Mahachap visit one – getting there

Mahachap visit one – getting there

 Part of the Village, the blue building with the tarp is the school

We eventually set off to Mahachap (I’ve encountered many different spellings, but I’m sticking with this one) village after some initial delay, due to rain, but made it there on time. Most of the journey was off-roading on dirt tracks, and I mean serious off-roading: the car didn’t always fit on the narrow roads so part of it was hanging over the precipice of the cliff, also at one point the road had to be repaired as the holes were too deep for the jeeps wheels. Eventually we made it to a point where the mud was so bad the jeep couldn’t continue. From here we walked about half an hour until we ran into a congregation of children, which to me resembled a walking day parade. It was a parade, but its purpose was to welcome us to the village. And so began the’ tikkaing’. All the ‘senior’ (I think) members of the village presented us with a garland of flowers and put some (alot) of tikka powder on our for heads, although I also seemed to be getting a much heavier dose than everyone else. This is a traditional welcome in Nepal and is very fun. We then set off on the ’10 minute’ (forty minute) walk back to the village, during which I got told off for walking too fast, but I was walking at the front and only had children running ahead to set my pace.

When we got to the village there was a welcoming ceremony for us, during which there was snacks, drinks, speeches, music, demonstrations of local dancing, a lot more tikka and garlands and I even got given a Topi, which is a traditional Nepalese hat; however, I had some hat size issues. It was a very interesting introduction to the village, even if I didn’t understand most of what was being said I got the general gist from Jyuti, who was acting as my interpreter mainly it was people talking about how excited they were for us to come to the village, what we were here to do and that they were going to make us feel welcome. I also had to give a speech myself which got some laughs when I mentioned my head being to big for the hat. After this we had some time to relax, eat, clean the tikka off and change clothes due to the large amount of bugs that had gathered on me because of the nectar in the garlands. 

Me in my Topi (it is mean tto cover your entire head, like a beanie).