{"id":54,"date":"2024-02-25T01:50:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-25T01:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/nepal24\/?p=54"},"modified":"2024-02-27T01:59:15","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T01:59:15","slug":"namaste-nepal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/nepal24\/2024\/02\/25\/namaste-nepal\/","title":{"rendered":"NAMASTE NEPAL"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What an eventful first 1.5 days even though we haven\u2019t begun coaching yet!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s start off with coaches\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gaby fractured her finger is Australia and is (hopefully) joining us in a week, Sian is recovering from food poisoning after an adventurous two weeks hiking around Nepal, and Ed is trying to legally cross the India-Nepal boundary in a car he hired from Ranchi (in Jharkhand, India) because he wanted to watch two days of cricket and not take multiple flights to meet us in Rajbiraj (fair enough!). Fortunately things are going to plan for Lee, Sara, Tim, and Rachana (so far at least).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, it\u2019s Saturday 430pm, and Tim, Rachana, Sian, and Lee meet up in Kathmandu. The first place Lee decides to take us to for a meal is \u201cNew Orlean\u2019s Caf\u00e9\u201d where we (ironically?) decided to try pretty much all the local food the restaurant had \u2013 momos, peanut sadeko, dal-bhat thali, thukpa\u2026 And of course, the Gurkha beer that cannot be missed. Dinner was essentially an opportunity for the coaches to learn more about each other -> basically, what were our top 3 favourite fruits (and the debates that ensued with what one assumed was a relatively harmless question). Essentially Boothie doesn\u2019t eat hairy fruits, Rachana refuses to have fruits in desserts, and Tim likes peaches (which we all agreed should not be a contender).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After crashing early-ish, Day 2 began ~10am, with a lazy breakfast in the hotel and making our way to the airport to get to our first coaching hub \u2013 Rajbiraj. However, to get to Rajbiraj is a bit of a trek by itself, with a flight to Bidarnagar (35 minutes only, and a spectacular view of the Himalayas if you\u2019re on the left), followed by ~3 hours on\u00a0kaccha\u00a0<\/em>(semi-made) road to Rajbiraj. We met Coach Sara in Bidarnagar airport who also brought with her some yummy samosas to munch on while we were on the road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Including a well-managed puncture by our driver, Vinod and a chai break where we gobbled down \u201cmasala magic\u201d lays and \u201cdark fantasies\u201d (yes these are popular Nepali\/Indian ready-to-eat snacks), we made it to Rajbiraj around 5pm, in time to watch the community cricket games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was our first foray into cricket in this trip, and such a beautiful sight it was \u2013 boys AND girls playing cricket and being coached. Seeing such a large number of girls (at least 30) when 2 years ago there was nothing was certainly an inspiring sight \u2013 there were at least 4-5 coaches (who CWB work closely with) running drills for the girls. You could see the ethos of \u201csafe, inclusive, and fun\u201d in action with the girls engaged and just having a really good time (with some great shots and bowling too). We also learned about stories of players such as Sakshi Yadav, who is a real \u201cwhacker\u201d of the ball and whose brother (who is a player for the Nepali men\u2019s team) has been a real supporter and advocator of the sport, and Sakshi Dev, who has been a coach for more than 2 years now, and while never played cricket before CWB, has been a significant reason and role model to get more girls into the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We then came back to the hotel to check in, meet with the local coaches, made the next week\u2019s plan, and have a hearty meal. I won\u2019t spend much time writing about tomorrow\u2019s plan, because 1) if there\u2019s anything I\u2019ve learned, things rarely fall to plan :D; and 2) let\u2019s keep it as a surprise for tomorrow\u2019s blog!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What an eventful first 1.5 days even though we haven\u2019t begun coaching yet! Let\u2019s start…<\/p>\n

Read the postNAMASTE NEPAL<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/nepal24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/nepal24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/nepal24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/nepal24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/nepal24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/nepal24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/nepal24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions\/61"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/nepal24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/nepal24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/nepal24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/nepal24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}