Generating Electricity From Salt Water And Graphene

Learn Nepali/Nepalese (and Nuwari) Language - Lessons in Kathmandu, Nepal

When we travel, we like to learn at least a bit of the language of the country.  Even just being able to say 'hello', 'thank you', 'I would like....' and 'That's delicious' get you a long way in interactions with local people.  Sanju at Quest Volunteers can offer lessons in Nepali (Nepalese) and even Nuwari (the local Kathmandu language) - so, if you're hanging around Kathmandu for a day or two, give Sanju or Salve a call..... the fees go to the Quest Volunteers charity that supports local schools, orphanages, Buddhist monasteries and environmental projects.  (Phone; +977 - 1-4380142)

Voluntary Work: Volunteering in Chovar, near Kathmandu, Nepal

We have heard from our friend Sanju at Quest Volunteers that they desperately need people to continue the restoration and refurbishment of the school building that Rob started when we were in Chovar.  Quest has the usual placements at orphanages, monasteries and schools teaching English  - but also runs environmental awareness and community volunteering projects, something a little different.....and a bit more active.   Even if you have just 2 weeks to offer - you will get Nepalese language lessons, live with a Nepali family and make a real contribution to the community.  While you are waiting to climb Mt. Everest, paraglide in Pokhara, whitewater raft down the Seti or Trisuli River or bathe with elephants in Chitwan, why not offer just a bit of time helping to give this school a new lease of life? The kids would be so happy if they could again use their computer room and science lab - ruined by rain coming through the roof.  Rob has repaired the holes in the roof and a group of friends have begun replastering the walls - they need someone who can use a hammer to replace floorboards, someone handy with a paintbrush - and/or anyone willing to learn.
They are also planning a fundraising trek to Everest Base Camp in May 2013 - sounds like a lot of fun....
Contact Salve or Sanju at Quest (shakyasapta@yahoo.com  or questvolunteer@wlink.com.np or questvolunteer.adv@gmail.com.
 

Day 115 - Home: Colombo, Sri Lanka to Kent, UK

Day 115 - His.

Some things are truly amazing. One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is how you can wake up in one country and go to bed in another 5,000-ish miles away. That will be today. After 114 days of travelling around Asia via boat, truck, bus, train, plane and elephant we are due home today.

We got up relatively late - after all, the airport is only 15 minutes away and had a slow breakfast. This wasn't necessarily planned - really just a product of Sri Lankan service. In order to get dinner on time you have to order 45 minutes to an hour before. If you don't want dinner before 10 O'clock then by all means wander into a restaurant at 7 and order a la carte. It seems the same mentality runs to breakfast and it makes you wonder if they have to plant the tree, wait for it to grow and fruit before you get your orange juice. Truly - it takes ages. Still by 10 we were in our taxi and heading off.

Our plane ride was a gruelling 12 hour session cramped between a fat man and a screaming child as we did our leg exercises to prevent DVT (as described in our in flight magazine) and waited until we got to England. Thankfully Sri Lankan Air is one of the better airlines we have used so we arrived gritty, tired and unprepared for the cold instead of gritty, tired and miserable. Long distance travel is both a curse and wonder of the modern age.

Steve, our friend - who is, himself, a wonder of the modern age - was bobbing about waiting to pick us up and whisk us to the safe bosom of our home. Steve is a slightly amazing character. For the drive home he had brought food and drinks and chatted happily as we drove back - and when we got back we found he had had the house cleaned, bought food and milk and bread for us. He poured Patti a glass of wine and me a beer. What we all really need are friends like Steve. We had imagined arriving home, dumping off our stuff and grabbing some shut eye before the mammoth task of getting back into the daily grind - but thanks to Steve the house was actually cleaner than it had been when we left! God bless him.

Still we are back home now and we had been in the door for 30 minutes when I caught Patti on the computer.

'What are you doing?' I asked. 'It's time for bed.'

'Just looking at Antarctica,' she replied.

'Antarctica?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'For our next trip, of course.'

So watch this space!

Day 114 Colombo, Sri Lanka

Day 114 – His.

Well, our last day. We got up at 6:30 – oddly enough as we didn’t have that much to do. The main thing is transferring to our new hotel – which is 15 minutes to the airport. But for some strange reason we were both just awake. We went for breakfast and met with the rest of our group to say our goodbyes. It was hugs all round and lots of we must keep in touch. It was all very sweet and a little glum. We than packed and went to wait for the taxi we had asked for at half ten. We waited, and we waited and we waited - by half eleven it turned up. We only had to say good bye three more times which is a little less than I thought it might be, so it wasn’t too bad.

The drive over to the hotel took an hour and a half – so on the whole I am quite glad we decided to do this today as if we had left it until tomorrow I know I would have been stressing. The Hotel we are staying in is the same as the one we stayed in when we first arrived and it hasn’t changed much.

