I was thoroughly exhausted from nearly 40 transit hours (Kathmandu to Delhi – 22 hours in Dehli – Dehli to Helsinki and then onward to Milan) when I landed in Milan, then Helen and I bused our way to the Central Train Station to then turn around hoofed it the 15 minute walk to our hostel rendezvous meet-point with Jenn. Jenn arrived earlier in the day and spent her hours wandering through the parks and panting her way up the windy staircase to the top of Milano’s beautiful Duomo. …

There is a very distinct rhythm to life in the developing world –things happen day after day often enough that you just forget that life could be lived any other way. For me, carrying toilet paper in every pocket of my clothes was just second nature. My whole days in Nepal were built around the timing of electricity for the day. Another fun part of traveling throughout India and Nepal…hand-washing laundry. Ahh, that is one of those things that just becomes a part of the routine.
In India we were …

The time-line in Nepal was a little disjointed on the blog, but basically, the weekend after our trip to Chitwan Helen and I said our goodbyes to our monasteries, gave Amrit a huge hug, and headed to Pokhara to do the Poon Hill trek through the Annapurna region and subsequently my stint in solitary confinement (ie. the pain-staking mind-purification process known as Vipassana meditation)
I was really sad to leave my monastery… the boys are so extremely welcoming and I felt like I was actually making a difference for them. …

We rounded out our weekend in Chitwan with a ride through the local villages standing up in the back of the jeep with the wind blowing through our hair as we took in the last of our experience on our way to the Elephant breeding center. I don ’t really know how I feel about the breeding center –mixed really. Because the elephant population in Chitwan is not endangered they breeding center is used to breed the elephants that are raised to either do hard labor in the fields …

Ok, so I have to admit, I never actually got the chance to..well.. dodge a wild rhinoceros…but I did see one! And according to my guide throughout my three days at the UNESCO listed Royal Chitwan National Park, wild rhinos are the least of our worries – it’s the wild elephants that will charge you and attempt to rip your limbs apart by stepping on you with a foot and then wrenching your body apart with their trunk. This was essentially my welcome speech when I arrived at Chitwan. …

The Nepali New Year dawned bright and early our third week in Pharping and Amrit invited all of us volunteers staying at the guesthouse to celebrate the New Year with his family up a nearby hill. Both of the monasteries were closed for New Year festivities; so, without the invitation from Amrit we would have been just four lost souls living in a fishbowl…wait…ack…rather four decidedly white people wandering on the periphery of the familial festivities of the New Year.
Instead, Amrit, Carna, and a team of his Nepali family members …

Pharping is a fairly large town by Nepali standards -but…not so much by mine. Our largest local grocery store was far smaller than your average 7-11 and had about one of all of the most basic of necessities and not a whole lot else. Well, they had snickers bars too -so that was a saving grace for me; I have a wicked chocolate habit that was really hard to fill throughout Laos but much easier here -perhaps the Nepalese like snickers bars as well because nearly every shop offers them, …

The monastery, probably like any boarding school, runs on a pretty regimented time-table. The boys have classes everyday except Saturdays and throughout the day have only brief breaks. Tea-time was my favorite part of the afternoon. Nepali chia is different than Indian chai but really just as enjoyable if you like a lot of sugar in your spiced tea…which I do! The afternoon tea-break lasted for a half an hour and the boys were instantly jived to run out of the classrooms, grab their soccer balls and hackey-sacks and …