In Nepal All Trails Lead to Somewhere

I just returned from a week long field trip to 4 villages in rural Nepal where Build Change is currently working. I went with our Kathmandu based engineering team to see what the existing conditions are and what the homeowners in these villages are building and/or are able to build. This was so that we could better tailor our drawings and guideline documents to better meet the needs of these homeowners. I'll post more details on what we found over the next few days.

One of the big issues with the reconstruction of these villages is access. The roads to most of these villages consist of little more than dirt trails cut into the hillside. Sometimes the road is hard, sometimes there is loose rock, and many times there is water flowing in the tire tracks. This is not a good thing to see when the SUV you're in is trying to climb a steep hill or to turn on a tight switchback...

The road up to Thulogaun

And the road back from Thulogaun

Coming down from Kaule

One of the roads in Dhungkharka

If this wasn't challenging and scary enough, there are sometimes obstacles in the way...

A stream on the path to Kaule, our SUV couldn't drive over this

Trucks on the trails are a common site

As are buses

Excavators though are pretty rare

It's not just the trails to the villages that have these conditions. Even many of the "highways" in Nepal are not much more than dirt roads themselves.

We survived the drive down the trail from Thulogaun...

to drive on the dirt road highway. Mind you, this is the primary road into the Rasuwa District

And this is the primary road into the Sindhupalchok District, the Arniko Highway that links Nepal with China

On the main highway between Kathmandu and Nuwakot. At least they're working on the road...

Getting directions to anywhere in Nepal can be an adventure too. There are no addresses or street signs, only on the major highways are there city limit signs, and maps are incomplete if not non-existent (both printed and online). So if you need to know how to get to a rural village you have to ask passers by on the street, who usually end up telling you to take a right at this person's house or a left over there somewhere, or just go up.

Getting directions to Thulogaun. The previous person gave us incomplete directions. We were halfway to China before we realized this and stopped to ask these folks for help.

Walking/hiking to the villages is an option here, and in fact is the way most of the people who live here travel. However, they aren't so easy to traverse either, especially for old fat guys like me.

Stairway to Ramche

A walking path in Kaule

A rope bridge outside Thulogaun. They are an engineering marvel and beautiful to look at from a distance, but scary as hell to walk across. No, I didn't try it...

Before we left for Kaule I was told that the accommodations that were there for us included Internet and a flush toilet (these are important to verify before going anywhere outside Kathmandu). However, the road there often looked like this:

I couldn't help but wonder if there would any civilization at the end of this road, let alone Internet and a toilet seat, but sure enough there was:

A toilet seat with a view

I learned a lesson this week. No matter how terrible the road is or even if the road is nothing more than a wider than usual horse trail, there is usually a town with thousands of people at the end of it, including school kids who love to say hello to strangers passing through.