On my way...

So today's the day! The last time I hit the dusty, colourful streets of Kathmandu was back in 2008 as an excitable young traveller, ready to take on one of the most incredible, beautiful places in the world... Four years on, I'm living back in London and I've got myself the most incredible job in the world - working in WaterAid's Events Team. 

I've got a feeling that this trip to Nepal will be an entirely different experience..... 

For the last year or so I've spent a great deal of time working on developing the WaterAid mountain challenge, 

WaterAid200 (www.wateraid200.org) - an event taking place in June that hopes to see a team climb one of 200 selected mountains across the UK and Ireland on the same day. For the first time, we've linked fundraising from the event to our work in Nepal. At first glance, this seemed an obvious link - trekking the mountains of Nepal surely appeals to every budding climber and hillwalker? I spent a while looking into and learning in more detail about WaterAid's work in Nepal and learnt that for many communities, particularly in rural Nepal, life is often as tough as the terrain...

The remote mountainous regions of Nepal are home to some of the poorest and most marginalised communities in the world. Collecting water is a huge daily chore, with real risk of serious falls on arduous treks down the steep narrow mountain paths used to reach water sources. A colleague of mine was out in Nepal a few months ago and met one lady, Dambar, who had slipped and broken both of her hands as she made her way down a steep path collecting water. Her hands didn't heal properly and she was then unable to lift or carry anything at all, never mind collect water. She now relies on her daughter in law to tread the same path to fetch water for the family. Communities like Dambar's struggle to work their way out of poverty, with women bound by the hours they spend collecting water and unable to earn a living. In addition to this, diarrhoeal diseases are common, and children's lives are lost.The lack of water and sanitation in these areas simply keeps people in poverty. 

I've seen examples of real abject poverty but only really in cities - Mumbai for example - and witnessing this alongside contrasting riches in these cities has shaped my own personal view of the world's inequalities. Some of the communities that WaterAid work in in Nepal are really remote, really removed from any kind of material riches... That beautiful, remote isolation sounds wonderful to some people - who wouldn't want to leave London and go and live off the land in some beautiful Himalayan paradise? It's a type of poverty that I'm not sure is fully understood in the west and I'm really looking forward to our rural field visit in the first few days of our trip to try to understand this a little more. One quote I read from a man in one of the communities visited on a previous WaterAid trip is stuck in my head.... 'We wake up and we see the beautiful mountains. That is the only single good thing about living here' 

I'm still a little unsure what this trip will bring - I'm feeling nervous but excited to learn as much as I can..... One thing I know is that I'm already feeling very lucky to be given the experience to see first hand the work that we do. I'm off to the airport now, but I'll blog as often as technology permits. See you on the other side! 

Anna  xx