Lights Out: Nepal's Horrible Energy Policy

Last April I wrote about how Nepal's energy policy was creating an unsustainable cycle of gas shortages and crippling availability to energy (article can be read HERE). Predictably we are now in another part of the shortage cycle, and the timing couldn't be worse for the people of Nepal. With temperatures dropping to near freezing at night, we are currently left with load shedding of up to 14 hours a day (and it will soon be increasing to 16 then 18), petrol is scarce and largely available only through non-official channels, and at the same time there is now a shortage of cooking gas. Watching people huddle around burning fires on the side of the road reminds one of scenes from Beyond Thunder Dome or some other post-apocalyptic story, not what one expects to see in the modern world.

If you were a hamburger in Kathmandu, where would you hide?

Maybe it plays into stereotypes but if there is one food item I have really come to miss in this city it's a really good hamburger. Yes I'm American, yes I like hamburgers, and no you can't get one really worth eating here. Maybe that's how Nepali's in the U.S. feel about hunting down momos or dahl baht. When I've mentioned the lack of good burgers I'm often met with a curious response, as plenty of places claim to make them, and if that's the only type of burger you've ever had I suppose you think the claim a bit odd. But to use the former analogy it would be like me showing a Nepali a pile of plain over-cooked rice and some dryish lentils and saying, "What do you mean this isn't dahl baht?" Yes it would be rice and lentils, but no that isn't how you enjoy it.

One of the things that conspires against the creation of a good burger in this country is that it has several parts, none of which are popular or even in South Asian cuisine. Beef for example is not to be eaten as the cow in Hinduism is sacred. This leaves you with a few options, which is import the beef from India (also a Hindu country but apparently with less qualms about killing cows) or places like Australia. This inevitably means less fresh meat, and requires freezing which often reduces the quality in my opinion. That said, I've had some really good steaks here, so getting good cuts of beef is not impossible. Another option is to use an alternative  but similar animal such as water buffalo or yak. Now buff (as water buffalo is referred to) is OK, but it has a slightly different taste, different enough that I'm not a fan. Yak on the other hand is quite tough, but when ground up as burger it actually is quite good. Thing is that most places in Nepal that advertise yak are actually selling buff, and most of the actual yak meat I've eaten was in Tibet and not Nepal. So really just trying to find decent whole steaks and then grinding them locally would most likely be the best option. Most places though seem to settle for frozen buff which is the worst of both worlds.

Game Theory in Nepal- Avoiding the Sucker's Bet

When you travel as a tourist or read guide books to any place you travel to the local population is often portrayed in way that people want to believe they are, and not as they truly are. You watch faux cultural dances, observe "traditional"attire that nobody has worn in at least a generation and in much of Asia the western population is presented something akin to a concept of the "noble savage"....though to make it palatable to modern sensitivities the word savage is never used. Still there is often a romanticization of the cultures we observe, an unwillingness to call a spade a spade and often a self conscious form of collective guilt that does not allow us to come out and make statements about another culture due in part to the West's colonial past. I'm going to say something anyway.

Anyone who has spent any time in south Asia knows that business practices here are abysmal. Scamming, bribing, cheating, fraud, etc. are every day occurrences and almost an expected part of any business transaction here. Credit card infiltration is not low in this part of the world because people are unwilling to spend money, it's because no one pays their bills on time, not even the government of Nepal, and there is very little accountability. I always shop at the few fixed price stores when I can because it avoids the hassle of absurdly high prices I get quoted when someone sees the color of my skin, while many merchants are happy to rip off anyone regardless of skin color, they know white people not only have infinite money (clearly) but we also take the suckers bet- we take people at their word.

While many people I've spoken with in Nepal will go on about things being the way they are because it's a poor country and there has been an insurgency these excuses are just that. Nepal's largest obstacle is the populations state of always expecting the person they are interacting with to be a cheat, and thus for everyone to always be looking for the quick buck and not prolonged relationships which net mutual benefits over time. I don't know a single foreigner that has started a business here that didn't at some point get cheated by their Nepali partner (us aside) and ended up dumping them after losing at least a few thousand dollars. Our first lawyer screwed us and then tried to charge super inflated rates, and we dumped him. My point is not that we got cheated and you should feel bad for us, but that the Nepali people in these incidents cheated themselves in the long term.

