Briefing for Everest Base Camp Trek at Christ Church

Everyone listening intently so as not to miss out details

Deepak paying attention too!

Q & A session with Deepak

We were at Christ Church Secondary School for a briefing session last night. As a centre for outdoor excellence, the school has organised many outdoor trips for its students.

We had the pleasure of participating in their trip to Annapurna Base Camp in 2007 and climbing Mt Kinabalu (see previous post here) in 2008.This round, we are really excited to be able to support YMCA for all its ground operations in Nepal for this amazing all-girls team to trek to Everest Base Camp!

It is inevitable for parents to worry for their girls going on the trip as everyone is a novice when it comes to trekking. What more, with little understanding about Nepal except its famous Moaist fightings and the perception of lack of food in Nepal....little do they know that millions of tourists flock there every year to do what their girls are doing! :)

Anyway, it helped that Deepak, as an officer from Nepal Tourism Baord and trek consultant, was there to share with views and gave an update of the current situation. Having been on part of the trek last year, I urged the girls to be clear in their objective and keep in mind what will motivate them on the trek. It is important to be focused and not habour any thought of giving up before trying.

It was wonderful to gain the parents' understanding (and a granny was there too!) at the end of the session. We look forward to assist the team in their quest and working towards a successful trip together.

Happy Chinese New Year 2009

A yak walking in Dingbuche within the Everest National Park.

Dear all,

In the auspicious year of the Ox, we would like to wish you a Happy Chinese New Year! In good times or bad times, let us look forward to a better tomorrow everyday. Stay Happy!

Yours Sincerely,

All of us at Divine

Kent Ridge Secondary - Thank You Card

Words cannot express our appreciation enough. Thank you very much.
Ms Sujeetha, Head of Department

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Dearest Deepak,
Sincere thanks for all your effort! Your commitment and patience have certainly impressed me. I also enjoyed all your sharing of the Nepali culture and lifestyle. Thank You for everything! You have sone an excellent job!
Ms Lim, Teacher

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Dearest Deepak,
It is a comfort to have you with us all this while. Your care, patience and attentiveness is greatly appreciated. Your smile never fails to brighten up our day. We’ve learnt a lot from you this trip. Sincerely, thank you.
Ms Chua, Teacher

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Thank you so much for everything. Your patience inspires me. We will really miss you. You are very kind. Thank you so much.
Syubri

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Thank You for this whole awesome trip and taking such good care of us.
Karina

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Thank you for everything especially during the four hours trek! Thank You!
Felicia

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Thanks a whole lot, Mr Deepak, for everything.
Peinah

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Thank You for guiding us along in the trip.
Frederick

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Thanks for being so very patient with us!
Claudia

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Thanks for being patients and all.
Natt

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Thanks a lot! Danyabad!
David

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Thanks for your guidance!
Azraa

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Thanks for guiding us for the whole trip!
Khalid

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Thanks! We will be missing you!
Joanne

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Thank You Very Much!
Indah

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Thanks for guiding us along!
Diana

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Thank you for everything.
Fatimah

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Thank you very much!
Yong Wen

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Thank you so much!
Maxine

Kent Ridge Secondary in Nepal 2008

Sent-off at Changi Terminal 2


Briefing upon arrival in Dhulikhel

Breakfast at Dhulikhel

Loading the luggages

Trekking from Dhulikhel to Nagarkot

Photo opportunity with Deepak

Toast and potatoes - Breakfast at Nagarkot

Eggs and Vegetables - Breakfast at Nagarkot

Beach ball for break time at village school

Oragami session

Teeth brushing techniques

A group shot with ethnic costumes from Singapore

How about a cake to celebrate the success of the trip?

Jake receiving his participation certificate from Deepak

The result of this trip - a brand new volleyball court

Kent Ridge Secondary School was in Nepal for their service learning trip in November 2008. If you have read about their trip and viewed the trip photos on our website www.nepalexplore.com , take a peek into those behind-the-scenes shots here. Our Singaporean students and teachers are really a great bunch of people to be with!

