OpenVillage House Kathmandu

[anu]

@johncoate Yes. You are right. For sustainability and also for the smooth run of the Open Village House Kathmandu, There should be proper planning related to lodging and other related works like roastery as well as coffeeshop. I am thinking to have a bed and breakfast service for co-housing. We can have local housewives as staff to prepare morning breakfast or I myself can very much do it. It was the same at Vietnam when I stayed at Hostel.

This way morning hassle in shared kitchen at peak time can be solved. The shared kitchen can be utilise for lunch/dinner. The student rooms and Guest rooms management need more planning. Do you have any suggestions on it? What I am thinking is to start small at first and then with success gradually increase it, same with the rooms. The room planning at initial phase will be

• One Big Shared Guest Room (Arrangement for 3/4 People)
• One Big Shared Student Room. (Arrangement for 3/4 People)
• One Shared Kitchen along Dinning
• One coworking Room
• Roastery in ground Floor
• Rooftop Coffee Shop

Any thoughts on this?

[alberto]

But can you add more rooms? Normally buildings have a fixed number of rooms, and if you need more you will have to get another building.

[anu]

Rents are getting very expensive now in Kathmandu. Despite taking whole house, I am thinking to take two flats for rent and if we get successful, we can search whole house OR what I am thinking is taking a whole house (let’s say house with three storey) for rent, use only two storey and rent one storey to another office like NGO or so. This way if we see growth of Open Village House,We can give them prior notice and take whole house for ourselves adding the rooms.

[johncoate]

What I am thinking is to start small at first and then with success gradually increase it

There is a kind of tension between having a bigger vision of where you want to go and getting going with what you can really handle. The idea of acquiring something big enough for growth that can be sublet until the right time is a pretty good strategy for this I think.

[anu]

Yes, I have already started working on proper plan related to everything. I will be updating everyone soon as it completes.

[natalia_skoczylas]

@anu and @Matthias, two years ago there was a big villa available near Karkhana space, I have never seen it but my friend mentioned it as an opportunity to open something big and ambitious there. Owners struggled to maintain it.
I could check where it was, and it would be the type of space you might want to get - the bigger the better, so you can expand gradually. and with a garden. If you can make one-two beautiful rooms for short-term rentals for travelers and set the price high, explaining it would offset the costs for struggling youngsters, I think it would be appealing for many to book it.

[nadia]

Sweet. You may want to connect with @Shei who;s in Kathandu now and I think has access to some kind of space. I’ll let Shei introduce herself

[anu]

Hello @natalia_skoczylas. The Karkhana location is very good actually, easy access of transportation and good neighborhood but don’t you think the rent of that area will be quite high?

[matthias]

But it’s not the empty decaying palace you once wanted to rent for 5 lakhs rupees, or is it?

[natalia_skoczylas]

I never saw it, but Vidhan didn’t say it was decaying, but for sure it would need some repairs. He said it was great, just the owners didn’t have the money or idea how to run it. I will ask him if it’s still possible and makes sense.

You know the homes in Kathmandu But I wouldn’t look to rent a normal home there - partly simply because of their planning, they’re mostly good for families who don’t want to run too much into each other. If there was something as our first home, just bigger, available, it would be fabulous - much better to be together.

So, what I am suggesting @Anu, is to find someone who owns a place but the place is empty and there is no plan for it. My friends do it this way opening communes in Poland - talk to the owner and offer him an idea that is not a fancy hotel or Starbucks. If we’re lucky and he’s open-minded, we could get it for longer. Just throwing ideas I would love to go back to Kathmandu and help set up a space there.

[anu]

Yes @natalia_skoczylas Kathmandu also might have empty houses and it was also in the initial plan to search for those house and utilize it in our open village house. The people who have many houses and willing to invest in new venture, we can involve them in it as investor on which they offer their house rent free for agreed term. I have searched two houses now and researched about the prices, sadly they are not willing to invest but are ready to give us on rent. The empty house which you described, we might give it a try. Please let me know whom to connect and also as an initial plan we don’t want a very big house, house with two flats are very much okay. Your friend Vidhan whom you mentioned, can he connect me to the building owner or kindly let me know whom to meet and how. Lets try our luck what do you say @matthias ?

[matthias]

This house is way too big as it is, but we could start with a small part of it (and have much room to grow). And sure, while this does not look that much of a fit right now, it never hurts to try all the paths you see … you never know what really is in there before you try. Which is also, as far as I understand it, one of the many secrets how @natalia_skoczylas manages her crazy life

[anu]

@nadia Today morning brought wonderful coincidence. I found @Shei in Facebook group and had very good conversation. I will be meeting her coming Sunday (8th October)

[Shei]

Hi Everyone!

Following a very invigorating session with @anu (Hi Anu!) at our place on Sunday, I’d like to fill in a little bit here about what our project, Cora Nepal, is about. In moving to Nepal to close the gap of a long distance relationship with my partner Sid, the plan was always to set up an enterprise that would make the most of his expertise in hospitality and mine in design, and so, we have been working to bring Cora Nepal to being. We run a humble guesthouse, Seto Ghar by Cora Nepal, in a quiet part of Kathmandu Valley where we take care of people who may be visiting Nepal or staying here for a while. Our intention is to build a long-term presence that assures comfortable and convivial accommodation in Nepal by prioritizing great design and impeccable service whilst keying our business into the local community and rooting our exchanges within the local economy. For so many people living every day lives here in Kathmandu, it is a difficult place to be. We want to ease off the challenges that living in Kathmandu presents, whilst nurturing the charms that exist here, in spite of the hardships inherent to the place as it stands. Up until recently, we’ve been focused mainly on setting up to create a warm and welcoming space to receive our guests. We are now gearing towards setting up events and reconfiguring some of our spaces that will facilitate a flow of people and exchanges on our site and beyond, to engage with each other on issues of the day, projects of mutual benefit, and plain simple fun We want to create a hub, and in reading about Edgeryders online and also in talking to Anu, we found many alignments with Open Village, in concept and in practice, and we’d like to offer our enterprise up as a node in the nurturing network that everyone here is working towards. We hope that our paths cross and keep crisscrossing and that the net we build as a result will be one that holds us all in love and kindness.

Thanks for reading, for your warm welcome, and I look forward to our discussions here!

You can find us on facebook.com/coranepal

x Shei

[nadia]

Really cool you guys managed to meet shei and @anu .

Wish you guys were here for the festival next week! We will try to make it so you can participate in the process of building openvillage as a transnational community also from Nepal <3

[anu]

Hi @Shei. It was really wonderful to meet you and know about CORA Nepal, such a nice place and very well managed with lots of space outdoor. Well I am very optimistic that your effort will shine more in coming days. Sorry for not being able to update about our meeting earlier but since you are here, I hope to continue our discussion more here

[alberto]

Hello @anu and everyone, I know a long time has passed since this topic was last updated but still was wondering where I can find updates on the roastery in Nepal project.

[anu]

Hi @alberto . Yes, I will update here about progress we made for roastery in brief tomorrow

[alberto]

These guys are trying to grow and transform coffee entirely in Italy. One of the two is from a family that has run a roastery for generations. You will need machine translation…

http://impact.startupitalia.eu/2018/07/19/primo-caffe-italiano-sicilia/