Nepal: Voluntourist.

Before our trek, we spent a week volunteering at a rural orphanage in the Chitwan region with an organisation called RCDP.

Voluntourism has a bad rap, and I was as cynical as any about it - children are not tourist attraction, I thought, and poverty is not some romantic ideal to be sought after and paid for to experience. And yet, with my Duke of Ed “residential project” still not organised for the year, I decided to leave my cynicism aside and give voluntourism a go.

The verdict?

I didn’t change the world. I didn’t leave a mark. But I’m pretty sure I did no harm.

We were placed in a village away from the tourist sites of Chitwan. The living conditions were trying: meals were served twice a day, always involving some form of lentils and potatoes; every trip to the “toilet” warranted courage and BYO toilet paper; snails crawled up the walls of the dark concrete box with a tap that was our “shower”; a buffalo lived outside our window, and a faint smell of shit permeated the air wherever we walked.

And yet, after three days of life in Chitwan, we stopped thinking about these inconveniences of everyday life, and started to notice the remarkable community that we found ourselves in - the idyllic rice paddocks that surrounded our host family on all sides, the croaking of frogs at night, the well-loved stray dogs that came and went whenever they pleased, the women who harvested rice at dawn and dusk.

Every day, school children, neatly dressed in their school uniforms, bid us good day as they cycled past on their bikes - the girls with white ribbons in their braids, and the boys with stiff collars and straight ties, their heads bobbing up over the rice fields as they make their way to school every morning. The children at the orphanage were so hard-working and well-behaved they put memories of myself at their age to shame.

No. I didn’t change the world. I didn’t leave a mark on these people’s lives. But I’m beginning to think that perhaps it isn’t about any of that. It’s about opening yourself to be changed, about allowing others to leave a mark on you.

It’s about understanding that as a tourist, sometimes the best thing you can do for a community is to tread lightly, to open your heart and mind, and ultimately to pass through, leaving with nothing but a different perspective of the world.



Our bedroom at the host family







The orphanage

Nepal: Trekking Day 4 - Ghandruk to Nayapul

We woke up to our last day on the trek to a view of the Annapurna ranges looming over our cottage. Yesterday afternoon had been overcast, so it came as a shock that the mountains had been so close to us all along. That’s a funny thing about the mountains: the weather is so changeable that sometimes a single cloud moves and an entire peak is revealed, glistening white and on top of the world.





From Ghandruk, we took a very steep descent down the side of a valley, and the scenery on our way down was probably the best of the trek. We passed by numerous villages and terraces, half hidden in wisps of clouds. Bare bottomed children ran around, their faces covered in snot and tears. Women quietly harvested rice. Teenagers in neat high school uniforms headed off to school, skipping lightly down stony steps that trekkers struggle to navigate. Goats tied to poles gazed at us, their faces an inherent smile. Ponies ambled past us, their bells echoing faintly in the distance long after our encounter.

I was in photographic overdrive, trying to catch every snippet of this other world tucked away in the mountains before I have to leave. But there are things you cannot take with you, things that eyes can’t see: like the smell of grass and horse shit, the dampness of a cloud as it embraces you, that moment as you turn around a bend and face a snowy peak, so beautiful and rugged it literally tugs at your heartstrings.

And when we finally reached the bottom, when we turned the final bend, we have come full circle to our starting point. The city awaits.

xx doots

Nepal: Trekking Day 3 - Ghorepani to Ghandruk

Day 3 was our longest day by far, and it was all about mountains, mountains and mountains. We got out of bed at 4:45am to climb to the summit of Poon Hill (only in Nepal would a 3210m mountain be referred to as a “hill”).

Why so early? It was alleged that the sunrise over a panoramic view of the Annapurna and Dhaugiri ranges is quite something to behold.

And it was.

Apparently hundreds of other trekkers thought the same. We had two head torches among the three of us for trekking in the dark, but it turned out to be wholly unnecessary: the way up to the top of Poon Hill was lit up with tiny moving head lamps, eager to get to the top before sun rise.

By the time we got to the top after a 45 minute climb, there was already some light, although the sun was still lurking behind one of the mountains to the east. In total, we stayed at the top of Poon Hill for about half an hour, just taking it all in.

It was a surreal feeling, to be so high up that you stood over a sea of clouds, surrounded by some of the highest masses of land on this planet. Often when you’re in a plane, you’re told that the aircraft is flying however many thousands of feet above sea level. Those numbers don’t mean anything, they are just a series of zeros that separate you and solid Earth. Yet being up on top of Poon Hill meant something, because I had made it there step by step myself .





















