Publisher's Synopsis
"Imagine yourself in a schoolroom in one of the most remote regions of one of the most hard-to-reach countries on earth. Nepal. The Lower Mustang region to be exact. To reach it takes a 14-hour flight from New York to Doha, Qatar. Then four hours by air to Kathmandu. Transfer at one of the world's most dangerous airports to a 90-minute flight to Pokhara, followed by a jarring, eight-hour Jeep ride over a vertiginous dirt road - one side is a mountain wall, the other side a two-hundred foot cliff. Finally you arrive, but it's not just any schoolroom. It has been converted into an operating room so that doctors from New York Eye & Ear Infirmary can provide the gift of sight to 24 Nepalis who were blind due to advanced cataracts. Jeff Blumenfeld witnessed this first hand. He was there as a traveler, but also as a volunteer. A voluntourist. People often wonder how they can explore the world and help the less fortunate even if they don't pos