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Home to the "season of mists & mellow fruitfulness" having been away for a month in the heat, dust & pollution of Kathmandu. It's really odd, in one way it's as if I've never been away, and in another I feel that things have changed completely.

I am now beginning to be able to talk properly after two and a half weeks of barely being able to speak. We do all take for granted the ability to communicate. It is deeply frustrating not to be able to participate in conversation & it was a bit worrying not knowing whether I was right, that it was simply a combination of external stresses on the voice - teaching, dust, pollution etc. Interestingly if you have to make a huge effort to communicate you tend to stop trying & listen more. Really listening to other peoples conversation without thinking of what you want to respond is fascinating. We can't have deep & philosophical conversations all the time, but it is amazing how the trivia of life plays a very repetitive part in general conversation.

Physically I have paid a price I didn't expect to pay. I thought I would be more or less bound to have a dreadful tummy bug - luckily it didn't happen. (I could have done with losing some weight!) But I wasn't expecting the daily hour & a half horrendous journey to and from school in a 4WD or taxi on the most unbelievably bad roads I have ever been on in my life. (That includes India, rural China & developing countries in the Middle East). Getting in & out of the vehicles, holding on for dear life in the absence of seat belts sometimes, & bracing my legs against the seat in front has all  left me limping with a much worse left knee & right hip. Not bad enough to be bionic yet according to the GP, so just have to adjust to more difficulties with hills & stairs & getting in & out of chairs & beds.

I certainly appreciate everything I have even more than I did before I went, if that's possible. Seeing how the orphans live in the orphanage we visited - spending a month in the delightful company of the children I taught in Samata school - seeing the street children living round the corner from my hotel, sleeping on the pavement curled up together like puppies on a rug on a main road, it is impossible not to be moved to real anger & despair at the unfairness of the world we live in.

We all actually know what the problems are - the solutions are the problem. Especially in a country as corrupt as Nepal. "Better to have a monarchy than anarchy" as one Nepali said to me about the current shambles of a government. More on this subject when I have had chance to reflect & assimilate the experience. But I loved it.