New Year in Nepal

After having spent Christmas and New Year in Europe, we are back in Kathmandu, where we suffer a daily power cut of 8 hours. It is getting hard to plan your daily life because we need electricity to use the computer at work, to pump the water from the well to the water tank, to read in the evening...
There is also a shortage of fuel because Nepal is not paying its import bill to India, so obviously, India stopped selling. If we continue not having electricity and fuel, Nepal will stop running soon!

The weather remains cold so we wear layers and layers of clothes, especially when we are indoors, and we place a hot water bottle in bed.

Simon and I went to Surkhet district in the Mid-West, in a quiet village called Birendranagar, with almost no vehicles, except for bicycles and a few motorbikes. Simon had some work to do there and I went along to learn some of the trainings / work he was supposed to do there. I am saying "supposed to" because the initial work plan had slightly changed before we actually left Kathmandu and completely changed by the time we reached there.

We first flew to Nepalganj, a village just 6 Km from the Indian border, we then took a rickshaw from the airport to the bus station – everybody stared at this rickshaw with two foreigners and their bags! and finally a minivan that would take us to our final destination. The minivan was almost full by the time we left, but it was overflowing after a few kilometres. At least we were sitting in front.

We enjoyed our stay in Birendranagar. The hotel was simple but OK, the food (the typical Dhal Bhat) was good, and the people were very nice to us.

In the way back to Kathmandu, we crossed the border into India to get our passport stamped, which should help us to get a new Indian multiple entry visa in the future. The Indian village was very busy and very dirty, so we were back in Nepal within 2 hours.
There are very few Muslims in Nepal, mainly concentrated in the Tarai, and in Nepalganj we saw the evidence of its presence with a Muslim Mosque, the prayers at 5am in the morning through loud speakers and a few ladies with burkas in Nepalganj.

The fuel in Nepal is being heavily subsidized by the government (this links to the problem of fuel shortage mentioned above) and when last week, the government decided to increase the fuel price, people just went out on the streets, burnt tires, shut all shops, stopped all cars… It lasted for 2 days until the government decreased back the prices. In just a few minutes after that decision was taken, buses started to run, shops opened… as if nothing had happened. It seems that the government didn't want to risk that these riots would link to any of the unrests caused by the coming April elections and gave in quickly to the demonstrations.

That's all for now. Regards,

Laura