So what news...

M covered quite a lot in the last entry and it seems has left me with just the scraps to report on.

Let's start with the cultural bit, after all there's always a festival to celebrate in Nepal. A couple of weekend's ago we had "Janai Purnima" and then "Gai Jatra" on consecutive days.

The first of these is the "thread festival" when the high caste blokes change the threads they wear across their chests and everyone else gets to wear threads around their wrists. To celebrate, our landlady woke us up at the crack of dawn! (well 10 o'clock), when she arrived at the door with a nice hot bowl of "kwoi", a hot curry soup that the Nepalis eat on this auspicious day (you see they are obsessed with food). This soup is made from 15 different kinds of pulse and pea, so it made for a very interesting breakfast!!! I'm sure the didi Shobah, who cooks for Meena must have been up at about 5am to get it made. We also had a holy man turn up at the hash run on that day, to hand out threads to the runners after we'd finished. So hopefully we're all now sorted with good luck for the next year .

The next day was "Gai Jatra", the "cow festival". Now although Kathmandu is a busy city, funnily enough there's no shortage of cows wandering around. So on this special day the cows get the full treatment, garlands of flowers and tikka on the forehead (do cows have foreheads ?) and everyone dresses up and heads off to the various Durbar (Palace) Squares with pictures of family members who have died in the last year. This tradition stems from the time many years ago that a royal child died and the King asked people whose relatives had also died to turn out to show the Queen, who needed cheering up that she wasn't alone in her grief. There was also a prize for anyone who could make her laugh, so lots of strange and funny costumes are worn. It's all very...well Nepali!

We've also got our holidays booked now for October, a week in Pokhara at the beginning of the month in a hotel by the lake and a week in the Jungle at the end of the month on elephant safari...watch this space...what could possibly go wrong.

The big event this week was the arrival from the UK of Rowena, a friend from Winchester who will be here for a couple of years. As a dedicated hasher, she came along to the run with us this Saturday. Now it was a funny old run as I'd help set it with a Dutch guy and we ended up climbing quite a steep hill (well a very steep hill actually) in the middle of the run. Still everyone (Rowena included) seemed to enjoy themselves so all in all it was a really nice day...except that is for the leeches which were out in force and were attacking ankles and feet like nobody's business.

Work is chugging along and the big news here last week was that my office at the ministry got hoovered. With the new government now more or less in place, it was time for some spit and polish as the civil servants prepare for the arrival of a new minister. They even had to stay late on Friday (we normally finish at 3pm) just in case he / she turned up unexpectedly. I'm looking forward to my introduction and showing them how the fax, photocopier and scanner that has been given pride of place in my office works (of course they'll have to provide their own paper!)

Anyway enough for now.