Puja:
So, where to start? Despite our cries of “I hate Puja” we actually tolerate the place enough to visit about once a month (although this is plenty…). First of all, lots of love for our day one Pyuthan boys (our district), Joe and Gray. These boys have seen us through thick and thin and only very rarely have banned us from Puja. Being only a 4 hour walk away (2 hours and 4 minutes if you’re the BFG, e.g. Joe) they are by far the easiest to visit for a weekend and were very stress relieving during the first month.
Puja is about 10000X the size of Neta (not hard – we have 13 houses) and has a very different atmosphere. Walking down the road (yes they actually have one of these) kids will be playing in the street, multiple strangers will call you in for a cuppa and you even risk being hit by a jeep or bus!! Puja’s school is also larger, going up to class 10 (ours finishes at 8). With real benches, decorated classroom walls and whiteboards fixed to the wall, the school feels much more developed. They even have stairs!
Crucially Puja has multiple small shops selling snacks and basic food meaning if you run out of oil you don’t have to go begging door to door (it’s happened before). With so many more houses and people, Puja never risks appearing entirely deserted as Neta does on a Saturday morning… Inkeeping with the vibe, people are far more outgoing and welcoming, not to say Neta isn’t, but Pujans are just more in your face about it.
The boys have two rooms, a kitchen and a bedroom, vs our single room. Both rooms are entered from outside which is quite inconvenient having to lock whichever they are not in. However, our primary dispute with the doors is their god awful bedroom door which doesn’t open unless you prop it at a certain angle. At 2am when you’ve had to go to the toilet and it’s pouring and cold and you’re throwing your whole body weight at this stupid door whilst muttering Neta’s superiority under your breath and it’s really not budging… Puja isn’t perfect.
Furthermore, Puja is damp. Everything is damp. All the time. Neta is very nice and dry. You can walk around barefoot and not end up waist deep in a muddy puddle, sit down outside without looking like you’ve had an accident and your feet actually stay clean. Admittedly this isn’t the boys fault, the house is just very wet but it is unpleasant. Puja also sucks due to their lack of shower or any water past 6pm. Whilst they can boast having a real tap, the water is cut off in the evenings and though you can apparently turn it on somewhere, it’s too much effort so we just die. This outside tap is also their shower and without any privacy alongside the cultural expectations especially of young unmarried people (although more so girls) let’s just say the boys hygiene are questionable. Joe could probably proudly count his number of showers of this decade on one hand.
To briefly mention the food: let’s say it does not match Neta’s (as the boys will agree). Although they can boast their famous pressure cooker lid, bringing up their dal game, Puja is severely vegetable deficient. However, Gray does make some delicious roti (don’t tell him I said so).
Although I have bashed Puja, we do actually really like it and have a lot of fun there. The boys share a massive bed which is nice to relax and chat on. They have electricity almost 24 hours a day and of course a pressure cooker’s lid.
Jokes, I still hate Puja.
Overall rating:
Housing: 4/10 (very damp and having two rooms is inconvenient and lonely for whoever’s cooking)
Sleeping: 6/10 (plenty of space but I never sleep well)
Village: 7/10 (Puja is a lot of fun and a nice change from Neta’s quietness)
Entertainment: 7/10 (we ❤ you guys)
Accessibility: 7/10 (conveniently close but such a trek up – Selin gave the walk 3/10)
Food: (no comment)
School: 5/10
Views: 6.5/10 (it’s always cloudy)
English level: 5/10
Fun feature: there are lots of parrots and eagles
Bijuli:
Bijuli is another village in our district but no way near as close as Puja. Last weekend was our first trip as we had a couple days holiday at the end of the week so we thought we’d check out the new 8 month volunteers who arrived in January via Project Trust’s shorter program. Leaving Neta at 6:30am our host laughed at us leaving an hour to walk the 20 minutes to the bus stop (however, speaking from experience, never trust Nepali buses to wait even a second for you even if they can see you’re running down the street towards them waving 15 bags of shopping and they arrive at random times everyday). Three buses/jeeps, a plate of momos and about 1000 rupees (£7!!!!) later we were met off the bus by Callum and Tom who happened to be at the local weed festival right by the bus stop. It had been raining and unlike Neta, Bijuli actually has a road making it very slippy but still not as damp as Puja (nothing is).
