Writes Mr Hilton-Dennis, Head of English
This was an expedition in every sense of the word. For the Taylors’ team of 18 boys and four staff, Nepal was new territory in more ways than one, calling upon each member to show resourcefulness, true grit and open-mindedness on each and every day that we were in-country. This was a learning experience that you simply cannot replicate in the classroom; you have to get into the Himalayas for this kind of thing, feel your lungs working harder for each breath in the thinning air, feel what it’s like to be the only westerner for miles in a remote and little-visited part of the country, staying with Sherpa families and eating the daily staple of dhal bhat made with vegetables picked from the field next door. Feel the responsibility of being a teacher, in charge of your own classes in a local school in Kathmandu, where education is everything.
Trekking the Helambu Trail in the Langtang National Park took the team deep into mountains. Crossing the Indrawati River across a swaying metal suspension bridge at the start of the trail acted as a prelude of the challenges that were to come (just ask Mrs Hazan). These came in the form of steep ascents in ferocious heat, followed by monsoon deluge; and with the rain, came that slippery denizen of rain forest: the leech. Our head guide, Kumar, was also a champion leech-spotter and for more than one member of the expedition, a saviour. He carried with him a slim stick with a sack of salt tied smartly to its end. It could be mistaken for an elongated artist’s dabbing brush. At one infamous moment on the descent into an otherwise beautiful rhododendron forest, Kumar could be seen leaping among the team, deftly swiping these inky curling creatures from trousers, boots, shirts, even eyebrows. The larger the leech, the louder the cry of ‘Zuka!’ (‘Leech!) And for the really big ones: ‘Baisha Zuka!’ Kumar would declare: Buffalo Leech. On the rare occasion that one slipped his keen eyes, it would not be long before a blossom of red could be seen spreading across the top of a sock. Boys like Munro T. (L6th) wore them as a badge of honour; Marcus W. (U6th) counted 12 to his name.
But the rewards were there, too, and what rewards they were. There was the deliciously fresh food we ate each day, cooked by the family Ama in each tea house on her wood burning stove oven. Then there were the cups of sweet Nepali tea – chia – which kept us on our feet, served by our team of guides and porters, who put us to shame each morning as they each saddled up with two of our large backpacks lashed together and carried by a mere strap around the forehead. Most were in flipflops. We would pass locals curious to see us; some sang back to us the ubiquitous Nepali love-song, Resham Phiri ri. One lady carefully prepared a cup of fresh ginger tea to help with an upset stomach.
On the day we arrived at the village of Melamchigung, we were invited to attend the first day of a Buddhist Festival. There we sat cross-legged while monks dressed in red robes chanted on either side, occasionally pausing to blow a pair of long narrow trumpets or clash cymbals together. Tightly plaited Tibetan bread was brought to us, as was Tibetan tea, an acquired taste of tea, milk, salt and floating globules of animal fat. Everything you need for the mountains. Daniel Z. (U6th) was overwhelmed. ‘One day, I’m going to bring my own children here,’ he said.
Later that same evening, a local man, now living in London and on a return visit to Nepal, engaged us over dhal bhat on the comparative merits of his chosen brand of Buddhism. What he hadn’t reckoned on was a friendly if full evaluation of his argument by Devin S. (L6th), whose authoritative knowledge of Buddhist philosophy was more than a match for this fellow’s proselytising.
The climb to the summit of Mount Tharapadi took us on a long and steeply rising ascent through cloud forest. After an early start from Melamchigung, halfway up we paused for a packed lunch of boiled eggs and Tibetan bread. Always we were reminded by Tim, our trek leader, to keep on taking little sips of water, keep hydrating, and not only because of the heat and the exertion: because of the altitude too. We were well above 3000m, and now, technically, into very high-altitude conditions. You could feel it with every breath, the lungs working harder to find the oxygen in the air.
That didn’t stop mountain goat Daniel Z. (U6th) – team leader for the day – from moving solicitously up and down the ribbon of hikers checking that everyone was set for the final push. Thomas B. (U6th), our version of Mr Motivator and sporting a fine sergeant-major moustache, chimed in from the back with bellows of encouragement. We were deep in cloud when we reached the summit, marked in Nepalese style by jubilant streamers of Buddhist prayer flags. The forest had receded to alpine scrub, and the air was mountain cold. Looming somewhere behind the veil of monsoon cloud we knew would be a special view, but we wondered if the Himalayas would deign to show themselves. We retreated into hot cups of tea, dhal bhat and the wood stove warmth of the mountain refuge that was to be our home for the night on the summit of Mount Tharapadi.
