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Most people come to JIRI for the Everest trek, and are too eager to hit the trail or get back to Kathmandu to spend more than a night here. That's a shame: an extra day is much better spent in Jiri than in Kathmandu. Set in a small, sloping valley, the bazaar features attractive whitewashed Sherpa-style buildings and is inhabited by a cosmopolitan mix of Jirels (the local indigenous group), Sherpas, Tamangs and Newars. It's a busy place, with lots of comings and goings as trucks drop off supply shipments and porters assemble to carry impossibly heavy loads out into the hinterland of Solu and Khumbu: you can learn a lot about the local economy just by observing the composition of porters' loads. Saturday is particularly colourful, as people from surrounding villages gather for the weekly market in the old bazaar, about 3km back up the road. Charlie Pye-Smith, in his book Travels in Nepal, called Jiri "the half-caste offspring of an impoverished Nepalese mother and a wealthy Swiss father". In 1958 the Swiss established the Jiri Multi-Purpose Development Project , a ground-breaking scheme based on the now widely accepted view that development needs - health, agriculture, education and so on - are interrelated and can't be tackled separately. The programme established a hospital, technical school, experimental farm, managed forests and other facilities, most of which have now been handed over to HMG. But of all the improvements bequeathed by the Swiss, it was the road that brought the greatest material boost to Jiri, by making it the area's main commercial centre as well as the trailhead for Nepal's second most popular trekking region. (Ironically, the road is now being extended another 20km to access the Khimti hydroelectric project, and Jiri may soon lose its privileged status.) At least a dozen trekker lodges are grouped around the western end of the bazaar - Cherdung Lodge (up to Rs140 [US$2]) is comfortable enough, with a reasonable choice of food, but any one will do. Shops in the bazaar sell Nepali porter gear (small backpacks, jackets, socks, etc) in case you forgot anything. Lodge owners can arrange porters and guides. Be sure to book return bus tickets as soon as possible for the next day's departures, as seats go quickly.
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