Katmandu living

We got up at 5.45 to watch the sunrise over the Himalayas. Even when the mountains are covered by clouds during the day you can see the mountains on most days early in the morning. When the first light arrived the mountains came out of the darkness
Most of the mountains in this part of the Annapurna mountain range are by Nepali standard not that high, ranging from 5000 to 7000 meters. However, no-one has ever reached the top of the fishtail mountain due to the extremly difficult climb.

After watching the sun rise over the Himalayas we started the decent to the valley where the vans that would take us back to the hotel was waiting for us. It had been very hard to climb up but was equally difficult to to go down as the trail was very steep.

As on the way up, Joop really preferred to be in the basket being carried. She was therefore also not very eager to get her photo taken.
The views down into the valleys were absolutely stunning.
Even though the clouds came in fast we just managed to take a photo of the whole group in front of the Fish-tail Mountain - one of the mountains of the Himalayas that has still not been conquered.

Today it was UN day at the Lincoln School - As a multi cultural UN-family we were of course proud to celebrate the UN Day - The kids had a bit of a split personality with Dutch clothes and a Danish flags on the cheeks and had to have their photos taken with both national flags. We could of course also have participated in the US and the Mexican photo session.

Today at the School it was fabulous Friday and Liva's class made a show over the Nepali Tihar holiday. Liva and the other girls made a small dance and sang four Nepali children songs

We have had an extensive break on our blog – We have been home in Europe on Holiday and have returned with many good memories to Nepal again. The monsoon has come and almost gone again (according to the Nepali calendar the monsoon ends on Wednesday. And I have started to work, so the small family is busy – however, we will make a bit more of an effort to keep the blog up to date.

The biggest Nepali festival season is starting next week and as an early start, the kids and I went to Unicef today to have our new (or rather by now older new) car blessed. To make sure that you can get through Kathmandu traffic without injuries to body or car it is quite common to get a hindu priest to make a sacrifice for the car. Unicef used to sacrifice a goat but these days the have limited the sacrifice to coconuts. Anyway both out driver, Bickey, and out car went through the process and should now be blessed.

It has now been quite a long time since I last published a post here on the blog, but things have been quite busy here in Nepal leaving us no time. First of all we have had almost a month where we constantly had visitors - first Lieke’s parents came and after that we had our old friends from New York, now living in Hong Kong, Simone and Dominic with their kids Max and Jack. In-between I managed to get a bad infection in my knee and had to get admitted to the hospital for 4 days – However we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves here so lets step back a bit.


At the end of March Lieke’s parents came to Nepal as a part of their Asian roundtrip to visit all their expat children and grand children. When they where checking out tickets in the Netherlands they found out the best connection to Nepal would be over Hong Kong, which made it possible for them to visit Lieke’s brother and his family at the same time. So they arrived here in Nepal after having spent 4 or 5 days in Hong Kong first, which turned out well for us as they had already recovered from the worst part of the Jetlag when they came here. Much time was used on enjoying the grandkids but we also managed to see some of the sights in Kathmandu.


While Opa and Oma was here I managed to develop some kind of infection in my knee and though trying to ignore it I ended up going to a doctor on the second day – After looking at the knee he admitted me to the hospital right away for bed rest and antibiotic IV – It was very strange – I have never been admitted to a hospital before in my life (I was even born at home so this was the first time I had to spend the night) and this was quite a cultural experience. No food was provided so I had to get Lieke or one of the Didis to come to the hospital 3 times a day with food. I didn’t get any visitors from all the “western” we have gotten here, but pretty much every Nepali that I have ever met came to the hospital (this includes our night guard which I hardly ever see as he is on from 22.00 every night). I had gotten a deluxe suite in the hospital, so though it was at times hard and I was in pain, I could unlike at home enjoy electricity and television 24/7 – So I came home fully updated on all my sit-coms.


