Wednesday, October 17, 2007
NEPAL – times of upheaval
The political situation in Nepal is complex, and there have been many changes since 2001. The king has only got representative functions since last year, and the seven major parties have formed an alliance to establish democracy in the country. The only exception is the communist party of the Maoists (rebels) who fight for abolition of both the caste system (actually there is several in Nepal) and the monarchy. In late 2006 the 12-year long civil war has officially been ended, but discrimination and exploitation of minorities, the lower castes, women and children still create a war-like situation at least in some parts of the country. The German foreign ministry as well as many local voices warned us not to leave the capital Kathmandu.
Nepal is one of the world's poorest countries, and except from the tourist quarter Thamel in Kathmandu, this is visible all over the place. The staff at our hotel advised us that attempting to fly a toy model helicopter :-) in Kathmandu was not a good idea; we might get shot easily, or at best have to stay in the country for weeks or months until all formalities had been cleared. Having said this, except for the royal palace and the monkey temple there was nothing suitable for the WSF project anyway. What's more, Nepal is famous for something else, and that's what we came for: The Himalaya!
Several people told us the world-famous mountain range was visible from the capital – well, this is not true at all, and so we were suddenly pressed for time to find a good viewpoint. Very unfortunately, this turned out to be a big, big problem.
We'd initially thought of Mt. Everest which is the highest mountain of the planet (depending on how this is defined), but you'd have to travel up to 2.5 weeks into the Himalaya until you can see it, plus it involves going to places that are controlled by the Maoists. Travelling into a war zone is nothing that would have stopped us, but the time span was totally unrealistic; and second, Mt. Everest looks like any plain mountain – nothing special about it at all. If you look at a panorama, you will not be able to tell which one it is; so this is a WSF knockout criterion.
Instead, we decided to drive to the city of Pokhara, the second largest of the country. It's only 150 - 200 km away, but it takes 6 hours to go there. The ride was bumpy and bad, sometimes the road had been washed away by a landslide, sometimes we had to cross small rivers with our taxi. It was almost an off-road trip, and our transport cases and parts of our equipment got damaged. Our guide spoke almost no English which made things even more complex, and it didn't help either that the engine of the car quit every now and then (we think it was running too lean :-) ). The driving itself was even worse than in India! We'll most likely comment on this in ROTOR 12/2007. The picture below shows a part of the road that had been cleared after a landslide.
We arrived in Pokhara late at night, and while still checking in at the guest house, there was the first power outage. Quite funny, the city was totally dark, like if it didn't exist, and the staff in the lobby were using their mobile phones as torches. Nobody lost a single word about the situation, and this tells you it is nothing uncommon. The picture below shows our lunch + dinner that day.
Labels: Himalaya, landslide, Machhapuchre, Nepal, Pokhara, safety problem
# posted by hg/tuw @ 15:59 
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