After the long pandemic and the curfews, in November 2021, I was finally able to return to Nepal. After filling out forms and obtaining the covid passport, and doing all the relevant PCR tests, etc, etc, I decided to fly with all caution, distance, security at the airports, to Kathmandu via Istanbul.
We were all very happy to be reunited. The welcome at the airport was magnificent. They brought in monks with their tantric chants to hold a welcoming ceremony. In the town, the mayor of Salleri, along with other members of the delegation, spent almost the entire day giving speeches of gratitude and appreciation for the work the foundation has done to help the town of Lumsa. It was all very moving.
Exactly one year before, a shipment of clothes weighing about 300 kg was made. This clothes were in boxes for almost a year and I thought that everything would have been damaged by the humidity. But it wasn’t like that, everything was in perfect condition and we placed the clothes and shoes on the basketball court and proceeded to sell them. To our surprise, it was a complete revolution, since people came from all the surrounding towns, which meant that everything was sold and a collection of about 100,000 Nrps was reached, or a lack as they say, which is about 1000 Euros at the exchange rate of those days.
We considered what priority there would be in the field of education and decided to buy three computers for the children at school. Teacher Pemba is delighted. They adapted a small room and teaches the children how to use the computer.
Then, with Mingmar, a single meeting was enough to lose the decision to build the Lodge, which was a project that we had in mind years ago but that we never found the time to carry out.
With my niece Maiana, we spent days and hours going over how this project could look on paper. Finally, we succeeded.
A small Lodge with four rooms, a reception, restaurant, kitchen, laundry, pantry and a first floor, the tower, as Mingmar calls it, with a living room and unprecedented views of the Lumsa Valleys and Pickey Peak, the emblematic mountain of the valley with its 4025 meters of height.
Between emails, we agreed on everything until they presented it to the Salleri municipality and gave us permission to build.
