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Photo Favorite: Trading Guidebooks
Blog: GoBackpacking - 13 March 2011
Upon arrival in Kathmandu, I traded my Lonely Planet China for Nepal.---------Join Travel Blog Success today and learn to build a better travel blog. Membership includes 27 tutorials, private forum, audio interviews, and more.
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Movie Searches for New Lama in Nepal
Blog: A Traveler's Library - 28 February 2011
Destination: Nepal Movie: Unmistaken Child (2008) I gasped as the camera panned over a crystal steam and showed a misty green valley shadowed by the moutains that climbers dream of. The camera tracks characters through the otherworldly narrow passageways between rough stone buildings that could just as well have been built in Middle Ages Europe [...]This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library.
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Update from the Field: Videos, Epic Commutes + Going Beyond Microfinance
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 28 February 2011
Compiled by Alexis Ditkowsky, KF14, South Africa Another week, another incredible range of dispatches from around the world.
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Street Kids in Nepal Drum Their Way to Self Esteem
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 26 February 2011
TweetThe dangerously handsome man sitting at an adjacent table in the Pokhara coffee shop nodded as I wrapped up my interview with two young girls who’s had an abhorrent experience with a local volunteer operator. A jumble of dreadlocks peeked from beneath Hugo Caminero’s rainbow knitted skullcap as he leaned across the aisle and admitted [...]
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Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Landscape of Microfinance in Nepal
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 25 February 2011
By Claudine Emeott, KF14, Nepal Over the last several months, the microfinance industry has come under considerable fire. These criticisms largely address reports emerging from the Indian state Andhra Pradesh, where the rapid growth of microfinance led to predatory lending and overindebtedness. In Nepal, just across the border from India, I find myself contemplating the [...]
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Paid Volunteering and Voluntouring – Scams or Legitimate Social Programs?
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 21 February 2011
TweetMy life changed for the better when I deserted corporate America to pursue my true passions of travel, writing and photography but over the past few years I’ve often felt there was still a piece of the puzzle missing. There was something more I was meant to do; I just wasn’t sure what it was. [...]
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Photo Favorite: Nepal’s Weirdest Vehicle
Blog: GoBackpacking - 17 February 2011
Traveling around the world, you see some interesting modes of transport.---------Join Travel Blog Success today and learn to build a better travel blog. Membership includes 27 tutorials, private forum, audio interviews, and more.Use discount code "tbs25" to get 25% off a Premium membership.
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Handbook for Travelers to Pokhara, Nepal
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 17 February 2011
TweetThis is not the normal type of article I write. It’s not a story about my adventures. But it is designed to help anyone who wants to visit the place on this planet that has most captured my heart, Pokhara, Nepal. Having spent three months in Nepal in late 2010, much of the time in [...]
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Pilgrimage to the Birthplace of Buddha
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 13 February 2011
TweetThe bus stopped at a dusty crossroad and the driver shouted “Lumbini, Lumbini, Lumbini.” Indeed, I was Lumbini bound, but I had been told this bus would carry me all the way; suddenly it seemed I would have to change buses. I unfolded my aching legs from the cramped space between seat rows, stood and [...]
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The Making of a Tibetan Carpet
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 8 February 2011
TweetAt the Tashiling Tibetan Refugee Settlement in Pokhara, Nepal, women card and spin wool, which is then dyed in rainbow colors and painstakingly woven into intricate carpet designs on huge wooden looms. The carpet being woven in the video is approximately eight feet long and will take about two months to complete, after which it [...]
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Small is Beautiful: Microcredit Fair in Nepal
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 6 February 2011
By Claudine Emeott, KF14, Nepal Yesterday marked BPW Patan’s first microcredit fair, which gathered 50 of BPW’s women borrowers to showcase their products. BPW’s director, Urmila Shrestha, confided that this fair has been a dream of hers for the last two years, but she was nervous about pulling together the resources — both money and [...]
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The Art of Tseten Tsering
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 4 February 2011
TweetAs I waited to fill my plate during the International Human Rights Day celebration at Tashiling Tibetan refugee settlement in Pokhara, kids darted back and forth through the dinner line, playing tag. When one of them unexpectedly scooted in front of me, I reflexively took a step back and bumped into Tseten Tsering. He laughed, [...]
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Two Tibetan Refugees – A Freedom Fighter and a Simple Farm Girl – Share Their Stories of Survival
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 1 February 2011
TweetJampa Chodok is 83 years old but he remembers his days as freedom fighter in Tibet as if they happened last week. He joined our small tour group just as we were finishing lunch at the Jampaling Tibetan refugee settlement, located about 12 miles east of Pokhara, Nepal. He sat in the sun, as old [...]
