“How are Your Camino Feet?” Walking 1600 Kilometres on the Santiago de Compostela Trail

There are three questions hikers and pilgrims ask each other when walking the 1600 kilometre Santiago de Compostela, or Camino, pilgrimage trail. Where are you from? How far have you walked? How are your feet? A fourth question of “Why?” usually only comes after you’ve shared a bottle (or two) of wine at a crowded table, the exhaustion of the day almost forgotten in the well-being of a full stomach and the camaraderie around you.

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“Kathmandu: What is the Worth of a Well?”

Antoine de Saint-Exupery knew the power of water in an arid land.  “What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince in Saint-Exupery’s 1943 classic, Le Petit Prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well.”  In Shanti Sewa Griha Leper Clinic and Rehabilitation Centre, the interior courtyard’s three-tiered well is both the physical and emotional centre of the community space. It is also available to everyone, including the people who live in the slum next door to the leper clinic.

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