The 'Ultimate Test' AKA the road to Lamjung

By Lelia Jo Dusthimer

July 24, 2019

Today was another tough one for Niraj, our faithful driver and potentially the man who has saved our lives more times than we can count. The road to Bahundanda can not be adequately described without several exaggerated hand gestures. In fact, Niraj considers the road to be the ‘ultimate test’ for a driver in Nepal - proving whether you are cut out to drive tourist groups. Niraj has driven here twice before. He recollected on his first experience driving to Lamjung, in which a British woman and her husband ~ in the midst of a particularly bad bout of nausea ~ asked if it was safe to continue. He responded with “I guess we’ll see at the end.” Not the most reassuring of responses, but turning around on these roads is practically impossible. Main sections of the roads are barely wide enough for one car to drive on, and we frequently have to stop to allow cars to pass by us. This led to two instances of our car getting stuck in the mud!

On the way up to the village, we passed an older woman. She asked us for a lift up the hills. Unfortunately, our car was full to the brim with supplies! We just didn’t have the space to bring her with us. Jokingly (we think), she spent several minutes trying to convince us to leave the materials behind…

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Lamjung is a destination that many hikers in Nepal may come across. It is one of the first villages that hikers walking the Annapurna circuit pass through. The village is surrounded by high hills and mountains in the distance. The two major industries here are tourism and farming, though tourist season is limited due to monsoon season and to the extreme temperatures here in the Winter. The average monthly minimum wage in this village is considerably higher than the previous villages, so we’ve adjusted our base salary up to $20 to meet the worker’s demands.

Things at Lamjung went quite well and ran in a similar format as the other villages. The local school was on holiday for harvesting season, but the village leader convinced the female student to attend class for our presentation. Our group also held a menstrual hygiene session for interested village women and around 20 attended.

Ultimately, we chose three women for the collective. The collective would be housed in an open room in the village. Some renovations will be made like adding a fan and mats for the comfort of our female workers. One woman in the collective even had experience working as a seamstress and produced particularly flawless pads! She plans to continue teaching the other women how to operate the machines after our departure.

To thank us for our classes and workshops, the village hosted us for a cultural show. Our group listened, danced and sang along to traditional Nepali music. Ashwin, Prashant, Sriya and I even chimed in with our own tribute - the song, Galbandi (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNInfBuBcOA) which has been a bit of an anthem for our journey.

Now, time to go back down!