The following morning at 4.30am we shivered out of bed to be greeted by a very different scene. Having been camped around us the evening before, the cloud was now below us, lying thick in the valley from which we had climbed. Rising away to the north-east were grey and ghostlike forms that we had not seen before. In the mid-distance, an impossible ridge burned with the golden fire of the dawn. The Himalayas were waking up just as we were: peaks, saddles, passes, escarpments were gaining definition with every passing minute, a kingdom in the clouds.
Each of us looked on in humble awe. Some were feeling light-headed, others nauseous with the altitude. At 3600m, we were standing at three times the height of Ben Nevis. For boys like Max F. (L6th), this was what we termed a ‘Personal Everest’ achievement. He had drawn on all his reserves to get here, fuelled by determination and a family fascination with the high places of the world.
Trekking the Helambu had taken us into what were until not that long ago completely unvisited parts of Nepal. The Sherpa villages, clustered on sheer mountainsides riven by layer upon layer of terraced farming, still have a kind of impregnable quality to them. Many can still only be reached on foot; the road from Kathmandu only found its way here in the early 2000s. Much of the agriculture is still done by hand. Often, we would see farmers bent double knee deep in paddy fields or women with great bundles of freshly hewn grasses piled upon their heads. Livestock are driven down the narrow paths, and at one point our guide Jeevan had to wrestle the horns of a stubborn billy-goat who was tethered to the side of the path and threatening to charge down any who attempted to pass.
At other times, the pleasure was simply to fall into step with someone and engage them in conversation. I find a walk in interesting company quickly has a way of becoming an intellectual journey. So it was that as we descended from the village of Tarkegang one morning, Devin S. (L6th) walked me through the fictional trilogy he is writing and sounded me out on character and plot development; and, following a high Himalayan ridgeline on the second day, Gabriel W. (U6th) treated me to an almost comprehensive history of Charlemagne the Great and his impact on Medieval Europe.
Each day saw a new team leader from among the boys, and this is where many shone as they took on different responsibilities. Few could match the quiet assurance (or high spec kit for that matter) of Max M-S. (U6th), while Kian P. (L6th) was phased by nothing, spoke with maturity and kept a tight control of the team’s finances. Equally, Jai M. (U6th), carrying with him books on world economy, weighed up whether the view of neo-liberalism or economic nationalism would be best for the group budget. It felt like Riyan B. (U6th) was carefully documenting every step of our journey, such was his interest in photography. Certainly, he knew how to strike a pose. Munro T. (L6th), stoic and prepared to take on the jobs that nobody else wanted to, which included a manual unblocking of the squat toilet one night, led by example. No one epitomised the indomitable spirit of perseverance more than Ryan C. (U6th) in simply being with us in Nepal. He can be very proud, as they all can, of what he achieved in the highest mountains on earth.
After six days of trekking in the Langtang National Park, an exhilarating bus journey brought the team back to Kathmandu and a very different challenge. We were given the warmest of welcomes by Mr Vishnu Bakhda-Dangi, Head Master of HVP Central School. Under the gaze of the Goddess Saraswati and located close to the historic district of Patan Durbar Square, this is where the team would be staying for the duration of their teaching placement. Two years ago, the first Merchant Taylors’ expedition had taught here, and there were many familiar faces among the staff and pupils. ‘Namaste, sir’, they would say in passing up and down the flights of stairs, decorated with paintings of Nepal and inspiring aphorisms from generations of volunteers.
Looking into the classrooms, it was encouraging to see the new brightly coloured desks and chairs which the school had purchased through Merchant Taylors’ fundraising from two years ago. Also in the welcome party were undergraduates from Oxford and Cambridge universities, who were volunteering through the charity HVP Nepal-UK, which supports three schools in Nepal and which I now chair. Among them was one Dominic Murphy O’Connor, a former Head Monitor of Merchant Taylors’ School, who had just finished his degree in English Literature at Trinity College, Oxford. It was a real opportunity for the current team, comprising Lower Sixth and 5th Form pupils, to mix with the university volunteers, especially one of their own, to see where the future perhaps might take them.
Quickly the team were into the new routine of rising from their dormitories, in time for breakfast of toast and fresh mangoes, before jumping on the bus that would take us further into the lush green of the Kathmandu Valley to sister school, HVP Thali. This is where the actual teaching would take place, and beneath the auspices of the ancient hilltop temple of Changunarayan, we were treated as honoured guests by Head Master, Mr Rajkumar Thapa. The whole school assembled in the playground to greet us, as we were wreathed in the ceremonial orange flowers of welcome. Next onto the stage was a school dance troupe of girls dressed in shining traditional robes, to perform a breathless whirling dance, just before the monsoon rains came down on our parade.
