The flight from Lukla back to Kathmandu was a sobering one. The sixteen-seater planes don't fly very high so it was pretty easy to see a lot of the damaged buildings. In most of the empty space or grass that was backyards and parks, you could see bright orange or blue tarps set up that people were living under since so many buildings were't safe to live in. At this point, there were still aftershocks with enough regularity that people didn't want to move back into their homes for fear of more damage/collapse.
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| They were sorting through the building, trying to salvage belongings and safe whole bricks. |
Luckily, the hostel that I had stayed at was undamaged and open. I managed to score a free ride from the airport with a European guy with a flair for drama (he had been up near EBC for the earthquake) and a journalist for NBC who was just eating up every single exaggerated word he dangled for him. Oh well. Free ride for me.
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| The crack went from the ground all the way up the building. |
It was amazing how much of the touristy area was undamaged and open like nothing ever happened. Apparently a lot of the hotels had been constructed in a more earthquake-safe way than other parts of the city. After I dropped my stuff off, I took a walk down to the place I had stayed with the Workaway. About two blocks outside of the touristic area, the amount of damage increased significantly. Large cracks running up concrete walls. Brick walls that had just collapsed. I couldn't even get to the place I had stayed previously because the road had been closed off due to debris. All of the students I had lived with were living in a temporary shelter or went home to their families, but I found out very quickly that they were all safe.
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| On my way to see the dog shelter. |
I spent the next day doing some catch-up work and looking for somewhere to volunteer. I had told pretty much anyone I talked to that I wanted to stay and volunteer until my flight out on the 31st. I ran into a student group that was asking for volunteers, so I said I would join them the next day. I spent that day at a hospital helping to move patients to/from x-rays or surgeries, but the fact that I didn't speak more than two words of Nepali made me significantly less helpful than all the students. And I also think it made some of the patiendts uncomfortable. There was a group organizing itself out of the hostel I was staying in, so I also spent some time working with them. We spent a day packing supply bags to be distributed in villages. They included soap, chlorine tablets and fabric to clean water as well as some basic food supplies.
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| We packed those! |
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| Bags of helpful stuff! |
I'd been fighting a pretty nasty cough since I got back from the mountains. As much as I loved to think I wanted to stay and keep volunteering, I woke up one morning feeling pretty sick and realized that what I really wanted to was to go home. It was a weird realization, this dichotomy in my brain from what I want and what I want to want. In this case, what I want won. I called up my travel insurance and they had tickets for me for the next night. That quickly. And great flights too! I got to fly Emirates. Travel insurance people. Get it. It easily paid for itself. Mine was through World Nomads.
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| Getting ready to board my flight in Dubai. |
Added bonus, I got to fly into Seattle a couple of days before Mothers Day, so I got to surprise mine! I'm pretty sure she stopped breathing.
Being back in the States was both super weird and incredible at the same time. It was a huge transition from Asia, but it was so welcome to see my people and be back where things were somewhat familiar that it balanced out most of the culture shock. It also helped that I had a summer full of epic plans to look forward to. I wasn't really returning to the real world, I was just moving my travels to the PNW.
