24th May (Day 10) – Travel to Bhujung, The Last Gurung Village
After a nice, comfortable stay in Pokhara, we set off bright and early for Bhujung, a trip that entailed a few hours bus ride followed by a three to four hour long jeep ride up narrow roads.
Our bus first took us to our lunch stop as well as resting point before we transferred onto the jeeps. We expected three jeeps to house about six to seven of us each for the ride up but there were two jeeps that were awaiting our arrival because the locals thought we were able to squeeze about ten to eleven people onto one jeep - the norm for Nepali locals but a nightmare for safety according to Singaporean standards as the jeep would be in its overcapacity. Luckily, the third jeep arrived promptly and we could arrive in time to start our trek down to Bhujung when we got to the entrance of the village.
While the descent down to Bhujung felt long and treacherous after a long day, we settled into our quarters shortly to see the living environments we were in. It was indeed a peaceful place to reside in, not many amenities but it was definitely enough to live comfortably.
After having a scrumptious meal of Dal Bhat (in which many of us asked for seconds because it was simply delicious!) prepared by the host, we made our way to the Youth Cultural Centre where we watched many Gurung cultural dance items put up in an honour of our visit. The villagers wanted us to dance in return allowing us to realise the differences in our culture. We did end up putting a short impromptu dance item so as to not disappoint the crowd. It was indeed a very stark cultural difference we noticed between our two cultures - dance may be an integral part of one’s culture but not necessarily the case in another. It was definitely an eventful day of learning, and we are definitely excited to see what Bhujung has to offer.
Written by Stella
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