Thanks for joining me!

Hello everyone! This will be the site where I document my journey from Port Angeles, Washington State to the Grand Canyon, Arizona, over the course of three months, and living off of five dollars a day. This is in support of people in rural Himalayan Nepal, through a charity Himalayan Trust, founded by Sir Edmund Hillary. The first person to summit Everest. All donations will go to Himalayan Trust. This will involve hiking, hitchhiking, camping, and living off of, rice, lentils, chick peas, and the kindness of strangers. My path will take me around the Olympic Peninsula, down the Oregon Coast, into Yosemite and the great Sequoia forests in Central California, and through the Mojave Desert, as well as many more beautiful places.

However beautiful my surroundings may be on this journey may be, the key point of it is helping people in rural Nepal.

In September and October 2018, I had the amazing opportunity to trek through the Himalayas in Northern Nepal. It is incredibly beautiful country, and the people are some of the kindest, most helpful individuals I have ever met. Unfortunately, despite the recent influx of tourism to the area, poverty is still rampant. I was deeply struck when I went to the village of a local friend and saw buildings that have still not been repaired since the 2015 earthquake struck the country. It was not a lack of determination that was the problem, they simply didn’t have money to purchase the building materials.

 

The efforts of this fundraiser will be going towards the Himalayan Trust. They work primarily in the Solukhumbu region of Nepal, where I was trekking and where Everest is located. In this area the poverty rate is 26%, which is 10% higher than the Nepali average. A big goal of the Himalayan Trust is to build schools and improve education opportunities for youth, so they may give back to their communities. In Solukhumbu less than 10% of children graduate secondary school. They also work to provide access to clean drinking water, as well as continued rebuilding efforts from the 2015 Earthquake.

In support of these wonderful people, I will be living off of five dollars a day in the United States for three months stating January 21’st. While it is a somewhat arbitrary number, as many people in the Nepali mountains simply live by what they can generate off the land, it is roughly what people in this area of Nepal live off of everyday. I will slowly make my way from Port Angeles, Washington State, to the Grand Canyon, Arizona. I will also be donating 1000 dollars (CAD) of my own money to get the fundraising going. Any donation helps! Sixty dollars could buy a goat to feed a family, thirty could buy tools for a teacher, twenty a clean water kit to protect against disease. Here is the link to the fundraising page.

https://givealittle.co.nz/fundraiser/create-change-in-rural-nepal

The first update should be coming late January, about a week into the journey. After that you can expect weekly updates, graciously provided by whatever coffee shops will let me use their wifi.  Thanks for tagging along!