to the name for the valley, White lake. It was a little cloudy but as the Sun rose, some of the mist cleared and we saw glimpses of the Annapurna range, the frontier of the Himalayas, spread out in the distance. The lighthouse structure gave us great 360 degree views of the surrounding area and although the cloud meant that the Himalayan range was partially obscured the surrounding hills and valleys looked beautiful in the early morning sun. 

Sunrise over Tansen and the 'white lake' of cloud which often sits in the valley in the morning.

Goats relaxing outside a home in Kailahnagar.

 
Having watched the sun rise, Julia and I headed off and left Dhani behind. We stopped after a short distance at Kailahnagar, a medium sized village, for breakfast on a balcony, again with fantastic views.

At 8am we set out and enjoyed a pleasant walk down the valley towards Rani Ghat. It was fairly easy walking along mostly decent tracks though with some scrambling down steeper sections. As we got closer to the bottom of the valley the track, which is sometimes used by jeeps, became worse with sheer drops down the side and a high cliff rising up above it. In one section the track in front of us was completely blocked by the remnants of a big landslide but on foot, we were able to scramble over it and continue on a short way further to Rani Ghat. 

Rani Ghat itself was described as the Nepali Taj Mahal, a rather bold claim, and what we found was a charming, though rather decaying, building with overgrown gardens. It was however in a beautiful setting alongside the mighty Kali Ghandaki River and nestled amongst the surrounding hills. There was a huge suspension foot bridge across the river – apparently the second longest in Nepal. The bridge had previously been swept away during floods and before the new one was built a ferry used to take people across. During the drier months this would be operated by one man but in the monsoon season it would require a six man team to get the ferry across and the ferry would end up half a kilometre downstream by the time they had paddled it across. Clearly the bridge makes things much easier for the people here!

Next day delivery Nepali style!

One of the many beautiful varieties of butterflies in Nepal - this one was fine and not stuck in the mud!

The picturesque village of Aure.

Julia peering into the valley below - we were glad we were not in a jeep on this track, though have been down some equally scary ones!

First sight of Rani Ghat (on left) with the 222m long suspension bridge, the second longest in Nepal.

Julia and I on the smaller bridge at Rani Ghat.

The charming Rani Ghat - not quite the Taj Mahal, but set in a beautiful valley and very picturesque in it's own right.

After stopping for a quick lunch, and conscious that our walk down had taken rather longer than we had been advised (some of the ideas for timings on these walks seem like they are based on someone moving at the speed of Usain Bolt!!), we continued on our way, climbing steeply up the other side of the valley. The way up seemed to go on and on and in the heat was hard work! The views though made it worth it. The way back was a longer route but was worth taking. We could see the track we had walked down on the other side of the valley, way below us, with people walking along it looking more like ants. The lovely part of this walk was the friendliness of the people we met, and as Westerners we seemed to be an object of curiosity. I lost count of how many children in particular bounded up to us, shouting ‘Namaste’ to us!

Looking down on the path we walked along on the way to Rhani Ghat (zoomed in version below)

Surrounded by children, excited to see a photo of themselves.

An eagle soars above.

A baby goat - thankfully he survived Dashian!

A family constructing a swing. These swings are often built during festival time.

Towards the end of the trek we passed through lush green paddy fields and as we made our final climb up to Tansen, the views over to the whole Annapurna range, the frontier of the Himalayas, were incredible despite being over 80 miles away!!

Arriving back in Tansen in the dark we went for some well-earned food and a couple of Everest beers!

The lush green paddy fields we passed through before our final, and long, climb back up to Tansen.

Our views of the Annapurna range towards the end of our trek. It was an exhausting walk but worth it!

The following day Julia, Barbara and I went once more to watch the sunrise from the top of the hill before having breakfast and waving Julia off as she returned to Pokhara before heading home. 

The next few days were spent starting to get things ready for our teacher training and shopping for resources in Tansen. Saran also invited us to spend the day with him and his family for Dashian, Nepal’s biggest festival, celebrating the triumphs of Gods and Goddesses over demons. It was really nice to be invited and to spend the main day of the festival (though the whole thing is 15 days long!) in a Nepali home and we were fed, seemingly continuously, with some lovely Nepali food (it’s not a good time of year to be a pig or a goat in Nepal!).

Me being 'Tikka'd'

Unfortunately almost the entire time we were at Saran’s house we were cooped up inside as it rained continuously for at least 36 hours. It was an enjoyable experience though and we were given lots of Tikka, a red powder, on our forehead, which is a form of blessing. 

