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| We Mark Out And Measure Our First Cottage |
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| Digging The Footings For The First Cottage |
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When I first arrived in Asia in 2006, I had never even thought of coming
to Nepal. Luckily while traveling round India I bumped into a British guy
called Neil who informed me that while he was in Nepal he was able to walk in a
jungle that had tigers, elephants and rhino. I made a decision right then and
there that I was going to go to Nepal. I had tried to visit some of the
National Parks of India, but it was monsoon time and all the national parks
were closed and it was, as I found out, very difficult to obtain permission to
enter these parks at this time of year. So with my decision made to visit Nepal
I headed towards Banbassa (the West border of India/Nepal) and crossed over the
border by horse and cart to Mahendrenagar. From here I caught a bus to Anbassa,
the gateway to Bardia National Park.
On my original visit to Bardia I stayed two weeks, going into the jungle almost every day. I was amazed, the jungle was absolutely teaming with wildlife, and
being able to walk around on foot to experience it was absolutely fantastic, totally
unlike the jeep safari’s that I had been on in the Serengeti and Maasai Mara.
At the end of the two weeks I was sure that at some point in the future I would
return.
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| Cutting Up Reclaimed Wood |
I did indeed return, each time gaining more knowledge of the country and
gaining in confidence that at some point in the future I would try to set up a
project in Bardia with my friend Sitaram, my guide in the jungle on my first
visit.
After many years of planning to create a project in Bardia, finally, in
April 2012 I came with the definite intention of building a guest house in Bardia from which
could run jungle adventure’s from.
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| Inside The First Cottage |
At first, the project started slowly, planning in detail exactly what I
was going to build and where we were going to build it. Once an outline of this
had been devised then came the hard struggle of collecting materials to build
it. Even though we are situated right next to the jungle, as it is a protected
national park, wood is quite difficult to obtain, and I was going to need quite
a substantial amount to build my cottages. Over many months of searching we
finally found a local family who were selling their house (or in actual fact,
the materials that their house was made from) so that they could build a new
house. This house contained nearly all the wood we needed to construct our
cottages, and with the bricks which Sitaram and his family had made a few years
before we were ready to start.
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| The Grass In The Foreground Will Then Thatch The Roofs |
With a team of local tradesmen, we started work on the cottages in
September 2012. Work then set of at a tremendous pace, and now in January 2013 the rooms are nearing
completion.
John Sparshatt
