Kumary House and the girls Poon-Hill Cheppe and Kumar

Kumary House

September 2001 in Nepal I met Tony at the New Katmandu Lodge close by Durbar Square. He was having breakfast with my friends Thomas and Julien, we were going to visit Patan for the day. Anyway, we had a chat and he told us what he was up to over there. He invited us for dinner at the orphanage he recently created. That sounded like a good experience, but we were having good experience every day in Katmandu.

By the end of the day we almost forgot about it, but we eventually met with Tony at the hostel. We left and walked across a part of Katmandu that we wouldn't have see otherwise. It was pissing rain, Tony had this big umbrella and we had plastic bags. Here is the place, we walk up the stairs and about a dozen little girls jumped on us as we passed the front door. The party is on. What a great opportunity to put the tape of the latest Nepali hits, and there we go dancing. To be honest, I've hardly seen such big smiles on kids faces in Europe, such genuine happy faces.

After a few trips in Nepal, Tony set up this place that August. I guess he was torn apart like many if us between the charm, the greatness of its people, its landscape and the poorness all around. We all want to react to this but a few of us actually do the move. Maybe Tony had enough of all these silly little things that are so important over here and found those smiles more fulfilling. We all understand why Tony set this up when we get in the Kumary house, but this doesn't take the credit away because of the time, energy and money that you have to spend to make an adventure like that possible.

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