Water Shortage in Sarangkot

In some ways, it is strange for me to be discussing about water crisis in Sarangkot. I say that because Sarangkot (and I suspect the entire Sarangkot-Kaskikot-Lumle 20-km ridge) is the rainiest place in Nepal. But I only say that it's strange in "some ways" and not "all ways" because life is full of funny paradoxes. I would go as far as to say that calling paradoxes paradoxes is itself a paradox. The best carpenter, being too busy, doesn't get to make his own wardrobe. God creates, but also destroys, etc. etc.

Sarangkot, like many mountain villages (I use the word "mountain" here to mean "high hills") has water crisis. I think that is the norm. Owing to gravity, water flows down and is available in the plains where rivers flow and lakes form. Except for a few mountains, I think the Australian Camp atop Kande is an exception, many many mountains in Nepal and, I suspect, many countries, have water crises. That is, unless something is done about it. Here, happily, things have gotten better over the years.

My grandmother tells the tales of how she woke up at four in the morning, walked for an hour to a place called "Budimul", a natural spring with a stone-and-sand hand-built reservoir, and waited in queue to fetch a jar of water to the family needs for the day. Two or three members of the house (usually female members i.e. daughter-in-laws accompanying their mother-in-law) would practice this routine every single day. This was the tale of every single household in Sarangkot and perhaps, in many mountain villages of Nepal until came the technology of pipes and cement came.

But in a country as poor as Nepal, a limited budget could only do so much. Our village had a single tap where everyone fetched their water. Many mornings before school time, my sister and I went to the public water tap, a five-minute walk from the house with as many jars as we could carry back, and sat in queue with our friends and neighbors, sometimes even fought with them for water. Water was only available between seven and eight in the morning, perhaps to make best use of the children in the house who had finished their homework and had nothing better to do than to fetch a jar of water before getting ready for school. Remember, school starts in Nepal at ten o'clock. This water came from Dhampus, a village 12-kilometer away. It came in subpar pipes (the norm in undeveloped countries) using gravity. In its long, winding route, the pipe would be broken or cut-and-stolen would happen regularly. In other words, the water supply was intermittent. Sometime water, sometime no water, like my mother used to say requesting tourists to save water. Back then, Superview used to be a three-room guesthouse with a shared bathroom. The water for the bathroom came from a 500-liter tank on the roof. The water which filled the tank was carried by the family from the public tap.

Today, every house is fitted with a tap that dispenses city water into their homes. This water comes "Budimul" which, translated means "Old Spring" using an electric pump. This is the same place my grandmother used to fetch water. In the dry season, the water supply is limited. We only get about about 500 liters of water once every two days. In the monsoon season, while we do collect rainwater for washing and cleaning, we still rely on the Budimul for drinking and cooking, which is a problem sometimes because with the monsoon comes thunder and lightning strikes which can damage the electrical pump that brings our water. This is to say, that while the situation has improved significantly over the year, it's not enough.

And the elephant in the room is that at Superview currently, we have 17 bathrooms (of which 5 have BATHTUBs). Are you kidding me? Well, why do we have bathtub is for another story. They do have their pros and their cons and especially so in a place like Sarangkot. So when Budimul water isn't enough for us, we use our 30,000 liter reservoir tank and when that gets used up to, we call a truck that brings water from Pokhara (likely from a deep bore well) and dumps to our reservoir tank at a price almost ten times what it charges in the city. K garne? (A Nepali phrase that translates to saying something like, Ah well, what can we do).

All that is to say that, water is both expensive and precious here. Please save it.

At Superview, for this reason, we do not allow guests to do laundry unless they fully understand how precious water is to us and promise to use only cold water collected before the shower water turns hot. We also request guests to collect this cold water before shower turns hot in the buckets we provide for use in the gardens. Some appreciate this as a gesture of our sustainability measure and some find it a nuisance. However, for us, it's just the way of life up there. We must save water, and it's not that we hate that we have to save water. It's just what it is.