Trip to Burtibang

I (Mark) recently got invited on a trip to Burtibang which is a small but rapidly growing town about 8 hours jeep ride from Pokhara. Richard Odell from the INF office in Kathmandu was contacted by a school in Burtibang a while ago and asked if he could help them with a project they were working on to build a computer lab at their school. Richard is an amazing man who has been working in Nepal for a long time and has an amazing ability to get things done. Richard and Mike Chisholm from New Zealand (who has also been involved in the project) asked me to tag along.

We left at about six in the morning and arrived in the early afternoon very eager to get out of the landrover. The first two hours of the trip arn't too bad, the road is sealed so its pretty smooth. After you reach Baglung the seal finishes and the road gets bumpy, six hours lately you arrive in Burtibang a little worse for wear.  Richard and his wife Joyce lived in Burtibang for several years many years ago so he was able to provide interesting insights into the village and how it has changed over the years. It used to be a walk from just outside Pokhara which took several days.

After arriving we went and checked out the computer lab, I'd been given instructions by one of the expat engineers in Pokhara to check the backup system to see how it is coping. The power supply provided some interesting challenges when he was specifying it so he was interested to see how it was coping. Apparently the power to the village comes from a couple of micro hydro turbines, as with most services like this they quickly end up very overloaded in Nepal. The school happens to be on the same line as the local town center where there are a number of workshops which spend a lot of time welding up broken trucks destroyed on the road to Burtibang. Every time someone fires up their welder the voltage drops considerably, a voltage regulator has been installed but there is only so much variation that these machines can handle and that doesn't normally include 90 volts to 220 volts in a few seconds.

The new computer lab

The room next door, this is what the lab used to look like

 

We then went out to dinner with a lady that used to be Richard and Joyce's home help when they lived there. They were a lovely family who feed use a great dahl bhat.

Burtibang from our dinner spot

This building used to be the INF office

Rabbits, which I don't think they were breeding to cuddle

The next day we spent a while walking around the village, a lot of the people on the street recognized Richard despite not seeing him for a very long time. We managed to keep ourselves busy until one o'clock which was when the official opening of the computer lab began, this was the reason Richard and Mike were visiting the town. We arrived at the school in time for the opening and immediately had dozens of garlands draped around our necks and were whisked off to be paraded around the town. This was somewhat embarrassing as I had only come along for the ride and hadn't really had anything to do with the project other than checking a couple of batteries and voltage regulator, unfortunately for me it was one of those moments that you can't really get out of. Despite being extremely embarrassed it was really encouraging to see how the whole town had got behind the project, Richard later told us that he felt that the town was thanking INF for all the work done in the town many years ago, he said that some of the locals contribute a huge amount of the development in the town to the work that INF did even though it was a distant memory for many.

Richard on the left and Mike in the middle, the other guy used to be the headmaster at the school but is now living in Kathmandu

Site of the new campus being built

One of the micro hydro schemes in the area

School kids parading us around the town

The band that lead the way, I think its called a junkti

Richard lost amongst his garlands

Richard on the left and Mike on the right

A rather embarrassed mechanical engineer from New Zealand

Very well behaved school kids listening to long speeches

All the important people

School kids using the computers, I didn't see any playing solitaire

Despite the embarrassing parade I had a great time, we had planned to stay two nights in the village however a bhand (or strike) had been called for the next day which meant that the roads would be closed. Since Mike had to catch a flight out of Pokhara we jumped in the land rover as soon as the opening ceremony was over and bumped our way back to Pokhara. I crawled into bed at about 1am.