Highcliffe School Nepal 2019

Our World Challenge trip to Nepal is fast approaching and our team of Sixth Formers are in their final phase of preparation.

Wednesday 1st May saw the final team meeting with World Challenge Expeditions and the 2019 Nepal expedition team.

The chance meet their expedition leader caused some excitement, almost equalled by the chocolate finger sugar rush in some of the team! Our leader, Rachel, has a vast array of expedition experience and is a qualified "wilderness medic" which will hopefully is a skill that won’t be needed. She ran through some team games and tasks designed to help the team gel further as well as helping her get to know the characters we have within the team.

Afterwards we dealt with the admin of the trip, discussed transport and getting prepared with things like our flights and the itinerary, as well as discussing the main project in a school, which will involve building and decorating the school as well as having time to interact with the school children and perhaps playing a game of football or netball!

Parents were given more information from World Challenge regarding visas, medical conditions, vaccinations, fitness, white water rafting as part of their R&R phase as well as personal kit.

Reminders for the parents of all the safety back up in place for the expedition such as satellite phones, global positioning beacons and smart phones all of which link to the emergency room that is staffed 24/7, 365 days of the year to help communicate in case of an emergency.

Parents were also introduced to the expedition leader who gave a summary of her years of experience in climbing, trekking and outdoor instruction of climbing and mountaineering. Having been to Nepal previously, Rachel has a good understanding of how the country works and common issues that might arise in Nepal.

The build-up day will be on Friday 12th July in school, when all the kit they have packed will be checked for anything extra that they should not have or anything they may have forgotten.

With time flying by the team is gradually getting more excited about the expedition and yet it feels a long way off!

Final decisions are being made, how warm the sleeping bag will need to be, how will photos be taken without a mobile phone and how will we cope without them for 3 weeks! This hasn't seemed to worry the students and instead they seemed interested in living without their tech for a time!

With questions from the parents having been answered, it was time to depart with a growing realisation of how close the expedition really is!