More than the mountains and the lakes, it was the people of Nepal that left me with the most indelible memories and lessons on sincerity, spirit, and grace. I’ve never encountered such hospitality, such strength and such character, all these while they face poverty and adversity daily. On top of it all, the opportunity to have cultural exchanges with people from such a faraway land has truly been a one-of-a-kind experience. Watching weddings and dances, trekking down hill terraces in the rain, having homestay with the villagers; we've certainly shared a unique adventure of our own!

Unexpected physical threat: we were aerially bombarded at night by stones from mischievous and drunk villagers supposedly from another village. When the stones started landing on the ground, we’d thought it was just some kids playing with stones nearby, till we realized that the stones were pretty large, and there were no kids around!

Everyone scrambled out of their tents and into the concrete classroom for protection. The girls remained indoors while the guys did guard duty outside. On hindsight, it was pretty funny considering that some of the guys switched into “army-mode,” setting up plans for night-patrols, emergency exits route, and gathering all our weapon (kitchen knives, what else??!) for our protection till the village head could come down the next morning. The subsequent days, we had a security-force from the village every night outside our tents to assuage our security concerns.