rivers of the east

Hello there, its been a month since I left and I cant believe how much I ve seen and done till now. The posting on the ER is over. After three weeks of uncountable poisoning-victims, chronic liver and kidney patients, burn- and traffic accidents it is now time for a change. I might regret this later as we got to do a lot on the ER.
Three weekends ago we went to Koshi Tappu, a nature resort about an hour from here. It is hard to get information or plan any activities in advance overhere but it always works out in the end. A young man, our guide, was kicked out of bed and picked up by our van within 15 minutes. He showed up with a Nepali bird-book and binoculars- officially it was a bird-watching tour- but we also got to see elephants and waterbuffaloes:-)

Last weekend we went on a river-raft at Tamar river! That was awesome:-) It was a whole daytrip and we finished about 30km downstream. To summarize: we had great weather for rafting (cloudy but warm), trustworthy guide with clear instructions ('All forwaaaaaard', 'Faster now!',...), I fell off the boat in a rapid and had to swim another rapid before the boat reached me (that was fuuun) and we had other swims in the river when the water was quiet.

Yesterday we went to a village called Barakshetra. It is a holy place for Hindus and on top of its cultural value it is a beautiful, peaceful place. It is situated in the hills at the Kosi River where we went rafting one week earlier. We enjoyed the white-sand riverbank, the sun was terribly hot though. It must have been 40°C. There is a couple of small temples at the hill, the whole complex is the 2nd holiest place in Nepal for Hindus. If you are able to lift a special stone(see picture for proof:-P) you will receive a lot of gifts from god, we were told. If you are unable to lift the stone, you are not free of sins. As you would expect, I could lift the stone haha
Since there is a hilly to mountainlike scenery, canopy bridges connect two coasts as an important part of the infrastructure for the locals. Ghislaine(another Maastricht student, I met in my first year) and me went to walk one of those bridges. Quite a shaky experience when children are on the bridge. It made a stable impression compared to other bridges because it was an iron construction.

As I mentioned before, our posting on the ER is over and we are going on a fieldstudy! We will spent 9 days in the lower mountains of Nepal conducting our survey, going from door to door. We join third-year medical students and I hope to finally improve my Nepali:-) I packed my bag and I m ready to go. We will barely have electricity and no internet. The climate will be cooler than here, something I am very much looking forward to. The last three days we suffered from unbearable, tiring heat. The sun should be fair and warm up Europe as well!