Sometimes writing a blog for you all to read feels like I’m also publishing my diary… I’m behind on so many stories that are worth telling from my time in Nepal and yet I do not spend my time writing them down. Instead, reality caught up with me and being back, it feels as if I never left. I am happy ‘that’ is not the case. I did leave and I lived in Nepal for almost 4 months. The stories will still be written and always remembered of course.  

People ask me “how was Nepal?” or a question similar to this one. Yet I feel that my answer will always be too short to capture the actual answer. My experience of Nepal is just as alive and changing as the country itself. It is a flow of impressions and experiences which I am so grateful for to have experienced. Nepal is alive and colourful and my ideas and knowledge about the country at the beginning are as truthful as those at the end of my stay. There is not one experience or one impression. And even while writing this, maybe while talking about Nepal or just out of nowhere my experience will change again, my perception and my opinion will evolve. So… How was Nepal?

Nepal is beautiful. The cities are full of sounds, colours, smells, tastes and movement. The people are kind, different and unique. The life is simpler yet other difficulties play a role here, once we have forgotten in the West. Cultural differences is something we talked about in school. About how society had to cope with multiple cultures and I never got the big deal, I never got my culture until I found myself completely in a different culture. Communication, religion, tradition, love, living, norms and values. I knew difference was there, I never got how this actually worked until I experienced it in Nepal. And even here I believe it took me almost 3 months to really get it and adapt. I am proud to have tasted this culture. To be a part of the Nepali family and to learn so much.

Being back in the Netherlands, I know life. It feels like I never left because the way of life and culture is so familiar, so known to me. I’m proud to say that even tho the life feels the same, I am different. Not the bullshit radical ‘I found myself’ different, rather the ‘I learned so freaking much and worked on my personal development on many levels’ different 😊