Through the mountains again

By now all but two kids are left at the children's home, yesterday we drove four n' a half hours east to drop three more kids off. As I had mentioned earlier the Hindu holiday of Dassain and all the kids go home for about 15 or so days.

To get to these kids houses we went through two mountain chains an I believe that I was the highest up that I have been yet. The road wound up and over a large mountain and it looked as if I was over a thousand feet up from the looks of it. Like most of the roads that go through the mountains there are some medium sized concrete blocks on the side of the road, set up as barricades to keep you from flying off the side of the mountain. It sounds nice but these blocks would really only slow your fall down the mountain, so traveling through the mountains at times is not for the faint of heart.

I was especially unnerved as the driver seemed to like to drive a bit fast. All I could think was "is it possible for you to slow down just a little bit?" Because there wasn't much to stop us from having a roller coaster ride down the mountain side.

So aside from a couple frightful moments I did see some more interesting communities in the mountains and the forests proceeding the mountains.

The forest communities were what I noticed first. These people lived about an hour and a half outside of the large town/city of Butwal. There must have been 15 or more houses and a stable. The houses were bamboo framed, adobe walled and the roofs were made of cut tall grass. As I said these houses were in the forest right by the side of the road. I would imagine that in the US or any western country this might be considered illegal squatting. These people seemed to keep to them selves as they did not have any small shops for attracting passer-by's, as most small towns or individual residences do.

The communities in the mountains were just as interesting, the homes were very similar if not of the same build. The difference was that these people for the most part were more commercial oriented. Many houses had small shops where you can buy pop, snacks, hot tea, and similar products. Some of these communities had hotel/restaurants, where the truckers can stop for the night. The trucks that you see all over Nepal are not the 18 wheelers that were used to in the US but smaller 2 1/2 to 3 ton trucks.

One of the most out of place things that I saw were several of these adobe houses or hotels with their thatched roofs, and a solar panel sticking out of the roof. I was interesting to see the contrast of the very old look of the house and the new technology of a solar panel protruding from the roof.

At one of these wayside stops we took a travel break and had some milk tea. There were some kids playing a betting game with rupees. From the looks of it the boy placing his money down was not doing so well, but it looked like it was all in good fun.