Barbara being 'Tikka'd'

Saran with his wife, Santi and their son, Sohan.

Tikka forms an important part of Dashian.

We returned to Tansen and were expecting to be joined shortly after by Alan and Elaine who had been trekking around Pokhara. Unfortunately the bus conductor on their bus fell asleep and failed to stop their bus at the turn off to Tansen until after Alan and Elaine had realised meaning that they had to continue along the rather dodgy road to Bhutwal, an hour and a half further on, and get a bus straight back to Tansen when they got there!!

They arrived back at about 8pm by which time we had lost power due to the rainstorms, an outage that lasted for three days and rather disrupted our preparations for teacher training! The next few days we did what we could without power and actually made a lot of the resources without the use of a computer which in many ways was actually good as it showed that simple but effective resources could be created without the need for technology, which for many teachers would be unattainable. The final day we did have power and so were able to get lots of printing done and make up packs for each of the teachers attending the training. 

Saran trying out a puppet before teacher training.

When the day came we took a taxi down to the venue – it was only a short walk but we were heavily laden with materials. The room, without decoration, looked very gloomy, much like many of the classrooms we had seen to date, but we soon transformed it with some colourful posters and displays. By 10 am, our start time, we only had 8 people who had turned up and we were rather concerned by this but soon after, many more turned up, some of whom had walked 2 hours to be with us.

The first day we delivered was on Phonics which Elaine led with support from myself, being the two Primary trained volunteers, but Barbara, Alan and Saran were fantastic in their support and with logistics of getting everything running smoothly. In the afternoon, having given lots of ideas and explained the structure of a phonics lesson, we asked our trainees to think of some ideas for phonics activities. They found this a challenge but with some guidance came up with some good ideas.

The next day we ran a session on interactive Maths, which I led, with the support of Elaine. I was rather nervous about this but it went really well and the trainees really got on board with the interactive activities and enthusiastically (after a little encouragement at first). There were some highlights I must mention, a shape game where the trainees had to find people with the cards which might match theirs so one set of cards might be a picture of a square, the word ‘square’, a statement reading ‘has four corners’ and another statement reading ‘ has four equal sides. We put in other sets of cards for circle, rectangle, pentagon and hexagon. This exercise went down really well so hopefully will start to be enjoyed by some children in Nepalese classrooms (I must give credit to Sarah Shakles from Upton primary school, where I did my PGCE placement, for this idea!). Elaine led some good work with number cards and Alan became a ‘magic magician’ to demonstrate how the cards could be used with algebra problems (the candidates loved this but also found it extremely funny that his mobile went off in his pocket mid act and we had to point out to him that it was his phone ringing and not anyone else’s!).

Afterwards the trainees came up with some ideas for interactive ideas of their own from different areas of mathematics and we were really impressed with some of the creative ideas they came up with to demonstrate different concepts. On the second day we had teachers joining us mid-session – from schools we don’t work with to come and join in as the other trainees had called them and told them they should come down! In the end we had 28 trainees from 14 different schools. In the afternoon Barbara talked to them about long term planning – something which really does not happen much here (or any other type of planning for that matter). All in all it was a great success and we had some really great feedback. Some trainees did find the language challenging (it was delivered in English) but on the whole they were really positive about the training they received.

The whole team, Barbara, Alan, Elaine and Saran have been absolutely brilliant and it has been great working with them. 

Teacher training (Will post some more pics of this later).

Lunch in the grounds of the temple during teacher training.

These boys couldn't keep away and were desperate to read the books we had.

We are now in Pokhara after another long but beautiful bus journey. Alan and Elaine have headed off on their trek to Annapurna base camp and Barbara, Saran and I are taking a cheap flight up to Jomson, which I passed through on the Annapurna circuit four years ago, and we will do some shorter walks from there. 

View from the road on our way to Pokhara (See below also)

Passing over the Kali Ghandaki river. Saran threw a coin in as we went past to bless our journey.

Women and children taking their goat for a walk!

View of Matchupuchare, also known as 'The Fishtail' on the approach to Pokhara.

Close up of Machupuchare.

Barbara and Saran out at dinner.

Once again and apologies for the plug but the link to the donation page is http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/charity-web/charity/finalCharityHomepage.action?uniqueVmgCharityUrl=manishachildwelfarefoundationnepaluk

If you can just give a small donation it would be greatly appreciated however small. Government funding is less than £1 per student per year for all of their pens, pencils and exercise books, so a little money really can go a long way!

Hope everyone is well and you haven’t dozed off after a rather lengthy blog entry!