Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. Mat 10:8
Home
News & Reports
Prayer Partners
Contact us
Schools of Healing
Books, CDs & DVDs
Messages
Testimonies of Healing!
Links
About us
Coming Events
New Christian?
The journey from Kathmandu to Hetauda was more adrenalin in a day than I am used to. I was told the van would arrive at 8am, and coated and gloved I stepped into the winter morning. But when our transport proved to be a jeep, I was slightly disappointed. I was wrong.
The road to the plains heads westward for an hour or two, and then wriggles down through the hills, but we turned south immediately off the Kathmandu ring road and began to climb steeply. ‘Shortcut’, was the brief explanation. Short it was not! We left the smog to lurk in the valley and twisted through villages that declined in prosperity as we left the capital. The smarter houses were clean cut dry stone walling of considerable skill, perched on the slopes like pillboxes.
There had been no rain for months, and the terraced fields awaited rains and the first plantings of the season, corn and cabbages, lentils and beans. Goats browsed the sepia grass, and chickens scattered at our horn-blast ascent. Nepalis are truly hill-people, and can build and survive on mountainsides so precipitous that anyone else would have abandoned them to forest centuries ago. Their houses and terraced fields are works of art.
Evidence of road maintenance slowly declined, and soon we were bumping and rolling over cobbles of broken tarmac. The next village was dominated by Buddhist monasteries and temples both ancient and modern. Men walked hand in hand or in clusters, and even small boys wore crimson robes and crew-cuts. Not much further on, the tarmac gave up the unequal struggle altogether.
The road became rocks softened only by a two inch duvet of dust. We were down to about 10kph now, tossing on the breccia like a ship at sea, while the mountains became even steeper, soaring into the haze a thousand feet above and below. We passed and were passed by a steady stream of motorcycles (their riders’ backsides must be made of sterner stuff than mine) and similar jeeps to ours, invariably overpopulated. Roofracks sported the inhabitants’ suitcases, bags of rice, rolled corrugated iron, and often an auxiliary population.
By the time we regained the tar, even the locals had given up attempts at cultivation on these astonishing slopes, and we entered forest. At times it was dominated by weeping-needled pines, at others by broadleaves of all descriptions, a tangle of trees, shrubs and vines. But it was too dry to be called jungle! Aside from tall birches, deciduous trees were few. Then tree rhododendrons appeared, bursting with unlikely red among the dust-laden leaves. Small children held aloft delightful posies of their blossoms. I wanted to buy every one, but we roared on. The villages now were of timber and mud, of ducks and turkeys, and dogs and poverty. Illogically, the older children wore immaculate school uniforms!
Then an hour later we suddenly dived left down an even more impossible track. The ‘hydropower’ dam ahead apparently resented traffic, so a ‘bypass’ had been crudely cut into the
cliffs. The track narrowed to barely a car width, no more than a ledge, and I was on the downhill side watching the river wind through the valley vertically below. People washing there were mere ants. We jumped and swayed over the tumbled rocks, while I prayed. When we met other jeeps on the tortured bends, one of us had to back.
By the time we found our way to the other side of the dam it was lunch. The ‘Welcome’ above the door of the hovel where we ate was a vain gesture. Inside, the steel roof-beams hung little plastic bags, to ‘keep away the flies’. They didn’t. But the food was good, and I didn’t get sick. The descent to Hetauda through a braided river valley would have been an anti-climax but for its astonishing beauty. Later when I commented on it, a local pastor said, ‘all Nepal is like this.’
Bungee-jumping? Try a missions trip instead!
Missions provides all the excitement you need!
