Anne Raup © Special to the Rocky Heavy fog is common during the premonsoon season in eastern Nepal. In some places, the fog is being "caught" to supplement scarce supplies of clean water.

MEET THE TEAM Meet Dr. Bialek and the student engineers, and hear what motivates them about the project. › The team OTHER STORIES A villager's wish: drinkable water, irrigated fields Water crisis a fact of life in Kathmandu Main story: Expedition to Nepal SLIDE SHOW Expedition to Nepal VIDEO Coloradans on engineering expedition in Nepal ENGINEERS WITHOUT BORDERS - USA Founded: 2002 Headquarters: Longmont Chapters: 225 professional and student chapters in the United States Membership: 12,000 Projects: 45 countries To learn more: www.ewb-usa.org or call 303-772-2723 WHERE IN THE WORLD? Click on the map for a larger view.

Anne Raup © Special to the Rocky Daya Ghimire, 22, cleans dishes as she does every morning. The family has water running to their property almost all the time. They cannot turn off the flow but can direct the water into their kitchen, to the dish washing area or into a small room used as a shower.

SUKRABARE, Nepal - At 6:30 a.m. Sadikshya Ghimire skips out of her parents' earthen-floored bedroom and runs across the dirt-packed front yard of their home to a dusty black water hose draped from a stick stand.

The 3-year-old splashes cold water on her face, takes a quick drink and rubs her hands. Then she is off, checking on the family's three goats in the back shed, the two cows on the terrace just below the kitchen shed and her 2-month-old sister Nona, sleeping in a hanging basket inside the house.

Her father, 26-year-old Hem, has been up since 4:30 a.m., making tea, feeding the animals and checking on the terraced fields where the family grows cardamom and broom grass, which they sell at market on Fridays.

The radio delivers the news from Kathmandu, the sound drifting out of open windows into the morning.

There is one landline phone in Sukrabare, a market town of about 30 to 50 homes. Unlike hundreds of dwellings in the surrounding countryside, however, houses here have electric lines and access to nearby water.

But the water comes and goes, depending on whether someone has tapped the slender hose that runs above ground from a spring high up on a mountainside.

Electricity is somewhat more reliable, but it cuts out during thunderstorms or when a line goes down in the rugged mountains.

About 800 students attend school here, their blue uniforms showing brightly as they descend through the dark green terraces on their way into town, the school bell echoing across the ridges.

Hem Ghimire says his life in the village isn't too hard, but that the village desperately needs a road, clean drinking water and a way to irrigate its terraced fields, where corn, rice and ginger also grow.

Sadikshya's mother, Daya, 22, prepares a fragrant midmorning breakfast: rice and a thin lentil soup served on metal platters with homemade chutneys and pickled vegetables.

She cooks over two fires, one inside the kitchen hut and one outside under a small overhang. The tea here is thick with milk and sugar, spiced with cardamom.

To eat her breakfast, Sadikshya sits on a small round woven stool, her platter balanced carefully on her lap as chickens peck at her feet and neighborhood children walk through the yard on their way to school.

It is the first of two meals the family share each day, with dinner - again of rice and lentils, and sometimes chicken - served after dark, as the villagers prepare to sleep.

When asked how she learned to cook so well, Daya tilts her head to one side, as if puzzled by the question.

She smiles and says, "It is only habit."

smithj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5474.