The big challenges for today are to go for swim, have a final curry and repack our bags. About the only essential one is the bag repacking as several people have told us that England has a temperature of 10 degrees in the day and five at night. Normally I wouldn’t worry about such things – but, after living at 35 degrees in the day and 30 in the evening i am finding I start shivering at around 20 so I had to dig out some long trousers, fleece and my down jacket in preparation for arriving home.

It is going to be so weird being cold!

Day 114 – Hers.

The taxi ride between the hotels did seem to take forever – but I preferred to think of it as one last sightseeing tour.  We saw the stupas, temples, mosques and churches we had seen yesterday and Galle Face where we had dinner last night.  We drove around the harbour – and the building site for its expansion.  We drove through the northern suburbs we saw on our first full day here – now appreciating considerably more the mix of cultures and how the locals live their lives.   In some ways it will be a shame when the highway is completed, bypassing all the sights – but I’m sure it will be much quicker and less stressful for those with a plane to catch.

The hotel had the big fluffy towels and huge range of toiletries that I remembered – as well as the inordinately large staff anticipating any perceived need or desire.  The suite is large enough for both of us to completely empty our packs – a bit of a necessity, really. As Rob said, we had to dig out the cold weather gear; I also had to cushion a number of purchases that I don’t want crushed or broken on the way home – I really should have thought a bit more about that when buying things.....

We went for a short walk and then I went for a swim (Rob had packed his swimsuit at the bottom, so watched a silly film instead.  “Well, it’s been four months since I’ve seen a film,” he said, making me think his packing order was deliberate....), a long shower (I didn’t want to waste all those toiletries.) and we went out to the lounge for a drink and dinner – our last Sri Lankan rice with curry (I’ll try to make it at home, but I’m really not convinced I’ll find all the ingredients.) – and a strange dessert called ‘Watalappan’ that defies description  really, but had coconut and ginger in it definitely....

There was a large evening party at the hotel - so we retired to our room to watch another film and (hopefully) get a last good night’s sleep before our long flight home.

Day 113 Ahangama to Colombo, Sri Lanka

Day 113 – Hers.

A walk on the beach and breakfast overlooking the crashing waves began the day.  We loaded up the Gecko bus for the last time and set off for Colombo.  We dropped off one member of the group in another coastal village where he was to meet his girlfriend for another four days of sun and sea.  His girlfriend has been volunteering with Habitation for Humanity, building houses for poor families – similar to the project Rob worked on in Guatemala on our last big trip. 

We took the highway to Colombo – it was well-paved and quick, only about an hour to the outskirts of the city.  The Sri Lankans we have met are proud of their government – there is free health care and education for everyone – and money that was being spent on the civil war is now being used to build the country’s infrastructure.  According to Deva, the people of Colombo have ambitions to turn their city into a success modelled on Singapore.  They are already expanding the harbour and building a second international airport – and skyscrapers are being built right, left and centre.  We saw the brand new performing arts centre, the national library, a good selection of beautiful temples, churches and mosques, several large hotels and shopping malls, and a wide variety of sport facilities as we drove around the city.

Colombo is green, attractive – and very clean.  Many of the government offices – including the new parliament building – are located in a large parkland suburb outside the commercial capital, surrounded by a lake and a wildlife sanctuary.  The colonial-style buildings in the centre and the Cinnamon Gardens areas give the city something of a southern European or South American feel.  There are still some obviously older and poorer neighbourhoods – but even these are, for the most part, well maintained.  The traffic is far worse here than anywhere else in the country – but nothing like we have experienced in most Asian cities we have visited. 

We stopped at ‘Food City’ (a very Western-style supermarket) to use their loo and buy snacks – and then at our favourite ‘P&S’ for a takeaway lunch of samosas and pasties. Our hotel is located several kilometres south of the centre of the city – so we munched on our purchases as we drove, arriving at around 2:00 and bidding a very fond farewell to our terrific driver and his very able assistant.  The hotel is nice, if a bit out of the way.  It has a restaurant, swimming pool and good wifi connection – even so, most of the group just collapsed into their beds for the afternoon..... a few have tummy problems, a few are flying out ridiculously early tomorrow – and a few just felt like chilling in the air conditioning!

Day 113 – His.

