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After a painful divorce I had come
to Nepal on holiday
to try and recover, maybe out here in the fresh mountain air, the emptiness
I felt inside would start to disappear. On the train to Kathmandu, I
had the misfortune to eat a salad which gave me dysentery, I staggered
off the train and for three days I lay in a cramped hostel bed unable
to keep any food down and when I recovered I set off for the foothills
of the Himalayas.
It looked as if the world had been
tipped on its head. Clouds swirled below me and above stretched a sky
so deep it could have been an ocean. The sun beat down on my neck. A
familiar feeling of sickness gripped me, my dysentery was back but much worse this time. I looked
for a place to get a drink but there was nowhere. Hours passed and my
footsteps grew heavier, I began to feel faint then in the very far distance
I made out a building, If I could just reach
it I could get some water. Summoning every ounce of strength I had left,
I made it and collapsed outside. Hearing me fall a man rushed out and
crouched beside me “I’m PK” he told me, “You’re safe here. I’ll look after
you”. He led me towards a bed and poured cold water into my mouth, but
my head was burning and I was slipping in and out of consciousness. PK
told me his wife was a nurse and would be home soon.
By the time she arrived a crowd
of locals had gathered, worried that a tourist was dying in their village.
The villagers looked after me, feeding me tea and biscuits and keeping
my temperature stable. Six of them took it in turns to watch over me
at night. Three days later, PK said his father, Nogli, was returning to Kathmandu
and insisted that I should stay at the family home there until I had fully
recovered. At Kathmandu I followed
Nogli through a maze of streets until he stopped
at a plain door. He knocked, it swung open and I stepped back in surprise.
A beautiful woman was smiling at me, in almost fluent English,
she introduced herself as Sita, PK’s 25 year old sister.
She was at university and knew all about me, the Englishman who’d almost
died in her native village. After a week I was well enough to go home
but on my return to Heanor I couldn’t settle.
I realised I was missing Sita and a few weeks
later I returned to Nepal
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In
time I proposed to Sita and she accepted and
we were married in front of the entire village. Afterwards we returned
to Heanor where we settled in.
We later returned to Nepal for a belated honeymoon and
took some pens and pencils for the village school. When I visited I could
see that it needed a lot more than that. These people had saved me from
death and welcomed me into their lives when I married Sita, it
was my turn now to help them. I started taking photographs and measurements,
next I ordered materials and tools then enlisted the help of my brother-in-law
and his friends to carry them up the mountain. The Headmaster asked what
was going on and I explained that I was going to build a new school for
him. He looked at me then turned away – I panicked, I was just a stranger
who’d been in the village five minutes, now I was trying to change everything,
perhaps they didn’t want me meddling – But then the Headmaster turned
round, his face was wet “What you are doing will help many children, thank
you” he said. Back in Derbyshire I set about organising raffles to raise
money. It wasn’t long before I had raised almost £1000.00 and had the
school completed. Since then I have started other projects to help the
villagers of Nepal and to repay
their kindness, the current one is to raise £5000 to build an orphanage.
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