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Johan’s diary – 12th of September
7:00 The clock wakes me, and I fix my breakfast consisting of rice porridge with raspberries and coffee. I pack my things for the trip out to Ratankot in the meantime.
8:15 The car (Toyota Land Cruiser) and Karma are here on time. There is heavy rain now and it rained all night so I’m a bit concerned about how the roads will be. We pack all the stuff; which gets really full, including the roof.
9:30 We leave the monastery, there is some traffic congestion and lots of water on the roadway in Kathmandu so we took our time to get out of town. The highway is in reasonable condition but in some places it has crumbled and is now provisionally repaired to being one lane the precipice on the other side, in other places there have been landslides that filled the road with earth and stone and they have only had the time to be able to clear half of the road. But it rolls on quite ok.
12:00 We stop for lunch along the way, I eat crisp bread, a bar and drink a Coke. It has stopped raining and is pleasantly warm and sunny. The driver is repairing a mount to the front anti-roll bar, which he had a new one!!
13:45 We converge with Shyam in the market town (where I was during the earthquake in May), he went before and has loaded on 1000kg of sugar on a smaller four-wheel drive truck, He had even given 8 villagers lift on the truck.
16:00 I arrive in Ratankot after a really rough hour, The road has certainly seen better days. I will be met by a large crowd of people waiting for us, I get lots of flowers and scarves. We award them all with 260 bananas. We then organize Shyam and Karma with the help of some villagers we distribute:
– 1000 kg sugar
– 216 toothbrushes
– 200 tubes of toothpaste
– 1000 soaps
– 600 detergent “soaps”
Many have happy and grateful faces, now the whole village has sugar for bread, soap, toothpaste and detergent followed for about 3 months.
19:00 I get the tent spread, darkness has now fallen; I cook my dinner, and am really hungry. I write my diary.
21:30 I crawl into my sleeping bag, its a little hard to sleep, as my back is a little sore after the car ride and pain in the buttocks after having slipped and sat down on a stone. Good night, it was all for today!