The All-About-Nepal Dinner at Vince's

Deepak and Angie engrossed in the Mustang trip discussion

Gift from Angie - Beautiful painting of Annapurna Range

Our talked-about out of print book - 'East of Lo Monthang'

Deepak and I were invited to dinner at Vince's place at Bt Timah tonight. It was a joy to get together with everyone after so long. It reminded me of the first dinner we had at Angie's about a year ago when Deepak was planning their Everest Base Camp Trek and Panchase Trek in Nepal. Thereafter we met up for dinner at Shin's place after the trek.Tonight we had gathered again to conclude the Mustang/Jomson Trek which Angie, Don, Grace and Chia Chi are going for this May. Deepak also had an intensive discussion with Shin about a group painting trip to Nepal. Shin does wonderful water colour painting and it would be her second trip to Nepal to paint. We were all reminiscing about our last Nepal trip as we flipped through Vince's album and our Island Peak album.

I also brought back 2 very interesting books - Mastering Light & Shade in Watercolour by Mr Ong Kim Seng and East of Lo Monthang - In the Land of Mustang by Peter Matthiessen kindly loaned to us by Shin and Angie respectively. According to Shin, Mr Ong is famed for his paintings which he did in Nepal. Indeed, when I flipped through the gorgeous hard cover book, the paintings of the Nepalese architecture and daily lives stood out. And it was love at first sight when I set eyes on Angie's book on Mustang. First of all, the book is already out of print which makes it really precious (well, at least for all of us Mustang fans) and what more, who can resist the gorgeous photographs when you turn the pages?

The icing on the cake must be the gift from Angie - a painting of the Annapurna range in West Nepal. I had mentioned over the last luncheon that I loved a painting of the Everest by popular Nepalese painter D Ram but did not managed to get it. This gift from Angie more than makes up the regret I had, simply because it is a gift from a very special friend. Thank you so much Angie. The painting is now sitting nicely on our pink wall. It's a great piece to have for our nice cozy living room!

Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) at ITB Asia Singapore 2008

NTB officials and participants at NTB Booth (Deepak on extreme left).

NTB Booth

Edwin Siew at NTB booth

The Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) exhibited at one of Asia's premier travel trade show ITB Asia held in Singapore from 22 - 24 October 2008. Deepak and I were busy at the tradeshow floor promoting Nepal as a travel destination at the NTB booth. It was a hectic three days event with lots of follow-up work everyday after the show ended. The interesting thing was, at this trade show meant for trade visitors, we spoke to many who were enquiring about Nepal for their personal trips! I guess Nepal still stirs in the hearts of many as THE destination to visit once in their lifetime. And for those who have been, only they know why they kept returning. We were happy to play host to Deepak's colleagues from the NTB Kubil and Hikmat. They both loved Singapore food! It was also to meet Edwin who came to visit everyone at the booth. Edwin was one of the member of the first Singapore Mt Everest Expedition Team to summit Mt Everest on 25 May 1998. The show was a success for the NTB as we managed to raise awareness of Nepal's tourism scene to many agents who visited and participated at the show. Having returned from the Island Peak Expedition ourselves in early October, it was a joy for Deepak to share his climbing experience at the booth. We are looking forward to the next ITB Asia where we can create greater awareness about Nepal's political stability and travel highlights!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2008

This is us at the the Namche Bakery during our Island Peak Expedition this year

Hi all,

Namaste!

It’s been a truly rewarding and exciting year for us in 2008 at Divine.

For a start, more of you avid travellers and trekkers seeked us out to plan your trips to Nepal and around the Himalaya. It was our pleasure to have you travel with us and thank you for trusting us with your travel and trekking plans. It has been very enjoyable discussing your trips with you and even more so when you returned to share your travel tales with us. Thank you very much for all your feedback, photos, gifts and most of all, friendship. To those of you who recommended your friends and families to us, we thank you deeply for your support and hope we have served you all well.

To all teachers, despite the hefty planning, admin and operation work for each of our projects together, we salute you for your professionalism and tireless enthusiasm! Thank you for your constant feedback, sharing and trust. It is always a great learning experience as we work together to shape programs, learning objectives and travel needs for our students. Your insights are invaluable and we hope to incorporate more of them in next year’s programs. Besides, sports and CIP in the village schools, we are exploring cultural exchange programs and arrangement with the local Nepali schools in the city. We will continue to refine and explore new programs so they are customised to meet your objectives and remain relevant to your students’ learning needs.

