Day 1 at EcoSystems

First day of work is always exciting, interesting and fast-moving. I was introduced to Nandu, our boss, and a few fellow employees, shown around the office and given my nice wide desk next to the window with a pleasant view of the fields outside of the city.

When the tour was over, the clock started to run and there was no time to lose. I started looking a the components of cell phone chargers and seeing how the one modified to work off 6VDC was working. Also realized that we were going to need a discharging station for cell phone batteries. This was made by putting together 52 LEDs that manage to discharge a full cell phone battery in 45min. It's fascinating how many things you could power with your cell phone battery; you know, if you are ever stuck in a James Bond situation, with a cell phone, a Petzl head lamp and AAA batteries, smash the headlamp, take the LEDs out, and use the cell phone battery to power the LEDs and deactivate the bomb. Remember to cut the red wire!!!!

The day ended with a conversation with Nandu, where I was told that if civil work broke in India or more bombs kept killing people in Pakistan, I would have to be evacuated out of Nepal because of my yellow and green hair.

Tuesday came and it turned out that we needed a few electronic components to make our own cell phone charger. Mike and I headed into the city and spent several hours walking around trying to get the right resistors, transistors, capacitors and diodes. After hours of walking and hundreds of conversations with locals that kept telling us that the store next door definitely had them, we found a shop who had all sorts of electronic components. It was also necessary to buy a light sensor and what he handed me seemed exactly like an LED, so I politely asked him if I could use his cell phone but as I started to remove the battery I was stopped by Mike who found the whole situation ridiculous.

Being in Thamel and Asan we took the oportunity to look into mountaneering gear, buying and rental options. We also stumbled upon this awesome buddhist temple, Itum Bahal. This beautiful place is right in the middle of the city, surrounded by crowded little buildings and you can only get to through small little alleys, and once you get into the open square, the huge dome with lines of colorful praying flags hanging from the tower in the middle to the buildings surrounding it, dominate the view.

A partly assembled version of the PedalPower

















LED lamps discharging batteries in their user boxes

















Mike and David going across a river using the wire bridge

















Yellowgreen hair by the Buddhist temple Itum Bahal