Only in Nepal!

G and I have got used to saying this about the ridiculous things that happen here on a day to day basis. For example the celebration , including felicitations from politicians, regarding the 4 year old boy who had driven his dad's car on the public roads. This was seen as a feat of enormous cleverness and clearly showed some incredible bravery and intelligence from such a young child. An interaction was held to allow him to demonstrate it again! Mental! Similarly Geri Halliwell of all people was here a couple of weeks ago as the UN Ambassador for Women. She was welcomed by the PM who even kissed her cheek - very inappropriate in Nepal- while she called him a man of the 21st century. All very cosy. The very next day I read that there is to be a prisoner release scheme as all the prisons are too full. Here prisoners will be granted amnesty but only for the more minor crimes - like rape!

Well, the most recent "Only in Nepal" story is that right before the biggest hindu festival of the year - the equivalent of Christmas - the banks are all about to run out of cash! The Nepal Rastriya Bank - like the Bank of England - ordered new notes 2 months ago from France but apparently asked for it to be delivered in small quantities so that the managers responsible could get lots of trips to check on the quality! Nothing like making it cost effective for the banks shareholders or the Government, whoever funds it. Anyway, the upshot is everyone only being allowed to withdraw 3500 rupees (£30) at a time and everyone really pissed off that they can't have their usual festival blow out!

But maybe its not just Nepal, perhaps its all Asia. All our visitors planning to come over have been in a real quandry since G met a man at the Hyatt who had been held up for hours in Delhi for not having an Indian visa. "So what?" I hear you cry! He only wanted to change planes! All the travel agents say you don't need one but if you check with the Indian Embassy you do, at least a transit visa. But lots of vols have come out that way and it is the cheapest way to travel and haven't had a problem so we shall just have to see how many of our visitors actually get here!

Anyway, what have we been up to? Well we celebrated 18months since arrival in Nepal with all of those vols who came out at the same time as us who were in KTM. Really its amazing how many of us have made it this long, but it will be a lot less at 2 years as most of us will disappear in the next 4 or 5 months. To celebrate we had enchiladas at Orla and Bex' flat with tortillas made by Nick so he's obviously got into the cooking thing since Gordon supervised his spag bol!

And then I took my colleague Anita out in Thamel. She has never been there before as its not a part of town that nice Nepali girls frequent. I think she was a bit disappointed that it was all quite sedate, just a lot of tourists and overpriced stuff. But I think she enjoyed the day. She even liked the western food we had and we finished up at the Garden of Dreams - a lovely park reclaimed from old neglected palace grounds which she hadn't even heard of. Very sad as Kathmandu needs as much green as it can get. But maybe she'll go back as it was much cheaper for Nepali citizens than us tourists!

So that will do for now. Alison arrives today - hopefully - so more updates when we've had some adventures together!