Change of Plans

I met with Uttam and Raju this morning to talk about my stay in Rinescot. It turns out Raju is the director of the Friends of Needy Children (www.fncnepal.org) run by Olga Murray, a thoroughly amazing humanitarian. My friend Colleen’s real estate firm finds tenants for Olga’s house in Sausalito where she lives for half of the year, when she’s not in Nepal. Small world!

 After a pleasant breakfast, Raju remembered that Rinescot school lets out for a three week vacation at the end of this week, which put all my plans into flux. Now I have three weeks to spend any way I want. Raju called his friend, another Raju (which means Happy, a good description of both men) who has a travel agency and would present some options to me. I went to his office and worked out a tentative plan to do a short seven day trek from Jomson, a short visit to Chitwan, the jungle in the south (couldn’t resist the elephant ride), a couple of day trips around Kathmandu valley, and, if all goes well, a week-long tour in Tibet. The Tibet journey has me the most excited, but it’s also the least assured of the options since it requires assembling a group.

I’ll post some photos of the Kathmandu area day trips in the next few days. Meanwhile, here are some from Hong Kong. The pink and blue city building is the Hong Kong History Museum, which I visited on my one full day in Hong Kong. The others are of the neighborhood near my hotel.