A lot of sweat and tears went into getting this tiny stamp…

I feel the exclamation point at the end of this post’s title is somewhat misleading. Exclamation points to me usually denote excitement and extreme enthusiasm, but the truth is that finally getting my Nepal study visa was somewhat anti-climatic in the end.

Almost three weeks, endless amounts of paperwork, one hefty bank transfer, many ATM withdrawals, and copious tests of my patience later I finally had the precious stamp. But it’s not been easy.

And the will to get it done, in all honesty, wasn’t there in the first place.

Truth is, as much as you all know I love Nepal, I’ve been somewhat ambivalent about this visa and staying for another year. This plan (getting a student visa, learning Nepali, and trying to start a social enterprise on the side of my freelance writing work) was what I had intended to do back in 2020.

Nepali lessons! And no, I can’t read half of that yet.

I came to Kathmandu almost starry-eyed in the January of that fateful year, excited to finally be living here and trying something new.

I was a ball of happiness and enthusiasm back then (sigh).

But the pandemic, well, it knocked a lot out of me, the aforementioned enthusiasm being one thing. The first year of the pandemic was just trauma upon trauma, and 2021 was what I called “The Long Wait,” i.e. holding out to see what would transpire and where the land would lie at the end of all of this absolute madness.

At some point last year, however, it occurred to me that there was no set end in sight. I realised that the pandemic would slowly peter out instead of there being some grand and definitive ending to the whole thing. That’s when I decided it was time to get my life back on track and I headed back to Kathmandu (I was in Cyprus getting vaccinated and waiting to be let back into Nepal for most of 2021).

The truth is a lot can change in two years, and as I find myself right back at where I was at the beginning of 2020 before the pandemic started (in Nepal, hoping to work on a bunch of things) the major difference is I’m now somewhat jaded. The excitement I had has gone. The rose-tinted glasses are off. I’m just…tired.

Does anyone else feel that way after two years of the pandemic?

My typical work view.

You could ask “Then Andrea, why did you decide to give this a shot if you don’t feel the same way anymore?” Well, there are a number of reasons. Firstly, I’m not quite ready to leave. In the past, I’ve always felt at my happiest in Nepal, and I don’t want to leave on a negative note. Hell, I don’t even want to leave on an ambivalent note, so I want to make new memories to eradicate the shit that happened in 2020 and 2021.

Secondly, I know I can have knee jerk reactions to crappy things and that knee jerk reaction is typically selling my shit, getting on a plane and saying bye-bye. It’s my SOP. It’s what I like to do when I’m bored/restless/fed up.

It was time to challenge that and try a different way of doing things.

And so I find myself in Nepal with at least a year here ahead of me (the student visa is valid for eight months and I can get another five months on a tourist visa straight afterwards should I want to). I’ve realised this is the one time in my life where I really have to try hard to make stuff happen. I cannot sit back and bemoan how indifferent or lost I feel – I have to think less and do more.

And that, my friends, is my motto for the coming 12 months. Think less, do more, and rediscover the love I’ve always had for this beautifully chaotic country.

Oh and learn Nepali! Nepal ekdam ramro chha!

I hope to blog a lot more over the coming months about life in Nepal, so if you’re interested, stay tuned. I’m thinking of setting up a newsletter in the near future, too so that you can keep up to date with when blog posts land. Let me know if you think you’d sign up for something like that. And also let me know if there’s anything specific you’d like to know about freelance writing or living in Nepal. My DMs/emails are always open 😊

To address the elephant in the room that I’m sure no one else is bothered about other than me – no, I didn’t complete my 30-day blogging challenge. I got busy before my trip to Dubai and, well, it fell by the wayside. HOWEVER, it wasn’t a failure and it served its purpose. It got me back into the habit of writing for myself, and, as you can tell by this post, it also helped me to get into blogging again. Mission accomplished!  

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