Last night I met up with Lala and one of his friends, Sunil. Sunil owns an export company distributing pasmina, silk, and semi precious stones all over the world. He’s only 24, but already he has 4 people working for him and partnerships with different factories in Nepal and India.

Sunil’s story was incredible and a real inspiration. He grew up in a remote village in north India. From the age of 6-13 he was a fisherman and a farmer. His family were very poor, and until he was 13, he’d never seen a car or a white person. Then, at 13 he came to Kathmandu on his own and begun to work in a factory. Over the next 5 years he went from sweeping the floors, to filling orders, to eventually being the manager. He learned to speak Nepalese as well as 6 other languages (enough to sell things to tourists).

He set up a few companies and a few of them failed. Then, he set up his current export business and took a different approach. He thought that everyone in Kathmandu was too focused on ‘today’ and didn’t think about ‘tomorrow’. Store owners hassled customers to come into their shop, and this meant that every store was in bitter competition with each other. He said they were always trying to pick the fruit off the trees, rather than planting a tree and picking the fruit later.

Sunil focused on developing good karma in which he began to develop relationships with people by doing nice things for them without pressuring them to buy anything. Like inviting people over for dinner, showing them around Nepal etc. Gradually he built up a network of friends from all over the world, and they began to tell their friends about Sunil’s shop. When these people came to Kathmandu, they would come straight to him. So through doing nice things for other people and developing good karma, business began to grow. In the west, relationship building is the key to sales, and what he did was develop a very successful referral scheme. This has now grown into a full export company and now isn’t focused on retail, but wholesale.

I really liked the way Sunil thought about things because his opinion is that ‘what goes around comes around’. He said people have taken advantage of him over time, but he believes if you constantly do good things for other people, then the favours will be returned, and success will come your way.

At his house, we chatted over dinner for a few hours, eating rice and curry with our hands. It was the first time since I have been away that I felt comfortable in the company of friends. I’ve been spending all my time walking around, and then being alone in a small hotel room, and it was nice to chat in a house.

The power was out so we had candles lit all over the room, and Sunil was burning incense. Then we did some meditation and I was amazed at how easily I was able to clear my mind of thoughts. Back home I just hadn’t been able to meditate because my mind was always going 100 miles an hour and I couldn’t silence it. I guess it shows how much I’ve relaxed since leaving, and I now feel like I’m settling into holiday life.

The night went on and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Sitting in the quiet dark with the flickering lights of the candles, the crackling of the incense, and our voices speaking softly about the simplicity of life. It was great speaking to someone who thought in such a fundamentally different way to me, or anyone else I know. However when he started talking about flying to different dimensions when he meditates (for 5 hours at a time) he lost me.

Shane arrived last night and I’m seeing the two of them tonight. I also found a cinema showing Batman so I’m going to see that now. Stoked!

Tomorrow Sunil and I are going to hire a motorbike and  spend the day driving around some local villages in the mountains where I will apparently get the best local food.

On Tuesday Shane, Nicola and I head 6 hours on a bus to Pokhara to begin the trek.