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Lights out in Nepal: Working through Load-Shedding
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 31 January 2011
By Claudine Emeott, KF14, Nepal When I arrived in Nepal to begin work with Kiva’s local partner here, BPW Patan, the majority of tourists and trekkers had just cleared out, likely heading for warmer climates or at least easier living conditions — because, by most standards, winter makes life in Nepal rather challenging. First, there [...]
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Is the Sleeping Dragon Roaring to Life?
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 28 January 2011
TweetOn my first full day in Pokhara, Nepal, a petite woman strolled down the sidewalk and stopped in front of my table at the open-air restaurant where I was enjoying lunch. Her muted, horizontal striped apron was cinched around an ankle-length gray dress and long, glistening black braids wound around her head. A wide smile [...]
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Five Reasons I Love Being a Petite Traveler
Blog: Coconut Radio - 25 January 2011
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How to Buy a Tibetan Thangka in Nepal
Blog: GoBackpacking - 19 January 2011
Thangkas are traditional Tibetan cloth paintings, framed with embroidered silk.---------Join Travel Blog Success today and learn to build a better travel blog.Membership includes 12 lessons, community forum, audio interviews, and a blog.
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Healed By A Tibetan Shaman
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 19 January 2011
TweetChime led me down a narrow grass pathway at Tarshi Palkhiel, the Tibetan refugee settlement on the outskirts of Pokhara, Nepal where he’d grown up. Midway down the lane he stopped before a diminutive man with a long gray ponytail and gleaming onyx eyes. The elder Tibetan grasped my translator’s hands between his own as [...]
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11 months of travel, 4 minutes of video
Blog: Around The World On The Toilet - 16 January 2011
We’ve been back home for a while now, and are back into an everyday routine. Having both found employment, there are no immediate plans for another multi-month trip, but we do find ourselves constantly looking back on the last year with no regrets and memories which will surely last our lifetime. Its been an amazing [...]
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Officially Adopted by My Yoga Guru and his Nepali Family
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 5 January 2011
TweetVery few things in life frighten me, but by the time I arrived in Pokhara, I was scared. My left hip and knee had never fully healed from an injury sustained in Mexico earlier in the year and as a result even an easy trek to Nagarkot and day hikes around the mountain village of [...]
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Sarangi, the Heart of Traditional Nepali Folk Music
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 28 December 2010
TweetStanding on street corners amidst clamorous horns and revving engines in Kathmandu and Pokhara, young musicians play sarangis, a traditional handmade wooden Nepali folk instrument that resembles a small fiddle. Although the sarangi is today used by many, it was traditionally played only by people of Gandarva, or Gaine caste, as they are commonly known. [...]
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Connecting with my Buddha Nature at a Lama Puja in Pokhara, Nepal
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 24 December 2010
TweetCrimson and saffron robed Tibetan monks shuffled into Shree Gaden Dhargay Ling Monastery and sat cross-legged on brocade cushions stretched in a double row down the center of the hall. Adolescent monks-in-training slid giant drums down the polished parquet floor to their older counterparts, while others took up ancient-looking metal horns that telescoped out to [...]
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Three Views of Pokhara, Nepal Capture My Heart
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 18 December 2010
By the time I came down from the mountaintop in Puma, the energy of my journey around Asia had shifted. With more clarity of mind than I’d had in a long time, I realized that in large part, I had been responsible for the frustrations of my recent travel in China. Having been in the [...]
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Holy Mountain Pass: Travel Photo Contest Friday 31
Blog: Todd's Wanderings - 17 December 2010
Update: The winner is Jason…who guessed Thorung La Pass, Annapurna Circuit, Himalayas, Nepal. Well, OK, he didn’t say Nepal, but I think we can assume he meant it. Seriously, I’m not that inflexible! Thanks again to Connie and tranquil mountain photo. Here is what makes this mountain pass so special to Connie: “Reaching the peak of Thorung La Pass at 5614 meters, after trekking through the amazingly beautiful Nepalese Himalayan mountain range for 12 days was an amazing accomplishment for me.
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Best Adventures of 2010
Blog: Canada's Adventure Couple - 14 December 2010
2010 is drawing to a close and it is the perfect time to reflect on the events of the past year. We have had quite an amazing year when we stopped to think about. It is funny, when it is your own life, you don't really realize just how incredible things are while they are happening, but in retrospect, life can be quite extraordinary. I won't lie, things haven't been all roses.






