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“Peaceful banda”
A stern-looking woman with her hair tied up in a bun enters a pasal in Patan, and leaves a printed letter on the counter. The young girl reads the demand for Rs 5,000 to Rs 50,000 to finance the Tesro Jana Andolan. The shopkeeper says she doesn’t understand. “What don’t you understand, haven’t you heard [...]
TIA or Terribly Inept Airport
The number of mountain flights that take off from Kathmandu every morning is a pretty good indication of how Nepal’s tourism industry is doing. Last Saturday there were 35 mountain flights. And, 42 more flights were headed towards Lukla on the same day. All this means is that we are well on our way to [...]
Travelblogue
For the past 20 years, as a media nomad, I have covered stories across the Asia-Pacific region. Lately, I’ve been roaming across Nepal and have by now visited most of the country’s 75 districts. Earlier this year, during a three-month stint through the country with the screening of the documentary Frames of War, I started [...]
A state of lawlessness
First posted on nepalitimes.com on 11 July, 2009 After traversing Nepal for more than two months, passing 40 districts, braving highway blockades, curfews and indefinite bandas we were stopped dead in our tracks outside Pokhara. There was no way we could get past a barricade of rocks, logs and the burnt out hulk of a [...]
Travels in Nepal’s Nepal
First posted on nepalitimes.com on 18 May, 2009 Now that it looks like we are going to have a government again, it is only a question of time that the current climate of normalcy along the highways of Nepal will soon come to an end. Sure enough, even as Madhav Kumar Nepal went to the [...]
Abnormal normality
First posted on nepalitimes.com on 08 May, 2009 Hours after Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal submitted his resignation to President Ram Baran Yadav in Kathmandu on 4 May, highway blockades that had closed the country for two weeks were suddenly lifted. The Tharus called off their banda of the Tarai, the Limbuwans suspended their agitation [...]
State of statelessness
First posted on nepalitimes.com on 01 May, 2009 We like to think that the most neglected and underdeveloped part of Nepal is the Karnali. But the eastern Tarai deos not fare much better. In just about every development parameter that you care to name, these districts between Bara and Morang lag behind the rest of [...]
