Kathmandu

Kathmandu is your atypical little pocket of contained chaos. I wouldn't go as far as Terry Pratchett and declare that is was "as full of activity, industry, bustle and sheer exuberant busyness as a dead dog on a termite mound" for I think that will be reserved for India. Also people are generally more laid back. In fact you generally see the men who work in the lodges spending an inordinate amount of time gambling, playing board games or just chewing the fat. It is the women who are following Gandhi's ethos of 'don't use a machine when you can do it by hand' especially when there is the carting of cement on construction sites, and while it is not Dubai, from all accounts, there is still a lot of construction. It has that bustle of Tokyo with shops signs (sans neon) packed more densely than the human eye can comprehend and people everywhere. But you need to add the nocturnal dogs to the calmer eddies of the foot traffic and the spaghetti cabling that hold the shop fascades  together, tiger balm hawkers and way more wheeled traffic than these alleys were ever designed for. In fact Roselin was about to 'take a short cut' through one lane-way when I had to remind her that perhaps the street layout was not the grid that would encourage such thinking - we can still get lost and that is only in the small region of Thamel. Kathmandu provides everything that a trekker could need, from the western camping stores, the excellent bookshops, to the VB cans and Belgium chocolate sold in the supermarket.

The Napali government is a failure, they have 3 parties that can not form a majority and now they argue while trying to amend the constitution. The local people try an lift themselves up by the bootstraps but are limited by what they can accomplish. This is probably no more evident than by the queues of young Napalis snaking around the block in both directions from the Kathmandu passport issuing office; those seeking a living in foreign lands such as Libya! Nepal is a state where the power supply is intermittent, water is not potable and corruption is rampant. A Nepali can not accompany a tourist to the immigration office without the risk of being asked for bribes. 2011 is the Visit Nepal year but the price of a trekking permit (TIMS) has increased to 20 US$ (unless you go with a guide in which case this halves).

However, in true democratic style local villages are raising money for their own micro hydro-power plants, mobile phones are way more prevalent than land lines. Now, where there is power, there are the modern appliances or vacuum cleaners and washing machines. Modernity moves into the mountains on the backs of mules or porters, Still I wonder how a freezer can make it up these narrow mountain paths where others struggle to carry a backpack. A centralised government should be responsible for connecting these democratised and empowered enclaves with the infrastructure to transport goods, people, clean water, waste and information. The centralised/decentalised dichotomy has always been a power struggle, but when you see the efficiency but limitations of  a decentralised local community and failures of the national body it becomes obvious that this struggle has a long way to go. So now there is road building at a frantic pace, earthworks that would match the neighbouring landslides; perhaps this will be the ground-breaking that bootstraps the nation.