This year we incorporated Divine as a private limited company and moved our office from Paya Ubi to Serangoon Avenue 4. We obtained our travel license and are working from a fully equipped home office. We always try our best to keep our office in pristine condition until the arrival of new travel brochures! Well, right now, the Kashmir collaterals are sitting in one corner right behind Deepak’s space. Interestingly, most of you are keen to check out our new office and we most certainly welcome you! I am trying to learn how to brew a good cup of masala tea so we can welcome you with a touch of Nepal when you next visit us.

At the end of year 2007, Deepak was appointed the Honourary PR Representative of the Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) in Singapore. We got real busy managing “Naturally Nepal Evening”, a roadshow and networking session for tour agents and operators at Traders Hotel. We had the pleasure of the Singapore Women Everest Team joining us at the event and introduced the iron ladies to the NTB officials. We helped organised a Nepalese song and dance item for Fairfield Methodist Secondary School when the school celebrated International Friendship Day. In August, NTB participated at the inaugural ITB Asia 2008, the largest travel trade show held in Suntec Convention Hall. Again, we helped put together the exhibition booth and had a successful presence at the event. In between events, Deepak played host to the Tourism Minister, NTB CEO and other NTB officials who came by Singapore.

On the media front, it has been an exciting time for us too. In 2007, NTUC Lifestyle magazine featured Nepal as the travel destination in its November issue on both its Chinese and English magazines. We met up again with the Chinese editorial team this time. We shall not reveal the content of the feature article but you can watch out for it in the February 09 issue of NTUC Lifestyle. We also appeared in ST Life! Travel to advice on last minute getaway to Nepal. You can view these articles in http://www.nepalexplore.com/media.asp. We were also approached to assist as a fixer for an episode on the ‘Culture X’ series in September (shown on Arts Central, now known as ‘OKTO’). It was great fun for our team in Singapore and Nepal as we made travel arrangements, co-ordinated the project, arranged for acting cast and even our staff doubled up as the main cast! Some of you may have recognised Subas and Tshering and wondered how come they were on TV…you were not seeing things, they were indeed filming for the documentary series! You can view the process here at http://divinesingapore.blogspot.com/2008/08/filming-in-nepal.html

Since the inauguration of our blog, many of you have shared that you enjoyed reading our blog. Thank you for visiting our blog. Despite running crazy schedules at work, we will continue to keep the stories coming in. Guess what, the best part of maintaining the Divine Blog is that we never run out of stories! As much as we enjoyed writing it, the constant challenge is to ensure consistency in uploading them. Usually we are not able to do so in Nepal due to extremely slow uploading speed. Hence, the lapse of inputs while we are away. :P That said, although our inputs may not be real time, the contents are certainly REAL and heartwarming. So, keep reading!

Moving on to 2009, while we work on other tourism-related projects and look to extend our marketing efforts to more parts of Europe and Asia, we also hope to open up more destinations. We also discovered many of you first timers favoured doing the easy trek route in Nepal. We will explore more easy treks so you can enjoy the great outdoors and nature in a stress-free manner. Obviously the toilets and showers will not be as comfortable as home but hey, ain’t this what adventure is all about? :)

That said, we do hope you would graduate from the easy trek routes and take the step to explore the other popular treks around Annapurna, Langtang and even Everest regions. If you talk to those who have been, the gleam in their eyes and the excitement in their speech will definitely spur you with a “Why not?” With a good sense of humour, some curiosity and belief in your ability, you can certainly achieve what many of us have. If you have been dreaming about doing THE trek and are unsure or have no time for guide books, talk to us. Let us help you turn your dream into reality and look back with a smile.

As for corporate clients, we are happy to continue customising your travel itinerary for that very important corporate retreat! Well, the price of air tickets are not exactly in our favour now. However, we are optimistic for next year as we begin planning new corporate trips in Spring (March to May) and look forward to falling ticket prices to the Himalayan countries!

As the end of the season and the year draws near, we are also looking forward to a much needed rest over the yuletide holidays. It is always good to be home – of course we meant Singapore – we look forward to meet up all of you either for good food or kopi and most of all, we would love to spend some time with our family and usher in the new year. Of course, for those of you who have been waiting for our return to discuss your trips, it is business as usual at our Serangoon office. We are closed on public holidays but will be contactable anytime. We will be away before the Chinese New Year but no worries, we will update our travel schedule when it is near.

Till then, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you. Enjoy your holidays to the fullest and see you soon!

Yours truly,
Deepak and Alice