मलाई याद गर्नुभयो? मैले गरेन....so here I am in this lazy, idyllic surrounds of Unnati Cultural Village (UCV), 24 hrs later.

Last night I walked through the stars with the crickets and an occasional field mouse scurrying. Unnati used to have deers, swans, ducks and wild ducks pigeons) also roaming the 6 bighas (almost 10+ acres). The deers have since been left out in the nearby jungles of Chitwan but the other boarders remain. All of them my fellow boarders at this 400-tree natural grove that is the only shock of forest that greet you on the busy Mahendra Highway that joins the Eastern reaches of Nepal to the Western borders.

Just off the restaurant on the east, a five-roomed Dehari (what the Tharus used to call their home cluster) greet you. Made with bamboo, thatch and a spine of concrete, these mudwalled rooms with modern amenities are unbelievably charming. Why? Because they have traditional Tharu-styled open bathrooms where water pours down traditional Nepali Dhungedharas (yeah, they used to have dragon-shaped faucets pouring spring water) instead of showers under the open sky! Despite the humidity of a monsoon evening, I loved it. I could see the stars and the water drained off a sweaty afternoon’s travails.

But then there is more at the UCV. There is Bodhi Kunja with 2 deluxe bedrooms and a private space for relaxation and Open Courtyards that make you imagine and create, read/paint/write (notice how this hardnosed journalist is changing colours?) or relax reading and writing.

And then there is Kala - the Art Hotel with 1 master bedroom and 2 deluxe rooms and the Artspace an open space which is used as an open art laboratory. Not very far off, you can see the handiwork of the stay at Kala in Pauva – the residential Art Gallery which pushes your imagination from legacies of the past to interpretations of the future.

PS: I won’t give away anything more than this here as magics can’t be repeated.

As I drifted away into the dreams of toads croaking and crickets singing – I could feel my heartbeats thumping or were they drumbeats at Dabali?