Now we are back from the mountains it is sweaty and hot. So, chilling in the air conditioning is a good way of putting it. We were going to use the hotel swimming pool but it is closed until December the 1^st – so that didn’t happen. What did happen was we grabbed a local bus (a bit of a disco theme here with flashing coloured lights around images of the Buddha at the front and partytime Baile music all the way) into town  and walked along the Galle Face – an area of Colombo just below the port and right by the sea. It is one of the high rent areas and has the Hilton at the top of it. Along the promenade is a whole clutch of little huts that set themselves up as restaurants by throwing a few plastic chairs around and barbequing as much chicken as they can sell. The meal was tasty, hot and filling and absurdly cheap. Our guide, bless him, paid for our bus tickets and helped us order – he is a real sweetheart. After dinner we strolled along the sea front into town and saw the lighthouse and stupa by night – they were all lit up and quite charming. Then we caught the bus back to the hotel. Of course people are unwilling to let the holiday end – this mostly because they are such a great group of people – so we wandered off to a local market to buy ice cream. Tomorrow is our last day here and I will be most sad to leave.

Day 112 Ahangama and Galle, Sri Lanka

Day 112 – Hers.

Our hotel is fantastically clean, quiet and comfortable and we were allowed a lie-in this morning – breakfast wasn’t until 8:30 – so I had a brilliant night’s sleep and didn’t want to get up even then.....  By the time we emerged, several members of our group had already had a swim, a walk, a run....this is truly a lovely, relaxing way to end our travels.

We boarded the bus at 9:00 and were taken to a sea turtle conservation project.   The centre is located on one of the main stretches of beach frequented by turtles for laying their eggs.  They ‘rescue’ any eggs laid during the night before the locals can dig them up – or pay a higher price than the food market – and then rebury them inside the compound.  After two months, when the eggs have hatched and another 5 days for their shells to harden on the underside, the turtles are released on the beach to crawl down to the sea and swim away.  The project has been going for 21 years – and as it takes a sea turtle 30 years to reach maturity, they have another nine years to wait before the first returnees.  It is quite an important project globally – there are seven types of sea turtles in the world and Sri Lanka has five of them.

The centre also provides an A&E hospital for injured turtles, reintroducing them to the wild once they have recovered.  One large turtle currently in residence has an amputated front fin (“Ooooh – a paralympic turtle,” said the vivacious English medical practice manager, with the quote of the day....) but will still be released when he has put on enough weight to be able to dive.

We then drove on to Galle, a World Heritage fort site and clearly a major holiday destination of the not far distant future.  The number of construction and restoration projects underway in this amazingly well-preserved colonial fort city was quite astounding.  The shopping is already better than any of the places we have visited; there are also already quite a few lovely cafes and restaurants – and the vibe is very like Antigua in Guatemala – a great place for a holiday – or investment.... We spent half an hour in one cafe talking to a local about the opportunities for foreign investors.  There are no restrictions on foreigners buying property – and no residency requirements, very unusual in such a desirable place.  We saw the international cricket ground – where New Zealand would be playing Sri Lanka today if they hadn’t lost the test match in 3 days....(The Aussie cricket fans were sorry to have missed it but not surprised at the result) and the colourful markets and large commercial area in the city outside the fort walls.   Rob suddenly announced that he would be quite happy living here – quite an admission given the heat and humidity......

After 3 ½ hours of cafes, shopping and strolling along the walls of the fort, we returned to the hotel along the coastal road – noticing again the remnants of buildings destroyed in the tsunami. Deva told us of several people he knew who were killed.  Apparently, it was a Full Moon Day (a holiday) in Sri Lanka – and hundreds of thousands of people had headed for the beach for picnics and outings.  The train that was washed away (with worldwide media coverage) was on a bit of track just down the road from here – 1,200 people were on that train and only one boy survived.  In addition to the 40-50,000 fatalities, over 2 million people in Sri Lanka lost their homes.  Deva told us that even though the civil war was still going on, the whole country pitched in to provide food and emergency aid to all of the affected areas – perhaps that was even the beginning of the reconciliation.....

We have noticed as we have travelled around that there are distinct ethnic/religious groups in different areas.  The Hindu Tamils live mainly in the northeast – which is still largely undeveloped for tourists as there are many landmines to be cleared – or in villages strewn amongst the tea plantations (though many of these are actually Indian Tamils who have immigrated).  The south coast has a large Muslim population and the southeast and east coast have many Christians – a legacy of the Portuguese and Dutch colonial settlements.  The Sinhalese majority, though, is largely Buddhist – and pure white stupas dot the countryside even here.

We arrived back at the hotel at around 2:00 and swam, napped, read – generally chilled – for the rest of the afternoon.  Truly a wonderful end to a wonderful trip – okay, not quite the end....we still have Colombo to go....

Day 112 – His.

 So this isn’t quite the end of the trip as we still have another day to go but people are starting to leave. One of the guys has arranged to meet his girlfriend in Galle so won’t be coming to Colombo with us and several of the others have flights out mid afternoon to early evening tomorrow. So, we decided to have the traditional last night meal tonight instead of tomorrow. It was a lot of fun and Deva pulled out the stops by hiring a DJ and we danced into the wee hours (that's 10pm in Sri Lanka....). As Patti said a great ending.