Recently we, the Nepalese people, celebrated the greatest festival of the nation called Dashain. This is the festival in which the elder members of the society put on Tika on the forehead of Youngers and give them blessing. The younger ones show their respect and greet to the elders. All the citizens who are out of their birthplace return to their home to celebrate the festival. Dashain longs for 15 days starting from new moon day up to full moon day. Putting on Tika is done in 10th day of Dashain and in some parts of the country it is extended up to 15 days. In my birth place it is done in 10th day only. There is a long history of Dashain and each days have their specific values. I don’t want to go through that as I am here to explain my Dashain celebration being a local guide.
Generally we use to visit the places sometimes by chance, sometimes by will and sometimes by need but being a local guide we have one thing common which is mapping. Like other citizens, on the 8th day, I also went to my birthplace to celebrate Dashain with my parents. Generally my mum starts the counting of days of my arrival from one month ago. So it’s certain that the moment was blissful.
In Dashain we use to pray the feminine power; the goddess Durga. In my birthplace Chhatradev Village Municipality there are a lot of goddess Durga temple in apex of almost every hills. This time I focused on mapping the temples with the help of my dad. He helped me to reach in different temples with his motorbike. Beside that I travelled in almost all parts of village municipality. Adding local businesses is of course a regular work.
So what’s the difference of visiting the places as a regular person and a local guide? Reviewing the places is not an easy task, especially the historic places. I consulted with the elders to know the history of the places. A concept triggered on my mind that the place can be developed as the tourist destination by forming a trekking trail utilizing the existing houses as homestays.
It’s joyful to roam around in the hills but there are certain pitfalls. Cellular internet is available but it’s hard to upload large files and it’s a bit costly. Sometimes map shows the error ‘Adding missing places isn’t available in this reason’. Using the hard effort to reach the destination the places are added but algorithm rejects the places as not applied.
I have an experience that places with contact numbers and websites have higher chances to be added but such information lack in village areas. I am still struggling to add the places. The best thing is I am not tired, I haven’t gave up. I am the one to map the place of my known. Meanwhile I missed to watch the live cast of connect live and the live of WW friendship forever meetups.
Thank you so much all the fellows for your courageous support so far.
I am also thankful to my parents & sisters who helped me a lot. I wish to call them unregistered local guides, specially my dad. Please feel free to leave feedback of any kind so that I can get the courage or the suggestion to improve my journey of local guide even better. The 2nd great festival ‘Tihar’ is coming. I will be back with another exciting memory. Thank you so much for your valuable time to read the story. Happy guiding! Happy mapping!
If you love to check the exciting photos I’ve collected, here’s the link: https://photos.app.goo.gl/7hemJV4gtzA9GaT57
