Climbing

Now that we have this amazing opportunity at Maya Devi, I decided to do a bit more research on the area and what Pokhara has to offer. When Keri and I first started to project a trip, she came up with the idea of going to Nepal. She was in running for the Fulbright scholarship which provides selected candidates a year long stint in a certain country of choosing in exchange of instituting a way to educate/enhance the country of choice. With Keri's expertise in art, she wanted to involve art in the schools as well as create a program that would take recycled products and create useful items in schools or in cities. That might not be the best description of what it was but that's the gist.

If selected, the Fulbright need to know what I would do with my time while I was over there with her. They didn't want to shell out extra stipend for someone who was going to be sitting on his ass using free money. So I had to get on the ball and figure out how I was going to use my time.  The first thing that came to mind of course was, how can I involve myself in the local rock climbing scene? We were going to be in the center of the climbing world that is the Himalayas, there should be plenty of opportunities to get in on something.
Come to find out there wasn't much to offer in the way of "rock climbing" but plenty in mountaineering. Since I have no experience in mountaineering, my chances of finding anything were slim. There were a few companies out there that I wrote to that wanted some help, but nothing was made of it.

After we got word from the Fulbright that Keri wasn't selected out of the 12000 that applied we both stopped looking at our ideas in Nepal. We knew we still wanted to go but more on a trip of selfishness that a trip of giving back. Fast forward 5 months, Keri tell me the good news of Maya Devi. Hearing this news brings up the old ideas of helping the locals with climbing; the search continues.

Being at a job that involves me sitting at a desk for 8hrs will only drive me to insanity without the little escape that is the Internet. Getting to my point that the Internet is a hell of a tool to find unique opportunities that normally you would never come across. With some google skills that I picked up after 3 years at the travel job, I have become a master of finding the odd and quirky sites that hold some useful info. Numerous hours of word combinations lead me to a low profiled website that had one posting for climbing in Pokhara. Reply to the post desperately, I had little hope in a return reply since the post was from a year ago. This site was the last straw that I had in hopes of finding something climbing specific.

After a few weeks I heard nothing back from the post so decided to re-read the post and play Internet detective again. Finding a few helpful hints and words I came across the 3 Sisters Adventure website that was based in Pokhara. Shooting them an informal email about the rock climbing in the area they hooked me up with the email for the gentleman who posted the message a year ago on that bogus webpage. The man who posted was a Dutch man named Harry, who has slowly been establishing a local crag for the women of 3 Sisters Adventure. Emailing back and forth numerous times, I had finally found the one who could help me pursue my goal of teaching locals how to climb.

Persistence pays off in the long run but also can't help but think that good luck and the idea of keeping your doors open had some involvement with this. Slowly we learn not to be let down by missed opportunities (the island), because something else equally as great is just around the corner waiting. We will take this view of life into our journey because we have no idea what is in store for us on the trip that is life.
As for Keri's proposal, she is in current search for finding that school in Pokhara what will allow her to fulfill her ideas. She has high hopes for being inspired to create and educate her art once we arrive in Pokhara.

Everything seems to level out at some point.