With a short overlap with Oma and Opa (we have now tested the house for capacity and we managed to easily fit 6 grown-ups and 4 children here) Simone and Dominic and their kids Max and Jack came to Nepal in the beginning of April. With them we made an overnight trip to Nagakot and also managed to visit Bakhtapur, besides some sightseeing in Kathmandu. It was nice to catch up with them – last time we were together was in Mexico where we met up at clubmed. We still hope that we will be able to visit them in Hong Kong later this year.

After the Ciafardinis had returned to Hong Kong we took off for Bangkok. Due to the state of the health service here in Nepal (which I have now had a first hand impression of) it is fairly easy to get medical evacuation from the UN for procedures that is not done in Nepal. Last summer while we were in the Netherlands we had Liva tested for growth hormone deficiency. As you need at least two test to fully prove or disprove deficiency, and they do not do this test in Nepal, we got a trip paid to Bangkok (that is, Liva and me got it paid – we had to pay for Joop and Lieke combined it with a trip she was on the Kuala Lumpur). We of course almost had to cancel the trip because of the riots on Bangkok, but luckily the “red shirts” decided to stop their protest 5 days before we left. Much of the time in Bangkok was of course used in the hospital where the whole family got checked up for all our ailments (The kids for GHD and me for my knee). Luckily the hospital was very nice and had everything you could ask for, including a McDonalds which was a hit with the kids. We also managed to see some of Bangkok – We went up the river to see where I used to live, saw the old grand palace, went to a IMAX movie, saw the children museum and the Aquarium and even managed to go the Build a Bear workshop. Besides that we did lots of shopping – the deals were absolutely amazing. So all in all we had a very nice trip – However, the best part of the trip was that both kids were found to have sufficient Growth Hormone. So the doctor has now told them that they have to eat better, which of course gives Lieke and I much more ammunition when they don’t want to empty their plates.

Yesterday was like christmas, Birthday and New Year, all in one - First of all it was the first day that Opa and Oma was here in Nepal on their world trip (they are visiting Hana, Pia, Sora, Maki and Martijn in Hong Kong before and after being in Kathamandu) and then we finally received our car - a Toyota RAV4. Unfortunately it will take a week to get plates and insurance for the car so right now I am just sitting pretending to drive .

Today both Joop and Liva had Parent-Teacher conference – However, here at Lincoln School they did it a bit different this time, so it was actually more like Parent-Pupil conference as the students were in charge of showing that they had learned. So we could see how far Liva has come with reading and writing and hear the letters that she has received from her Turkish pen friend and also how good Joopie is in counting and recognizing the letters of the alphabet.

Opa and Oma are arriving in 10 days time and after them we will have Simone and Dominic and their kids over from Hong Kong. As we are still pretty new here in Nepal we are using these days to explore Kathmandu so we have something to show off when we have visitors. Today we went to the Boudahnath Stupa in the East of the city and after that to the Hyatt hotel for Brunch.

It is soon spring here in Nepal and the flowers are starting to bloom. Our gardener Santa is busy getting the garden ready for the summer – We are now self-sufficient with salad and spinach and our zucchinis will probably be ready in a month or so. Santa is big on flowers – He keeps on running around pointing to places saying “colors” which means that he has planted flowers there. On the picture below you see Santa together with our Guard and some of the flowers from our garden.

Yesterday it was Holi, the Hindu spring festival of color. Holi is is celebrated by people throwing colored powder and colored water at each other so we used most of the day inside cowering under the tables. Lieke dropped Liva at the bus-stop and as it can be seen on the photo she put on her whole protection gear, including rain jacket – In the end it was all for nothing as no one was interested in throwing color at her. If Liva looks a bit under the weather it is because she is sick right now. The called from her school 20 minutes after this photo was taken to tell us that she had thrown up in the bus, so she is home again today

This morning Liva lost her other front tooth and she is now able to eat rather big things without even opening the mouth. Ever since her other front tooth fell this tooth has been wiggling so it was with some relief that if finally fell out.