Talk about a rest stop! If you were to ask me how I’d be spending the previous 24 hours of this day, exactly one year ago, I would have never believed it.
Let me describe it: It was our last day in Borang, a remote village in Nepal, where we camped and were volunteering to help on a safe water project for the villagers, in addition to school visits with under-privileged children, awarding them with scholarships to keep them in school.
After an unexpected 12-hour downpour of monsoon-like rain that I had never seen in my life, seemingly with no end in sight, leading to a flooded tent, we ended up packing all of our belongings and moving them up a muddy road to a classroom with no door and open windows, the same classroom we had spent time in with the children earlier that day. Never would I have imagined spending our last night there in sleeping bags on the concrete floor, especially when I remember the discomfort of sleeping on the ground just days before.
After a sleepless night of hearing the pounding rain on the tin roof above us and the pitter-patter of the bats flying around outside (yes, bats), we spent the day on the road, making our way back to Kathmandu, and we stopped here for lunch, a small roadside cafe with the most spectacular view and our first chance at internet service after nearly 5 days. A 24 hours for the books!