Daily Snippet #6 Trying to get some cash

A fairly typical day for me today. Spent lots of it cycling through national parks in Nepal which were pretty awesome. In the space of 10 seconds I saw 3 deer, 2 monkeys and a peacock!

I also had my first sighting of the Himalayas!

Granted, this is probably just the outer edge as these don’t seem that high but it makes me excited for later in the trip where hopefully I’ll get a better view (and ideally see Mt Everest).

Arriving at the hotel for the night I realised I needed some cash so after checking in, I went for a little walk to find an ATM.

I use a Monzo card (using MasterCard) as they’ve got a good deal on foreign transactions and withdrawals but for the life of me, I couldn’t find an ATM which would take it.

I had the same issue in India but here I tried 10 and not a single one worked. This could prove a real issue and need a solution ASAP. When I’m in Pokhara and Kathmandu this shouldn’t be as much of an issue but in these smaller towns where not many places take card and I clearly can’t take out money very often, I’m going to have to find one that works and take out a serious wedge.

A decent chunk of the journey so far in Nepal has been going past people’s homes surrounded by their farmland. They may have a cow, a couple of goats and chickens and several fields with crops in. They live in concrete homes with electricity so thankfully they have some amenities but as a westerner, it is strange to see people do fully self sufficient.

Here I am worrying about how to get cash out and there are people that I’m passing every day who will rarely use cash as they are able to produce everything then need to survive themselves.

I think that we’ve become so distanced from what we need to survive and we live in a world of what we want, we forget how our ancestors lived for millions of years.

It’s refreshing to see and hopefully moments like this will have a positive impact on the way I live when I come home (eventually).