Dolpo Hostel provides a 'home away from home' and a base for students aged between 7 and 18 years. It provides a stable environment where the students can maintain their culture and language while continuing their education. The children are able to attend school, learn Nepalese while maintaining their language and culture at 'home' in the hostel.
Once the children have come to Kathmandu they are unlikely to go home to their villages until they finish their education. This is because the main holiday for the year is over the winter period when the villages are cut off from the rest of Nepal. So it is possible that the younger children wont be seeing the families for very long periods. Despite this, the children recognise the importance of their education and want to return home with skills to help the people in the region.
The villages where the children come from are in the north west of Nepal bordering on Tibet. It is a very isolated area of Nepal where few people visit due to the extreme altitudes and remoteness coupled with being cut off for 5 months of the year by snow.situated in the rain-shadow side of the mountains. It is closer to Tibet (two days walk) than to smaller towns in Nepal - (four to five days walk). The landscape appears dry and barren but the snow melt provides enough water for small scale farming in a traditional manner unchanged for years and blue sheep, wolves and snow leopards still find enough to live on in the area.
The few visitors to this area are serious climbers and trekkers who are willing to pay up to US$1000 per person for permits. This area was not opened to foreigners until 1989, and still retains its untouched beauty far from the pollution and noise of the Kathmandu Valley.