Then it was into the classrooms for everyone, as the Merchant Taylors’ boys began their new roles as teachers of Nepalese school children aged between 8 and 15. With the transformative power of education taken very seriously by the Nepali pupils, our boys had to be on their mettle as they taught consecutive lessons of English, Maths and Science each day. The range of topics was wide, among them: teaching narrative fiction and use of the past tense in English, the classification of animals, the differences between flowering and non-flowering plants, the laws of indices, and exponential equations. Fair to say, the boys were at the sharp end of learning on the job, but they faced up to the challenge, just as they had Mt Tharapadi, and took to heart the responsibility of being a teacher.
Special thanks must go to Mrs Hazan, Mrs Omert and Miss Green for being on hand to help with lesson planning, subject knowledge, and lesson observation and feedback. Credit to the boys: they took everything on board and learnt how to adapt their teaching to ways that best enabled their pupils to learn. By the end of the week of teaching, they looked the real deal. Several, such as Marcus W. and Christoph Z. (U6th), had taken their classes outside – a novelty for the Nepali pupils who are taught in strict rows of desks (girls on one side, boys on the other) – and were using drills, chanting and games, to teach such topics as multiplication. It was joyful to watch, as much as the fierce and hot games of football and basketball, played between the Taylors’ boys and the pupils of HVP Thali, or the more gentle games played by the younger girls, akin to ring-a-ring-of-roses.
Some emerged as natural teachers. Noah W. (U6th) always seemed to have a smile on his face in front of his pupils, Karim O. (U6th) took remarkable care with his lesson planning and marking, and Karim A-H (L6th) held his classes in the palm of his hand with his storytelling. Aarav P. (U6th) did brilliantly, despite being racked by Delhi-belly. Louis P-B. (U6th) was an absolute hit with Class 10 (the studious girls especially), the oldest and academically most demanding class. This was an expedition as much about self-discovery as it was about mere experience.
On the day of departure from the school, we were given a memorable and emotional send-off by the pupils and staff of HVP Thali. We were each presented with individual tokens of gratitude, even as we offered a class set of iPads to help meet the school’s desire for more up-to-date technology in its teaching. We pledged future fundraising to help with the school’s aspiration of purchasing of a new minibus for the safe transportation of pupils to and from home each day. Speeches of thanks were made, as were sincere wishes for the partnership between Merchant Taylors’ and the HVP schools to continue. Then the dancing and the singing began, at first more swaying and measured, but then quickly becoming a jubilant union of Nepal and the UK in scenes more in keeping with summer festivals. Several of the younger pupils had tears in their eyes and gave handmade thank you cards to the Taylors’ boys.
This kind of experience stays with you. It has with me for nearly 30 years now, when I first went to Nepal as a volunteer teacher myself. The boys will have learnt many things about Nepal and had experiences beyond the reach of those who come merely as tourists. They have forged deep connections with the country and people of Nepal, and they have discovered they can make a meaningful difference to the lives of young people, at once so similar and so different to their own.
Since our return, Nepal has sadly come to the world’s attention following the devastating floods close to the border with Tibet. From these almost inconceivable scenes and from reporting in the media both within Nepal and internationally, it is clear that many people living and working in those affected areas have lost everything: homes, livelihoods and, most tragically, their loved ones.
Fortunately, none of the HVP schools, including staff and students, nor the trekking company we work with were directly impacted. Nepal, however, is a small country, and everyone is feeling the trauma of the disaster in some way.
It came as no surprise to me when I was contacted by pupils and their parents involved with the trips to Nepal over the past two years, asking how they might be able to help. With the close connection Merchant Taylors’ has developed with Nepal, there is a powerful motivation within our community to offer support, not only to the schools in our partnership, but towards the disaster relief effort. Many share this same motivation, especially Nepalese communities living within the UK. To which end, the charity HVP Nepal-UK has set up an appeal to raise money, which will be sent to the fund set up by the new Prime Minister of Nepal that is coordinating all international donations. By this means, the money raised will have the most direct impact.
Should you wish to contribute to this appeal, please go to the following link.
https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/hvpnepal-ukdisasterappeal
Anything you can give will be gratefully received at this moment of crisis.
My thanks go to everyone involved with making this expedition possible: Mrs Hazan, Mrs Omert and Miss Green for their steadfast support and good humour; Tim (our patient trek leader) and Tom from True Adventure; Major Ram and his team in Nepal; the Merchant Taylors’ support staff, in particular Mrs Elliott and Mrs Copsey; and Mr Greenaway and the former Head Master, Mr Everson, for their support from the very beginning.
My final thanks go to the boys (and their parents) for agreeing to take part in an enterprise of this nature. Each of them in their own way rose to the challenge that Nepal presented, gave something of themselves and gained experiences and memories that will stay with them for life.
