Good morning! blog posts may be a bit delayed- we're just knackered! Trying to keep up with all the interesting work we're doing and things we're seeing.
Monday morning we met at the hotel for an early breakfast, and a few of the LWR Nepal team came over for a quick meeting. The security situation in Nepal is a bit tense at the moment and we wanted to confirm it was still okay to travel.
A quick background on modern Nepali history might help. Nepal had over 240 years of a monarchy when, in 2001 the son of the king at the time, assassinated the entire royal family before killing himself. The lone survivor was the king's brother, who was out of town, and thus inherited the throne. Many people here don't believe that the prince was responsible, but instead that his uncle, the king's brother, was actually behind it, essentially creating a coup. That's how I recall hearing about the story in fact, when it happened. The kings brother took over the throne, but also inherited a history of political factions and some unrest. In 2008, despite some years of local elections and parliamentary elections to give political groups more power, the elected assembly voted to dissolve the monarchy entirely and get rid of the king. And they did. So for 7-8 years they had an interim constitution and in September 2015 (this month) they put into place a permanent constitution. But not everyone was happy, and some ethnic groups in the South in particular, which borders India, began to protest over the terms in the constitution. Which is when India got involved, for some reason, and took a stand protesting some of the terms of the constitution. And then started embargoing major imports into Nepal, such as gasoline. Nepal is highly dependent on India for imports, so that became a problem.
Fast forward to this week, where Nepal basically has been cut off from supplies of gasoline and cooking gas, and things are beginning to deteriorate. There are movement restrictions imposed by the government (apparently tourists are exempt?) and a lot of protests and some violence, especially in the border regions with India (not near where we are). But as of Monday, many of the petrol stations were out of gas already and people had begun to stockpile. So you can see how the entire country's situation can deteriorate quickly.
We set out Monday with a driver that was rented, to fit our whole team, and swore he had enough fuel to get us to Lamjung, about 5-6 hr drive. The our local partner in Lamjung had already made arrangements to stockpile gasoline so that we were sure to have enough to get back.
Which leads us to our Monday adventure! Turns out the driver lied, probably because we were clearly his last business for a while since it was clear the situation was getting dire, and he assumed he could get a little more along the way. He made it to about an hour outside of Lamjung, Bechisahar is the name of the town, when we ran out of gas. If you follow twitter, check me out at @christiegetman for the play by play of that day. Luckily, our partner, a local NGO named COPPADES, sent a car and driver to pick us up. So after waiting on the side of the road for an hour or so, we were on our way. In a car much smaller, so we creatively figured out how to tie a bunch of stuff on the roof. Below are some entertaining photos of myself, my coworker Kat from HQ, and my coworker Subhashis from India, and also Narayan from Nepal.
In the end, the views on the drive were gorgeous, photos won't do them justice. We drove into a hilly region but not too mountainous. I don't think we're at an extremely high elevation but we are definitely surrounded by hills. The first picture above is taken from the window in our hotel (glorified guest house really but hot water and local tv!) and is a gorgeous morning view of the Annapurna range. It's also breathtaking and impossible to do justice in photos!
A quick background on modern Nepali history might help. Nepal had over 240 years of a monarchy when, in 2001 the son of the king at the time, assassinated the entire royal family before killing himself. The lone survivor was the king's brother, who was out of town, and thus inherited the throne. Many people here don't believe that the prince was responsible, but instead that his uncle, the king's brother, was actually behind it, essentially creating a coup. That's how I recall hearing about the story in fact, when it happened. The kings brother took over the throne, but also inherited a history of political factions and some unrest. In 2008, despite some years of local elections and parliamentary elections to give political groups more power, the elected assembly voted to dissolve the monarchy entirely and get rid of the king. And they did. So for 7-8 years they had an interim constitution and in September 2015 (this month) they put into place a permanent constitution. But not everyone was happy, and some ethnic groups in the South in particular, which borders India, began to protest over the terms in the constitution. Which is when India got involved, for some reason, and took a stand protesting some of the terms of the constitution. And then started embargoing major imports into Nepal, such as gasoline. Nepal is highly dependent on India for imports, so that became a problem.
Fast forward to this week, where Nepal basically has been cut off from supplies of gasoline and cooking gas, and things are beginning to deteriorate. There are movement restrictions imposed by the government (apparently tourists are exempt?) and a lot of protests and some violence, especially in the border regions with India (not near where we are). But as of Monday, many of the petrol stations were out of gas already and people had begun to stockpile. So you can see how the entire country's situation can deteriorate quickly.
We set out Monday with a driver that was rented, to fit our whole team, and swore he had enough fuel to get us to Lamjung, about 5-6 hr drive. The our local partner in Lamjung had already made arrangements to stockpile gasoline so that we were sure to have enough to get back.
Which leads us to our Monday adventure! Turns out the driver lied, probably because we were clearly his last business for a while since it was clear the situation was getting dire, and he assumed he could get a little more along the way. He made it to about an hour outside of Lamjung, Bechisahar is the name of the town, when we ran out of gas. If you follow twitter, check me out at @christiegetman for the play by play of that day. Luckily, our partner, a local NGO named COPPADES, sent a car and driver to pick us up. So after waiting on the side of the road for an hour or so, we were on our way. In a car much smaller, so we creatively figured out how to tie a bunch of stuff on the roof. Below are some entertaining photos of myself, my coworker Kat from HQ, and my coworker Subhashis from India, and also Narayan from Nepal.
In the end, the views on the drive were gorgeous, photos won't do them justice. We drove into a hilly region but not too mountainous. I don't think we're at an extremely high elevation but we are definitely surrounded by hills. The first picture above is taken from the window in our hotel (glorified guest house really but hot water and local tv!) and is a gorgeous morning view of the Annapurna range. It's also breathtaking and impossible to do justice in photos!
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