The Kathmandu Burger Project

As I mentioned in this post it is tough to make a really good burger in Kathmandu, but this hasn't deterred me from trying. So yesterday I gave it my first real attempt since I've been living here, and despite some of the components being substandard the result wasn't bad at all. 

Real Hamburger- Step One

Getting real, decent hamburger in this country is a little tougher than most due to its Hindu heritage. Why people of various religions think God(s) is(are) interested in micromanaging our diets is beyond me, but I digress. Nina & Hagar's supplies ground beef tenderloin and it can be purchased for a reasonable price, but it does come frozen. Despite this, the quality seemed decent, although defrosted hamburg is harder to shape properly. I made use of wax paper and a rolling pin with a little shoring up of the edges with my hands afterwards to create burgers that would cook evenly.

Condiments, toppings & Bread

What prompted me to finally put this all together is that a shipment of cheese from the US arrived via Harilo a few days ago. While you can get some Australian cheddars that aren't terrible, they aren't really quite right. For this time around I cut up some New York sharp cheddar and grilled up some bacon for New York cheddar & bacon burgers. In addition I grilled up some onions, mushrooms, peppers, chopped some fresh lettuce, tomatoes, and broke out the Heinz ketchup (though I may start making ketchup from scratch) and Grey Poupon. 

One difficulty was still the bread. Kim made some really nice bread the other day, but I have no head for baking. So I went off to European Bakery, which produces some of the better bread products in town, only to find that they were closed. Stuck between a rock and a hard place I lowered myself to buy the rolls at Bhat Betini- and these are rather terrible. It looks like a roll but the texture is just all wrong, it's far too light, and they disintegrate rather easily, not unlike Wonderbread. To combat this I toasted the rolls over  a girdle which firmed them up, and lets face it, toasted rolls are better anyway.

Result- New York Cheddar Bacon Burger

I'm happy to report that the first test run was relatively successful. The weakest link was the bread, but I'm confidant we can overcome that problem. The burger itself was quite tasty, the cheese we shipped worked out well, the bacon was good, and the toppings were all there. Although I'd normally have a burger with fries, recent events have had me cooking more fried food than I like to eat, so instead I took the opportunity to make some other items I had wanted to test out including some walnut & Gorgonzola stuffed mushrooms and a salad with apple, cranberries, walnuts, cucumber, Gorgonzola, tomato and tossed in olive oil. This is just one burger of a list of about a dozen I have to experiment with so I'll be sure to update my pursuit of burger perfection in the hardest place on earth to make a good burger. 

Articles, Restaurants, and Happy New Year 2068

So the other day I was in the paper. The Kantipur Saturday edition is having a weekly article that gives an expats view of Nepal. Dinesh Wagle, who maintains a good blog over at Wagle Street Journal, interviewed me a few days before the article and translated it to me over the phone before it went to print. Since I can't read Nepali to save my life, I still have no clue how the article reads, and the only two words I can discern are harilo.com and smith-kathmandu.blogspot.com. Still I haven't received any hate mail, so it can't be too bad and I have had a couple people stop by the blog and give me a call as a result of the article.

I'm the article in the top left.

Some of the calls, and e-mails I received were about the fact that I'd like to do an American style restaurant. Apparently there are more than a few people looking for this, but the trouble with partnering is the compromises. I'm not really interested in Nepali food, as I'm not very good at making it, and there are a hundred places in this city already doing it. I'm also not interested really in a place that specifically targets tourists, as that demographic is very seasonal and largely are looking to experience "local" food, although 90% of them returning from a trek are very much craving food reminiscent of home. I've also mentioned it at the market a few times and have a few people showing me places in the Lazimpat and Baluwatar areas. Not sure where all of this is going, but it could be interesting.

Somewhat  unrelated, we celebrated four different holidays in a single week this last week. Nepal celebrates more holidays tan you can shake a stick at, but the big one for this week was Nepali New Year, celebrating the year 2068. So happy new year to everyone in Nepal, even if it's a little late. We had Losar earlier, which is celebrated by the Tibetan, and related peoples in February, and we'll have another new year celebration in the fall some time, followed finally by the western calendar which celebrates it in January. That's four times celebrating the new year, each year! The holiday schedule winds down a bit for the upcoming months until we hit August and everything picks right back up. By the time Fall rolls around we celebrate more holidays than days without holidays it seems. such is the pace of life here though, and may it be a good 2068.

More Than Just Salsa

There has been a strange trend as of late that when I meet people for the first time their first response is, "Hey you're the guy who sells salsa right?" Yes I am the salsa master, well at least according to the business cards that Kim had printed for me. It's not a bad thing to be known for as it is usually followed up with something like, "My room mate bought it and we both loved it so much we were eating it with a spoon." Which is a nice compliment, especially considering I don't even eat it with a spoon....well maybe the pomegranate.

This last weekend though my brand of Enlightened Salsa was no more, I'm rebranding and expanding into a wider array of food. If this first weekend was any indication, then it should be a success as I sold out of almost everything that I cooked up for the markets. The new items expand on the Mexican theme, providing things like; veg. chili, refried beans, and south west style pulled chicken (soon to be chipotle chicken when I get my peppers from Harilo). The larger expansion is into other American styles of cooking offering everything from Italian style pasta sauces to Tennessee style BBQ. This weeks items included BBQ Pulled Pork, Marinara sauce made with roasted red peppers, Mushroom Garlic pasta sauce, Bruschetta (which to be fair is just a slightly altered form of my old Greek salsa), Tzatziki, and Greek style triple strained yogurt.

