... says one of a group of beaming children in this poor but tranquil farming area - their joy palpable, their enthusiasm infectious. A simple greeting, but a complex flow of thoughts and emotions ensue. Their words carry not a hint of judgement of, nor expectation from, this person who has come so far, from a land and life they can hardly imagine, and almost certainly never visit. I cannot know what I may have brought to their lives, more than a smile in kind - but they have given me something impossible to quantify: a ray of hope. And ... Nepal IS an impossible land: an impossible richness of natural wonderment juxtaposed against the impossible chaos that is Kathmandu, with its impossibly overloaded busses and the impossible burdens carried on the backs of women (a
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