If Poon Hill was the high point of the day, then all the rest of Day 3 was one long, frustrating low. We spent an hour or so in the morning literally walking at cloud level along a ridge, seeing nothing but a dense white.

Around noon, we started to descend … and descend … and descend … a neverending descent through the forrest, down wet, slippery stoney stairs, with our knees wobbling, and our clothes wet from the sweat and the damp permeating cold.

Finally at around 4:30pm in the afternoon, after almost 12 hours of trekking, we got to our destination for the night - Ghandruk, a sizeable village with a sizeable tourist presence, as it happens to be located both on the Poon Hill circuit and the Annapurna Base Camp route.

Unfortunately, one of downsides to having a sizeable tourist population meant that the children in the village gathered around anyone who looked foreign, demanded lollies, often sticking their hands openly into your pockets. As someone who has been travelling more and more in the past two years, it has been important to me to tread lightly and leave as little trace of my passing by as possible. Seems like other tourists could do with a bit of the same philosophy: don’t give local children lollies or money and encourage a begging mentality in the future generation of a developing country.

Nepal: Trekking Day 2 - Hile to Ghorepani

Day 2 was the beginning of our nightmare.

As we made our way up thousands of steps over the course of the morning, it became painfully obvious to us that we had underestimated the sheer steepness of the terrain in Nepal. To add insult to injury, local children would hop up the stairs between us wearing thongs (flip flops), while we struggled for breath in our Goretex hiking boots and state-of-the-art trekking poles. Our porter, who was carrying both of our luggage in one pack, barely broke a sweat as he leisurely made his way up the mountain while texting his friends.

Around noon, we reached the forrest part of the trek, where the route levelled off to a more reasonable incline. From there on, the afternoon became marginally easier as we were mostly walking in the shade, accompanied by a soundtrack of passing streams and waterfalls until we got to Ghorepani late in the afternoon.

At the altitude of 2775m above sea level, Ghorepani is the highest town on the Poon Hill circuit, and the ideal spot to rest the night before climbing up to the Poon Hill summit the next morning to watch the sun rise.

People can be rather divided about Ghorepani and Poon Hill. Some find it beautiful, and the highlight of the trip. Others find it too rowdy, too touristy, or lacking in authenticity.

I didn’t care. We were some 2700 metres above sea level, higher than the entire continent of Australia. We were surrounded by the snowy peaks of the Himalayas. We had a working hot shower, and a fire heated dining hall, in which we spent a merry night eating dhal bhat, drinking hot tea, and debating the best of Australian rock with perfect strangers. Touristy is good.

xx doots







Annapurna South peeking out in the morning. 





Reaching the shadier part of the trek. 





The gate to Ghorepani



Main street in town. There was even phone reception and wifi. HEAVEN. 

Nepal: Trekking Day 1 - Nayapul to Hile

In October, I went to Nepal with a friend. We did some volunteering at an orphanage in rural Chitwan, near the Indian border. After our short stint at the orphanage, we headed north into the mountains near Pokhara for the Ghorepani/Poon Hill trek. 

Poon Hill is one of the most popular short treks in Nepal, generally done over four to five days. We did ours in four, and hired a guide and a porter to save us the trouble of organising transportation, accommodation and meals along the way. I won’t go through a shopping list of the places we stayed at or the villages we passed along the way. Photos speak louder than words. 

But looking back, it’s amazing to consider how far I’ve come this year. I’ve never been an outdoors kind of person. Never had a great appreciation of nature. And yet this is my third trek of the year, a personal record.

Despite all physical challenges along the way, I found myself enjoying the simplicity of waking up every morning with nothing to do but walk. I loved the mindless physicality of the act, the ability to really think and hear yourself as you walked, and the fact that happiness can be nothing more than arriving at your destination each night, taking a hot shower (where possible), eating dhal bhat, and writing your travel journal in the kitchen with a hot cup of masala tea. 

The village of Nayapul, starting point of the trek.

In the warmer parts of the country, rice harvest was already in full swing. But here in the cooler mountains, the terraces were still fields of gold. 

Our room at the guest house: non-sound proof, no blankets, no fresh linen, no phone reception. One couldn’t look at the pillow too closely without feeling a sense of revulsion.

But after our stint in Chitwan, we were just grateful for a flush toilet. 

Oh. And the view wasn’t too bad.

Orient Express #4: Museum of Innocence - Part #2

Note: this is a delayed post about a trip back in June this year.

Getting tear-gassed in Istanbul wasn’t part of the Itinerary. 

Before we got to Turkey, protests had erupted over the development of an urban park in Istanbul into a shopping mall. Friends and family sent us worried messages: are you sure you want to go there? Are you going to be safe? 

