Just thought I’d do a brief post – along the lines of what I did on my holidays. Although actually I was still working quite a few of the days as … well that’s the ideal thing about a job based on the Internet, you can do it anywhere. Anyway, I had the chance to try out this activity, a totally new one to me, basically just a small update to an activity my wife started off a few years back.

Geocaching learning activity April 11^th 2016

The original geocache site was set up at the Mahan Siddhartha High School  http://www.msschool.edu.np/ on 20th November 2010. It was an off-set cache – visitors to the stupa at Boudha answered clues based on the stupa and this led them to the school – but this had to be revised after the earthquake damage in April 2015 due to the school being relocated and rebuilding of the stupa. The geocaching activity on the 11^th April updated the location of the cache, and children from the school also identified new questions, based on the buildings and objects around the stupa, rather than the stupa itself. A video of the original activity can be seen at

The new co-ordinates for the cache are

N 27 degrees 42.942

E 085 degrees 21.418

The geocaching activity that visitors undertake when visiting Kathmandu is to visit the website geocaching.com and search for nearby gecocaches, of which this (at https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC2JG4D_between-sacred-sites) is just one, and answer a series of questions to find the cache.

The co-ordinates are made into a puzzle by substituting letters for the numbers in the co-ordinates and setting clues for those letters. Taking the smallest four of these numbers, 1, 2, 4 and 5, the remainder of the digits can be created from those, where, if A=1, B=2, C=4 and D=5.

The principle of this was explained to the children from the school and, as a quick simple maths test, they were asked how all the numbers could be created from these four. The children identified that the larger numbers could be made up from the smaller ones like this:

N B (D+A)  degrees C B . (D+C) C B

E 0 (BxC) D degrees B A . C A (BxC)

The group took one walk around the partially-rebuilt stupa looking for clues that would produce the answers 1,2,4 and 5. The clues produced were:

How many maps are there as you go round the stupa? = A (answer 1)

How many dragons are there on the front of the Guru Lakhang monastery? = B (answer 2)

How many gates are there into the stupa? = C (answer 4)

How many leopards are there in the Guru Lakhang monastery? = D (answer 5)

Also as part of the exercise, the geocache was re-upped with three new trackables or travel bugs. Travel bugs are picked up and dropped off at the geocaches along the travels of the geocachers. By visiting a page associated with the bugs, geocachers can see what the mission of the bug is, and who else has picked up and dropped off the bug along the way. To individualise the bugs (which are just flat pieces of metal similar to dogtags) keyrings can be attached to them.

The children were asked to choose three keyrings that they felt represented their culture (as an example they were shown an Iron Man keyring to represent Western culture). One of the children chose a representation of a Gorkha  – a long Nepali blade. It was given the mission of collecting reflections about what the site visited means to the visitor’s culture and to them personally. To start off the bug’s mission the children were asked the significance of the stupa to their culture and to them personally. Responses were that culturally it was an important landmark site, but that personally it was where they came to be close to God. It can be tracked at http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=6495363

The second keyring was a Vajra, although the children only identified this as “a Buddhist symbol”. Vajras represent thunderbolts. This bug replicated the mission of the bug from the original creation of the cache, to visit places of worship.  It can be tracked at http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=6495372

The original bug can be tracked at http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=2982297 It had a very brief journey, being taken by one geocacher to Lisbon, and then picked up by a second who took it to Egypt and back. It was only on the move between 28.11.2010 and 26.8.2012

The third keyring chosen was a representation of the stupa. The MS School has links with a UK school, children took part in a collaborative exercise whereby they wrote a short description of themselves and their lives, together with a photo, to share with children at the other school. This bug is aiming to travel to a cache near that school. The intention is that it will be picked up and dropped off at different caches en route, and randomly make its way to the right place. It can be tracked at http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=6495395

These three travel bugs were then placed in the cache at the Mahan Siddharta High School. Visitors to the stupa will then be led to the school, where they can fill in a logbook, drop off their trackables at the cache, and collect a different trackable from the cache. They can also fill in their experiences of the visit to the stupa and school, and completing the puzzle, at the website. This is then something the children at the school can watch developing, and see what other parts of the world their school becomes connected to.