Photo - Our room in the house

Our room is divided into two, separated by the wooden beam that runs along the floor. This is obviously the sleeping side. If you step out the window at the head of the bed you are standing on the roof of Jayne's apartment. It's just like having a wee private sun-bathing terrace with lovely panoramic views of the mountains and surrounding villages. The main door into the room is in the other area

This is the chill area (sitting room back home). There is a distinct lack of chairs as most people here sit on the floor, hence the mats on the floor. The wee lone chair is mine because of my gammy knee as sitting on the floor and putting excess pressure on my knee when standing up contributed to it becoming a problem in the first place. Anyway my knee is back to normal again but that's another story for another day. It's a great space for chilling and chatting with friends when they come round to see us and for when Pritam comes upstairs to play chess with Colin, which they're normally still doing 5 hours later! It's really entertaining watching them as they're like a pair of kids.

This is our balcony with our wee kitchen at the end. The small bags with packing tape on them, on the left hand side of the photo is our rubbish bags. There is no refuse collection here so we have to dispose of any rubbish ourselves. Anything that is burnable we take down the path to an area where we burn it. Bottles, cans and plastics are sporadically collected by a wee Indian man who then takes them to somewhere, where he gets money for them. Food rubbish e.g. vegetable peelings - and there's always plenty of that as vegetables are what we mainly eat here - we throw onto the path for the cows and sheep to eat and if there is anything left on our plates after eating it goes into Tiger's bowl. When you buy shopping you don't get it in plastic bags as they are banned here - the shopping is put into bags made from newspaper - so you don't have loads of plastic bags to dispose of. There really is very little waste her as anything that is re-usable for something is not thrown away e.g. when you finish a jar of coffee you then have a new storage jar for the kitchen!

This is the balcony from the other direction. The wee blue bin is for our veggie peelings and it only takes a few days for it to be full! Oh well, it keeps the cows and sheep happy.

This is our wee kitchen. It doesn't look much but there isn't really anything else that you need - well maybe Colin's nespresso machine as he's stuck with instant coffee here and hates it. I remember when we were packing up the flat when we were selling it and, when it came to the kitchen, packed many large boxes of kitchen 'stuff' - more pots, crockery, cutlery, utensils and gadgets than you could ever actually use. Here our kitchen consists of a 2 ring gas burner, 2 plates, 2 bowls, 2 knives forks spoons and serving spoons, a chopping board, frying pan, sieve, cheese grater and some storage jars - most of which are re-cycled coffee or mayonaise jars - and it really is more than adequate. We don't have running water on the top floor so we keep water in a bucket by the side of the cooker for wiping surfaces etc. There is a sink in the main kitchen with running water and an outside water tap at the bottom of our stairs and this is where we wash our pots and dishes. The water comes from natural springs higher up the mountains. Its very cold, clean and perfectly safe to drink. Next time you buy bottled water, buy Himalayan water and that's the same water that we are drinking. We keep a couple of 2l bottles that we fill from the tap and keep in the room for filling the kettle. With the amount of tea that is drank here they need filling several times a day! Keeps us fit though going up and down the steep spiral staircase.