Going Home to Nepal

  The People Post March 20, 2024 We’ve been home four days now and the readjustment is real. The return went very smoothly, even with one 14-hour leg of the journey. Went well until we missed our connection to Columbus because we had one hour to clear our bags, immigration, customs and TSA. Who thought that was a good idea? But we did make it home, where everyone apparently survived without us. I told a lot of stories about what we did. But I glossed over the who we did it with. Our amazing experience was mostly amazing because of all the people who made it so. Gopal was a huge part of it, from taking us to lunch with his family our first day, to arranging our day of sightseeing, to taking us on the rocky 4+ hour trip to where the ceremony was held. He also enlisted an “adopted” son who traveled 17 hours to Kathmandu to be available to help both my brother and me and Gopal. He and his wife Sheila are such genuine people who are a joy to be around. Then there was Ram Mohan, t...

Today was relatively low key. Our hosts (more on them later) fed us an early breakfast of steamed bread and beans and potatoes and we left for the airport. But not the flight back home quite yet. We decided against getting a full bodyassafe on the rocky roads into Kathmandu and we flew from Bharatpur. It's a very small airport that seems to just have one plane going in an out.  Check in was easy, they checked both our bags, and we passed through male and female security respectively. We'd been told to expect long waits but the plane showed up only half an hour late. It was a full flight of probably 50 and we had a great view. Despite hazy scratched windows. I was in awe of these mountains and winding roads everywhere but then I looked farther and saw the tips of the Himalayas poking through the clouds. Now those are mountains! Shortly after we arrived back at our hotel, Gopal and Kunti's husband showed up. And Kunti was on her...

Today was quite meaningful. We had a big breakfast and then dropped off Heidi and bought our plane tickets for tomorrow. Then Ram Mohan drove us to Debauli to spend the day with the family. We were met by Niru and her husband and son Aman. Then Aasha and Booja showed up with all their energy.  We first went in to see our old house. It's very run down but still being used by the woman who took it over way back then. It was a weird feeling that we grew up here and so many of the childhood stories happened here. The pump my dad had installed, the first in the village, was gone but every house seemed to have a pump. We then decided to walk around the whole village to see family. Everywhere we passed, people remembered us. One of the first we saw was Birendra, who Jonathan used to play with. Somehow he seemed very familiar. Of course the day of endless photo taking started then. We also ran into "poopoo", one of Kissan's sisters. Over the course of the last couple days I t...