Elections and being a tourist

A long gap since my last entry because so much has been happening. The elections here disrupted life a little as the office closed for a week and VSO held it’s annual volunteers conference over the election period. This was a good way of using the security need to have us all in KTM together given that the situation looked rather uncertain. Predictions of violence proved to be incorrect and although there were some infringements of polling protocol these were the exception rather than the rule.
The Maoists swept to a clear victory much to their own and everyone else’s surprise. The new parliament hasn’t met yet. The new parliament is so large that they have had to hire the International Conference Centr to hold the meetings. It remains to be seen what will happen but the country has clearly voted for change and there is a big burden of responsibility on the new government. I just heard the London mayoral results last night and feel that there could not be a bigger contrast between my home town and my adopted one in terms of political flavour at the moment. I am happy to be watching London at a distance for once.

The other disruption to life has been the arrival of our daughter Laura for a two week visit. Not only has it been lovely to see her but we have used her presence as an opportunity to do some tourist activities which we have really not done before. The highlight of the trip was leaving the Kathmandu Valley and going up towards Pokhara for 5 days. We went on the only cable car in Nepal, installed as a tourist development project but seems to be almost entirely used by Nepalis, which was also my first trip on a cable car at all. It was hair raising especially as the top turned out not to be the first hill you could see but one much higher and further away. The cable car also has a special car for goats ( charged at 135 RS one way) who were being taken up to the temple at the top for sacrifice, frighten the poor things and then kill them seems to be the idea! As people don’t waste the sacrificed goat but take it home to eat I was rather worried that we might have to share the return car with a decapitated goat.
We visited a beautiful hill town which is the best use of EU partnership money I have ever seen. The village had been twinned with villages in Greece and Italy to develop eco-tourism in all three and I only hope the others are as successful as the Nepali one. It was a great antidote to KTM with traffic free streets and a reduced number of barking dogs.
We then followed on with three days gentle trekking when we hoped we would get good views of the Himal to the north but unfortunately the horizon was cloudy for three days. We were rewarded with a glimpse of the mountains when we got up at five to see the sunrise on the penultimate day, I was very pleased that such an early start wasn’t wasted.
Of course being a tourist here is very cheap compared to London but doing tourist activities now made me realise just how much I have got used to living rather than touring here. In the main we live on our allowance. That means we shop and eat cheaply. The allowance certainly doesn’t run to the cost of being a tourist and I had to resist the temptation to complain loudly about prices when in tourist haunts. Still we had fun, used a bit of UK cash which is exactly what it was intended for and now that Laura has left we will back to our very cheap lunches and home cooked food.
Cooking without an oven somewhat limits your style and when I invited someone for tea and cake today I was forced to experiment with my miracle oven. This is not an oven at all. It looks like a casserole dish and it sits on top of the gas ring with a heavy heat diffuser underneath it. When you take off the lid it has a hole/funnel in the middle which circulates the hot air. It means anything you make comes out in a ring shape; this is fine for cakes but a bit weird for a lasagne or something. Anyway you will be pleased to know that I produced a pretty passable papaya cake and the recipe is available for a small fee (if I can remember it). Who says two gas rings are limiting!

Namaste
Julie