Hi from Tara Linhardt!
I came to Nepal in February to set up lots of cool details and “off the beaten path” things for my Music, Arts, and Culture Tour that I led in March again this year. My clients arrived just fine. We had a fantastic week of Music, Arts, Culture and some jams with local musicians. Above is a little clip of one jam we had with a local sarangi (traditional Nepali 4 stringed fiddle) player named Kiran Nepali.
After that first week most of my clients also signed up for the light trekking week and we went out into the mountains and got lots of lovely views and exercise and more stories to tell, and had a few more jams at various altitudes.
We discovered that just a few days after our return to Kathmandu from trekking that Nepal was planning to close its airports and borders and businesses for a large scale Covid-19 shutdown to try to keep it out of the country. Nepal was lucky since it was very late to get any Corona cases. Nepal had the advantage that it is really not on the way to anyplace. It is kind of like living at the end of a dead end street. One comes to Nepal because one is coming to Nepal, not because they are passing through, which has meant that in this case it was way behind on getting any people with any signs of Corona.
Anyway, to make a long story short, all my clients safely made it back home to their homes in the US in March, but I remained here. The airports, borders, and businesses have remained closed and probably will be for some time to come.
While in Nepal, I have been staying busy by teaching online music mandolin, guitar, and ukulele lessons, creating a Patreon page and making some fun videos in hopes to entertain folks no matter where they are. Here is one of the first videos that we made in our apartment as we were just starting to learn how to use the StopMotion app. This may give new meaning to “driving that guitar,” hee hee. The music in the background on the video is a tune I wrote that is on my CD.
If folks are interested in seeing any of our other videos, or in lessons, or in just saying hi they can send an email to me.
Stay safe and healthy and keep on pickin!
Hope to see lots of you when the world opens back up and we have festivals and concerts and jams to bring us together in person again. 🙂
Tara
