The whole of the first year went on the water and the ground

People assume the road came first. It did not. The whole of the first year went on water and on ground, and at the end of it there was still no road.

The water first

The water had to be settled before anything else, because anything we built in its way would go where the path had gone. So we found the line it took and laid rock across it, to send it down one side instead of over the middle. Then a check dam, small, built from what was lying there. That alone was four or five months.

Then the ground

Then the ground. Where a few hundred people sit now was a pit of loose rock and trees. We cut the trees and we filled it, rock carried in from wherever there was rock, until it stood more than seven feet above where it had started. You cannot walk on rock, so we dug red soil out of the bank beside it and poured that over the top. Another month or two.

A year with nothing to show

A year, and nothing a stranger would photograph. No road, no shrine. A flat place where there had been a hole, and the water going somewhere else.

None of us had done work like this before, so a lot of that year went on finding out how.