I dismissed their concerns. 24 hour news channels have a way of sensationalising events, and urban planning isn’t exactly the kind of subject matter that inspires revolutionary fervour.

Besides, we weren’t stupid enough to insert ourselves into the middle of Gezi Park. Common sense gets you a long way, you know?  

And for the most part I felt perfectly safe in Istanbul, even though we stayed near Taksim Square where the protestors congregated. The atmosphere during the day was quite festive. People sung and danced, youths graffitied whatever surface they could manage to spray. At night, the sky above Taksim Square was lit up with fireworks set off by the protestors, the chants grew louder, more boisterous. But in general, most of the people there seem to be both protesting and having a grand time with their mates. 

On June 11 however, things turned a bit sour. 

We were returning to our rental apartment after a day of cruising on the Bosphorus when we decided to stop by Istiklal St - a pedestrian shopping strip running off Taksim Square - for a kebab.

Suddenly we saw protestors running towards us, their faces covered in masks and before we knew what was happening, a tear gas grenade had gone off, and we were paralysed by the heat. I couldn’t breathe through my nose, I couldn’t breathe through my mouth, I couldn’t open my eyes. It burnt up my nostrils, into my chest, it stung under my eyelids, it stung at the back of my throat. I stumbled through the streets half blinded, surrounded by footsteps. 

Suddenly someone grabbed my arm, “LADY!” he yelled, pushing hair out of my face, “look at me!" 

I looked up just as he sprayed some antacids in my face. As I blinked, the stinging stopped, even if it did leave me with the appearance of having toothpaste on my face. 

Realising things were only going to get worse, I grabbed my friend and ducked into an alleyway running off Istiklal. The sole bar in that alleyway was closed, but the owners were banging on their glass windows and motioning us to come inside. The door opened and we walked into a room full of protestors, sitting in front of the TV, smoking and watching live footage of Taksim Square on CNN. They handed us masks, water, napkins and gave us a minute to breathe. An awkward silence descended.

"Welcome to Turkey,” I said, wiping toothpaste and eyeliner off my face. And suddenly, everyone was laughing, shaking their heads in exasperation.

Two girls emerged from the back who spoke fluent, American-textbook English, and they took us to the roof top where we watched from afar as the riot police - in line formations - slowly cleared the protestors out of Taksim Square with water cannons and tear gas. 

I didn’t want to take sides or hold an opinion on the domestic politics of a country I was visiting, but it seemed hard to justify such heavy-handed tactics on perfectly legitimate protest. What was even harder to understand was the rationale behind the plan to turn public green space, which benefits local residents, into a profit-generating mall that benefits private enterprise.

It just seems to be the kind of dystopian world once described by a wise lady called Joni Mitchell: “they paved paradise, put up a parking lot …" 

Media van at Taksim got completely trashed. 

The one episode above aside, the rest of our time in Istanbul was splendid. At Istanbul Modern, the city’s gorgeous contemporary art gallery, I jotted down this poem on the wall, which aptly described what I had seen, heard and felt up to that point on my journey. 

And thus spoke the place: 
Bring me the thrills of the first time you saw me,
Each of which became a path for you in a different work.
Bring yourself to me. 

The remains of every single piece, mixed up in the earth.
Bring me a piece of my old guests,
That piece you used to love to dearly.
Bearing the faces of 19 people lined up side by side, looking at us.

Sculpted in solid wood by Kurimbu villagers,
The story of each suspended in faraway places, like empty suitcases.
Bring me 19 suitcases,
Each concealing the memory of a different person. 

Bring me all the moments you were lost in,
The moments you will look through lenses to seek the traces of time.
Bring me back my old chairs, 
Each will unite me with a different memory.

Bring me that poem of Rumi.
That beings with the lines, "How good to migrate anew everyday.
And how beautiful to settle anew everyday." 
And ends saying, "So many words that belong to yesterday.
Now we need to say new things." 

Bring me the people,
May each be the storytellers of their home towns. 
Bring me your dreams,
Those dreams that turned me into you, head to foot, as I lived. 
Bring me my own memory
That memory I yearn to meet.
Bring me everything, 
Each thing the everything of something else. 

Suleymaniye Mosque was my favourite in Istanbul - partly because it was far quieter than the Blue Mosque, and partly because it was situated in an area where every single street sold just ONE thing: there was a mop street, a rope street, bucket street, screw driver street … you get the drift.

Ain’t no way to do capitalism, Istanbul. 

On the Bosphorus cruise with a group of school kids who kept on shouting "KONICHIWA” in my face. Geez friggin Louise, at least pick the right stereotype. 

I can attest to the fact that EVERYTHING at the Spice Market was DERICIOUS.