Sure these people might have made a quick buck by taking the short pay out, but what if they had been fair all along? If our lawyer had been an honest man and charged reasonable rates I'd still be using him, and not only that I'd recommend him to other expats who ask me for visa advice, instead I'm writing this article about him. The businesses that many expats here run are successful and make decent money for Nepal, and instead of being off somewhere scamming someone else (or possibly getting scammed themselves) they could be part of a decent  honest business that makes good money. Aside from robbing someone else in the short term and being a blight on the better part of humanity, they also robbed themselves of future returns and contacts, something that is often much more valuable.

The Good, The Bad, & The Absurd

The Good: Kim and I finally (after 66 days) have received our business visas. The little stamp is in our passports, and is good for six months, and in theory we have a letter from the department of industry which should get us a renewal for another six months after this one. So yay us. We can now move around the country a bit more freely as we no longer have to be in Kathmandu to intermittently sign paperwork.

The Bad: You may remember from my earlier post about hiking in Annapurna that I am supposed to be there trekking right now. Well with the visa taking all week, and the not actually getting the passports in my hand until around 3pm today it just wasn't going to happen. With all offices (for more paperwork of course) being closed on Saturday I can't get the needed permits tomorrow either. This means I have to wait until Sunday to get the needed permits. The only question now is if I go to Pokhara tomorrow so I can get the permits and start trekking the same day on Sunday, or get them in Kathmandu on Sunday and start on Monday.

The Absurd: In the West we like to pretend that our bureaucracy is somehow for our own good, that our over payed under-worked public "servants" are moving all that paperwork around for some greater good. Maybe it's to protect you, maybe its for some safety net scheme. However worthless the public "service" it at least has the mask of doing something, besides creating jobs for the paper-pushers you get to deal with. In Nepal they don't even bother with the masquerade. It is very clear that the paperwork exists for its own sake, to create jobs for the public employees and funnel cash into their hands and the hands of the state.

I arrived at the Department of Immigration and watched as my paperwork got shuffled around. There were a number of desk jockeys in the main room, we'll label them DJ1, DJ2 and DJ3. So the Nepali kid I'm with, who is our lawyer's assistant goes to DJ1 and talks to him for a bit. He informs me that one of the people we need to talk to isn't here, but he'll get it started. DJ1 looks over the paperwork for a bit and then after a moment points to DJ2. The paperwork goes to DJ2 and he moves some papers around and flips through the pages. After a few minutes of this he hands the paperwork back to the kid and he brings it back to DJ1. DJ1 now does the same thing as far as I can tell from my vintage point. Then he says something to the kid and he comes and sits next to me for a bit. After another ten minutes or so the paperwork gets briefly handed to DJ3 who tells the kid to take it to a room I will call Office 1. I never leave my chair so I'm not sure what happens in the office but after five minutes or so he comes out and then goes into Office 2. A few more minutes pass and he comes out and gives the paperwork back to DJ1. He unbinds a few documents, rearranges some things and actually writes something this time. The kid then brings it over to DJ2, but apparently he doesn't need it. It now needs to go into Office 3.

A Flaming Disaster Isn't The Worst That Can Happen

Sometimes we go through life and we really don't pay it much attention. You go to work, you eat meals, chat with friends, complain about that pebble in your shoe. Once in a while you do some things that really make you realize how little opportunity there is to get out there and really take part in life, you do have a finite number of years after all. Sometimes when we don't pay attention you end up just pissing precious time away.

I spent my 25th birthday sailing down the Nile River on a boat with a bunch of people from around the world that prior to that ride I had never met. We were getting toward the end of a ten month trip that Kim and had spent travelling around the world. Our past travels had brought us through the south pacific, over NZ and OZ over through Indonesia and up the Thai Peninsula, over to Nepal down through India and over to Egypt. After my birthday we would go on to Jordan, Turkey and Greece, and after a brief stint in the states we would spend over three weeks in Peru. Ever since this trip I have without pause listed it as the best thing I ever did with my life.