The boys house was directly below the temple/bus stop. Their two rooms, a bedroom above a kitchen, were impeccably clean throwing shade on our room which is definitely a biohazard. Similarly to Neta the boys have two beds, although these are wider than ours. Their kitchen is pretty much the same, bar from being in a separate room and Bijuli shops clearly offer a wider selection – even coffee! Neta shops struggle to offer such diversity when we have only one and by ‘shop’ we mean a woman sells instant noodles out a box from her house. Khem, their host, was welcoming and spoke almost fluent English (although slightly obsessive about rice consumption and avoiding the rainwater tank for fear of death). The negatives of the accommodation are that the house doesn’t have a direct tap or water supply and so all water has to be transported in buckets (I think Selin and I would just dehydrate to death).
By the time we arrived it was already 4pm and after briefly visiting the now closing weed festival only to be fed, we went back home for a cup of tea: Twinnings green tea with honey and lemon no less! The boys were super generous all weekend, sharing all their snacks and making excellent food. We brought them a bag of kitkats, Oreos and these nougat chocolate bars we found at a bus stop along the way.
Despite the rain the boys claims were right. Bijuli is tropical and the views were insane. Right now Neta seems to be at the height of dead and brown winter whilst Bijuli was green with pine tree forests (very Centre Parks-y vibe). On Saturday, the boys took us up to Bijulicot, a high point of the village looking down on the whole valley. The area was walled in until it almost felt like a park in the UK. At the top was a temple and more importantly the 3G tower which provides the boys with 3G everywhere (even in their room) and even 4G. Safe to say our Neta brains exploded at the concept of loading Instagram on the toilet…
After visiting Bijulicot, the boys took us through the forest, past school and along footpaths winding down the the town, Chunja Teti, at the base of the valley. Tom’s eggs and fried bread breakfast had been several hours ago and we were all urgently in need of chow mein. Several plates of chow mein, a bag of sugar and having sung a chorus of “1kg of sugar” in Nepali to a shopkeeper who definitely did not ask for 4 white teenagers to serenade him, we trundled back up to Bijuli. Bijuli is a confusing place; the walk that took 1.5 hours down the hill took 20 minutes back up (although we’re not complaining).
On Sunday we had intended to catch the bus back to Neta to teach on Monday. Nepal had other plans specifically a surprise transport strike across the district meaning no buses were running all day. Instead we had an extra day in Bijuli (to Callum’s delight) and accompanied the boys to school.
Bijuli school is the polar opposite of ours. It’s huge with 500-600 students, real classrooms and an actual timetable. The routine is much stricter with fewer teachers bunking class (unlike Neta where this is the norm). Class five and below even had hot lunch prepared for them by school. They even have a WiFi office…
Their kids spoke significantly better English than ours – even able to complete written exercises (wow imagine this!).
After school we visited the famous ‘Bitching Hill’. Callum and Tom’s Friday evening activity is visiting the hill, sit both facing towards the valley (avoiding eye contact) and bitch to each other about one another. Sounds cathartic! The boys then left us for 10 minutes, allowing us to trial the hills for ourselves but this proved too much pressure for us and we just sat in silence.
The following morning the strike was miraculously over (and our school decided on Sunday evening that Monday was to be holiday anyway so we didn’t miss any school if anyone from Project reads this) and we got the bus back home.
Honestly, Bijuli is a first world country in comparison to Puja and something out of sci-fi to us Neta kids. They literally have 4G and WiFi… All the kids play cricket and can tell you when, where and who they played with in English. They even knew what acne was (a very confusing concept in Neta – no Nepalis have acne). With the tea and coffee, we might as well have been in Pokhara.
Overall rating:
Housing: 7/10 (water collection is quite long)
Sleeping: 6/10 (no one except Callum slept)
Village: 6/10 (pretty cool but Bijuli kids aren’t as sassy as ours)
Entertainment: 9/10 (very impressed with our itinerary of activities)
Accessibility: 6/10 (took half a day to get there but the bus literally took us straight to their house)
Food: 8/10 (everything was delicious, impressive vegetable selection, offered Nepali tea, coffee or English green tea twice a day with or without milk!)
School: 7/10 (more serious but less fun)
Views: 9/10 (Bijuli was so pretty)
English level: 7/10
Fun feature: their toilet has a really cute orange light that makes it really cosy
A Year in Nepal 