Day 122 - Good-bye Sapana Village, Hello Pokhara

In Nepali, the word Sapana means dream. We have spent the past five days at Sapana Village Lodge and the time really has felt like a dream. Even better, they are very active in improving life for the local people. Nepal is one of most beautiful and friendly places in the world. It is also one of the poorest. Literacy for women is less than 30 percent, and literacy for the country hovers between fifty and sixty percent. Parents believe that education is a way to a better life for their children. Most children, boys and girls alike, are sent to school, but the buildings are fiercely over-crowded and under-funded, with as many as 95-100 pupils for every one teacher. Sapana village hires all local labour, sources the food for its restaurant almost entirely from the local farms, offers many programs to meet and visit with the local villagers, and is using 50 percent of its profits to build a new school on part its land.

This is their first full season, so they are not yet listed in any guidebooks. If you are visiting Chitwan, consider spending at least a part of your stay at Sapana Village. They are a little more expensive than some of the surrounding guest houses, but the accommodations and services are on par with the much more expensive hotels in the park proper. And they are doing good for the area. Their webste is under construction, but it can be found at www.sapanalodge.com. That's my plug. I wish them success.

For our departure, Didi (one of the staff) placed a tika on our forehead for safe journey, and garlanded our necks with flowers. We were carried by jeep to the local bus stand, and our driver saw to it that we were on the right bus.

The right bus, which unfortunately broke down as it wheezed its way up into the hill country. We waited for a while, and some futile attempts were made at reviving her, but no luck. If she was going to budge at all, it was going to be to roll backwards down the hill from whence she came. This is not uncommon in Nepal. It is generally advised to be flexible by at least a few days in your travel schedule as roads are frequently blocked by landslides or Maoists, and the buses run far past their expiration date.

Our old girl out of commission, we waited by the side of the road until van heading toward Pokhara picked us up. We were approximately 15 people crammed into a 9-seat van, but luckily several got out at a town only a few kilometres into the journey. The rest of us made it to Pokhara in good time in our much faster, younger carriage.

Power in South Asia is a fickle thing. Short power outages are a daily occurence, and we have learned to carry our headlamps with us everywhere. Nepal goes one step further. Most of the country's turbines are water-driven. During monsoon season, the rivers run high, and electricity is fairly abundant. Still, to save power, there are national power cuts for four hours every week. All of Nepal goes dark from 6-8PM on Thursdays and Sundays. This is pretty manageable. As the dry season progresses, however, the cuts can increase up to twelve hours every week, which begins to affect business, tourism, and children's ability to do homework. We rode out today's power outage at the Chettri Sisters (3 Sisters) guest lodge sipping drinks and watching the moon and stars over Phewa Tal (the large lake in the center of town). Unrivaled by electric light, they sprawled wantonly across the sky. I was reminded with a jolt of the seasons changing when I spotted Orion - the surest fall/winter constellation - high overhead.