Time is moving on - we've been here more than 4 months now. Almost feels like home, i.e. raining a lot and moaning about work all the time!

Last weekend was fun. We went to Nagarkot with the hash which is right on the edge of the Kathmandu valley and is the place to go to get a view of the Himalayas, except in the monsoon, i.e. now when the cloud is too low to see anything! But it didn't matter that much as the countryside was still lovely and it was just great to be that far out of the city. We stayed the night in a hotel so it was a sort of Himalayan half-baked weekend, especially as it was pouring with rain when we first arrived so I was expecting to not do any exercise at all. But just before the run was to start it cleared up and the sun came out and it stayed nice for the rest of the day. There was rather a lot of leeches which was a little disturbing. The walk was nice and civilized so we avoided them but I don't think a runner escaped and G's feet are positively covered in bites. He seems very laid back about it now so is obviously hardened to the travails of hashing out here.

We were also joined by a Pullitzer prizewinner - ha, Winchester may be the martini hash but you've never had that! And he's going to write the hash trash for last week! How's that for a coup. His name is Kai Bird - no I'd never heard of him either but some of the Americans had. He wrote American Prometheus about Openheimer, so there you go.

We have some people moving into the flat below us today. They are either Australian or Israeli, I couldn't quite get what our landlady was saying, but it will be interesting to meet some more Badeshi as we foreigners are called. I just hope the landlady can keep the water supply up enough. They pump from the well to a tank on the roof and occasionally we have run out so with another family below us we will all need at least twice as much! It is a little irritating all soaped up in the shower and then the water stops!

Gordon had his first "district" visit last week. Not tremendously exciting, just to a conference in Bhaktapur which is another small city about 20miles from Kathmandu. But there was still rather too much Dahlbaht for his liking and he did have to share a bedroom with his colleague from the ministry, Arjun. Not a major problem but does mean you never really get to unwind so I think he was pretty glad to get home again. Apparently Arjun did have a rather fetching pair of white silk pyjamas - Gordon even had to sleep in his running shorts for the duration - and he felt like he was in a Morecambe and Wise sketch every night while they were each reading in bed, though no ice cream vans went past!

So there is now a new president for Nepal. It has all been a big stitch up as despite the Maoists winning the most election votes the president is from the Nepali Congress party, the vice president is from a small Madheshi party from the Terai while the chair of the election commission is UML. This means that the NC and the UML who were the two parties in power before the election and were roundly dismissed by the electorate are now holding the key jobs. Don't you just love politics? I just hope the Maoists don't go off in a huff and start fighting again but whichever, I don't think the people are well-represented by any stretch of the imagination.

And there was a public holiday yesterday to celebrate their being a new president and we didn't even know about it. Gordon went in to work to find not a soul there while I came into work and everyone was here as my office don't bother recognizing half the public holidays! Either way we both feel a bit aggrieved! The joys of Nepali communication!