The first day of our Habitat for Humanity build started off with us being welcomed into the village of Prithvinagar by our partner organization the Pragati Women's Village bank. They are a women's cooperative that helps each other out financially. We went to their building which was partially built where we had a very warm welcome with lots of tea, speeches and photos. We then boarded the bus and headed a few miles out of town to a small rural community. We m...

After a couple of relaxing days in Chitwan we climbed on a bus for the long ride to Pokhara. We almost didn't get there because of demonstrations and a road block in one if the towns we drove through. We did eventually make it through and the drive was beautiful, following along the river through the hills. We got to Pokhara late in the afternoon and headed out on the lake. We went to a small island in the middle of the lake with a small temple on it. From t...

Today we have headed further into Nepal. We have passed lots of farmland. Right now is mustard season needless to say it felt a bit like home with yellow fields and the smell of flowering mustard (canola). We were so surprised by the amount of bicycles in Nepal. There was probably 50 bicycles to every motorized vehicle on the road. I guess when fuel is $1.30 a liter and it is one of the poorest countries in the world it makes sense to ride a bike. Even the ...

Today we got up early to head into Nepal. Again the traffic was crazy and the roads were horrible...the 350km journey took us about 8.5 hours. We officially said goodbye to India and walked across the border into Nepal. We stayed in a small town called Lumbini which is famous for being the birthplace of Buddha. There is a monument at the place where he was born and a stone with his footprint in it. There are also a number of Buddhist monasteries here from cou...

We took our last Indian train to the holy city of Varanasi. It was about a 14 hour journey but we were able to get a bit of sleep which was good. We checked into our hotel, had a shower and some breakfast and then caught an auto rikshaw to go to the ghats...or so we thought. Our driver proceeded to take us on a sightseeing tour which ended with us in a "Muhgal village" where we got to see them weaving silk fabrics. The end of this "tour" had us sitting on the...