Flying into Kathmandu is very dramatic. Most of the two hour flight from Bangkok is over low lying flood lands and tropical rain forests typical in SE Asia. Then, out of practically nowhere, the land climbs. Within a matter of 30 minutes, the view changes from green lush forests to permafrost towering above 7,000 to 8,000 feet.

Tribhuvan International rests at about 4,500 ft above sea level. Flying into Nepal’s capital gives you the impression (at least looking at it from above) that it is a sleepy city. Once you land, however, this notion is quickly corrected.

Kathmandu has about 2 million people squeezed into a small area. Even coming from Thailand (itself considered a third world country), you can see right away that Nepal is wracked with poverty.

The dust creates some of the worst air pollution I’ve ever experienced. The smog all but blocks out the Himalayas from site. Traffic is congested throughout the day, making it difficult to get anywhere in the city.

But we didn’t stay in the city…

Instead, we went to a place in the middle of nowhere, far outside of Kathmandhu. They’ve got this beautiful monastery out there, at Chapageon.

That’s where I had tentatively planned to complete a feasibility study on installing solar panels (more details on that in another post). It’s all part of the work I do for my business and my private foundation.

You see… I love traveling in Asia, especially in Thailand and Tibet. If used properly, I could pursue this philanthropic cause through my private foundation to help people in that area.

Assuming that my foundation was properly set up and its Mission Statement appropriate, this could allow me to travel in Asia on official charity business. Proper due diligence, among other things, would determine who to help and how to help them.

The cool thing is that I get to live my passion and do it all in a tax efficient manner. Yet my work for my charity is probably the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.

So as we were traveling to the monastery at Chapageon, I finally reached my two primary contacts there, Nikki Glegg and Joel Ho. And once I arrived, I found them to be wonderful hosts and two of the most admirable people I’ve met in a long time. Nikki ran the medical center and Joel (an engineer by training) was the jack-of-all problems on site.

I also got to meet the almost 60 boys who are monks in training. They’re all between the ages of about 5 years old and maybe 10 or 11 years old. All of them were very, very polite.

All of the boys are orphans and the monastery represents their whole life. While training to become monks, they are not required to take the cloth and in fact are trained in many areas of the trades. Some will eventually choose to leave the monastery and build their lives outside the monastery, while others will remain with the monastery for their entire lives.

I spent maybe 50 bucks getting what’s called “Moomoos.” It’s kind of like dumplings. And that’s their idea of a party in the monastery. They all drank Cokes, and then they all did this wonderful dance for me and my group after what we had done.

It was striking to see how a relatively small sum could make such a difference to the boys — and to the monastery. I’ll write more about that next time…

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