Lahachowk, Nepal: Attended ACAP meeting

Today we were invited out by ACAP (Annapurna Conservation Area Project) to come to the next village up the valley to discuss a home-stay program with them. We were supposed to arrive in time for an 11 am meeting and it was reported to be a two-hour walk. So, to be on the safe side, we had an early breakfast and got started by about 8:30 am. The walk through Lahachowk and up the river valley was quite lovely – plenty of pretty farm homes and buildings with very healthy-looking market gardens.
Our walk took us up the valley, to the next village of Anand where we were invited to stop in and have a look at a computer training facility for the village children. The facility consisted of one completed building housing a lab and a classroom and a second building under construction. The project is being sponsored by an NGO out of Europe and it appears that it is well utilized by the local students.
After about two hours we arrived at the meeting place, in plenty of time for our 11 o’clock meeting. Unfortunately, our meeting did not start until about 1:30 pm and it followed a lunch put on for us by ACAP. Both lunch and the meeting were held at the local community centre and by the time the meeting had ended (people kept arriving throughout the meeting) the place was pretty much full. Men sat on one side of the meeting room and women on the other, all on the floor matting. The was a young child, just barely learning how to walk, that wandered around the room and kept everyone amused with her antics. Torrential rain began halfway through the meeting and had everyone wondering just how wet we would get on the walk home. However, it was so late by the time the meeting ended that we decided to take a taxi back to Lahachowk in order to get our scheduled taxi to take us from our guest house into Pokhara for the weekend.
We scrambled to get our dirty clothes and other weekend accouterments together in a hurry, piled into the Land Rover taxi and bounced down the hill to Pokhara, arriving before dark at the Giri Guesthouse. After a very welcome hot shower and a shave (in my case!), we wandered off to the Moon Dance Restaurant for a lovely supper.

Ralph Bullis
DWC Team Leader
Nepal 2010