Olga and Balázs, set out for the bicycle trip of their lifetime, to cross the Indian Himalayan range. Their final destination was the ancient palace in the remote village of Zangla, where Alexander Csoma de Kőrös spent one and a half years to compile the words for the first Tibetan-English Dictionary. This was the beginning of Csoma’s Room Foundation.

The first team of 6 volunteers arrive to Zangla. First they try to hire local workers, but they fail as the harvesting season is coming. They acquire knowledge and skills in local materials and construction methods. They reconstruct the floor under Csoma’s room to stabilise it and fill the cracks on the outer walls, hanging on ropes.

An archaeologist of the french EFEO creates the first manual map of  Old Zangla. We proceed with the emergency interventions on the royal palace with the first volunteers. 

Repairing the collapsed slab and door of the second floor.

Our first visit in wintertime to the region. The only way was through the frozen ice of the Zanskar river. We are facing an official winter break for three months due to the lack of a heatable school facility. But the village organised winter tuition by converting their school’s balcony to a green-house using agricultural foil. Being impressed, we offer our help in the construction of a sustainable Solar School suitable for winter education.

Our most dangerous project so far, the structural stabilisation of the South-Eastern corner of the Palace through 3 floors. Emergency intervention at Malakartse stupa, filling the hole on the roof to protect the earliest wall paintings known in the region. Measuring Zangla Palace and Upper Zangla village using Total Station.

We launch a teaching project with volunteers in the local public school. We supply stationary and local specific books published by Secmol.

On the Palace the collapsed third floor roof and the collapsed staircase get repaired.