Really the dairy products may be one of the largest areas I could expand into. The yogurt and tzatziki sold out about half way through the first day at the market. I've already been making my own butter, and butter milk but really haven't had any suitable packaging to sell it in. I'd also like to possibly move onto selling sour cream and possibly flavored cream cheeses if I can get the process down a bit more reliably, as I think those items would sell very well for the breakfast crowd. The problem with dairy is that it really needs refrigeration on site, and coolers here are absurdly expensive. My next order through Harilo will include a collapsible cooler which will make my expansion into dairy products possible.

Harilo also offers some room for further expansion, as you can get quite a few items from the States that aren't available here or items whose quality is vastly superior to what is available locally. Corn products for instance are a real problem here, and there is nothing worth using. Making BBQ mean you really want to have corn bread, and making Mexican dishes you really want corn tortillas. So in my shipment that is on the way I have a 4 pack of 20oz bags of Bob's Red Mill Cornbread mix and in my shipment I'm putting together now I'll have a cast iron tortilla press and a 10 Lb bag of Masa Harina so I can actually make tortillas. Beyond just corn products though I'm also able to purchase certain spices that you can't find here like the previously mentioned chipotle peppers, American style chili powder (which has a very different flavor than the local stuff) , the best BBQ sauce in Sweet Baby Ray's gallon containers (which is cheaper through Harilo than buying inferior quality stuff at Bhat Betini), and kitchen utensils like whisks which are apparently unavailable in Nepal. Who knew? But then what Nepali food would require a whisk to make? Once I have a whisk here I'd like to make home made mayo...possibly some flavored stuff, as my food processors whipping attachment just isn't capable of making it. Sure you can buy low quality brands of mayo here, but it's very expensive compared to the ingredients.

All of this is part of an expansion that I'm planning to do as a way to move into catering and hopefully a restaurant if the stars align for me. I'm putting together a business plan and a mock up menu for the restaurant idea, but as one can imagine getting hard numbers here is a bit tough. The idea though is to have a place/person that people can go to to get authentic North American style food, which is currently completely lacking in this city. I think there is a ton of potential for this, but there are some good sized hurdles too. Getting quality beef cuts in a Hindu country isn't as easy as walking down to the local butcher...I think it's still a crime to kill a cow. Cheeses such as Monterey Jack, Colby, Sharp Cheddars, Provolone, Swiss and Blue Cheese will all have to be imported (by the way I compared prices and it's half the price per unit weight to import through Harilo as it is to buy at Bhat Betini). Fountain drinks aren't the norm here and most people use bottles, but figuring out how to get fountain drink machines running here could mean a good size reduction in price and that would allow for free refills, which is something that is lacking and drives me crazy here. Then there is the whole planning prep in a country that is often lacking electricity and thus consistent access to refrigeration.

It's the difficulty though that I find attractive, because if you can solve the puzzle it's almost sure to turn a profit. It's a design and tuning issue, a combination of balancing numbers, creativity and quality. That kind of thing I've always found attractive, and it's the kind of thing I can throw all my time into and be perfectly happy doing so. So if you happen to be in Kathmandu, I'll be having more than just salsa available in the future. Hopefully soon I'll have something put together for catering, and I'll post all the info here. Until then may we all dream of six different kinds of Buffalo wings.

Super Bowl XLV- Nepal Style

What a great game that was, and congratulations to the Green Bay Packers for a well deserved victory! Getting to watch this game in Nepal accompanied by all the correct food took a little bit of American ingenuity and some sleep deprivation. The obstacles were quite numerous actually, and at several occasions I thought we would miss the better part of the game, but fate was on our side and in the end, Kim Donnie and I all got to enjoy some great food and a very good game.

There are two major problems, the first being the difficulty in finding a way to actually watch the game. Apparently it was being broadcast on some channel according to an article that Kim found, but we don't have a TV, and few- if any- bars would be showing the game, especially when you consider the kick off time (we'll get to that in a minute). Donnie has a TV in his room, but with load shedding increasing to 14 hours/day as of today there was no chance we could watch the whole game even if his TV got the correct channel due to the power outage. NFL.com was streaming the live game, but internet here is too slow to do live feeds. The solution I had come up with was to stream the audio and put up the play by play board from ESPN for the visual. I spoke with my dad on Skype the night before and we worked out a system where he ran a direct cable feed on his computer and had the webcam facing the screen to send the image back to me. We ran it full size on our screens, and though it was a bit blurry- it was the closest thing to a live feed we would be able to get, and was really rather decent considering the circumstances. Big thanks to my dad for the feed, which he had to check up on every once in a while to make sure it hadn't been lost on my end or his end.

Wanting to Write Something Positive

The more settled I get in Nepal the harder it is for me to find things to write about it, as nothing seems all that different to me. So just like back home, conversation and thought about the country turns to the events and politics that the country engages in. In this area it is quite difficult to say anything positive about Nepal, and so I have put off writing about it. For instance I really wanted to write something about Nepal Tourism Year 2011, but as I started writing about it, I found that the entire piece was cynical and disparaging. Indeed it is hard to look at what has been done for this and come up with a single good thing to say, and what makes it worse is that the general population seems to have high expectations of it.

Sure people should come to Nepal, it's a great destination, it has the best trekking on the planet, it's temples, people and culture are something that can be spellbinding, and places like Chitwan offer some of the best jungle safari's in the world. For all these reasons and more people should come to Nepal, and more tourists could certainly help the economy here, but that really isn't the issue. The issue is that Nepal declared 2011 tourism year, and then proceeded to create no new incentives to come here, did not reduce the archaic paperwork or ease the terrible visa process, they actually upped the fees for tourists at places like Bhaktapur and infrastructure throughout the country continues to get worse instead of better. There were no new trekking routes opened, no permit requirements eased on some of the more interesting trails, etc. At the airport the visa lines are still terribly long, but there is a nice shiny newly painted gate as you leave the airport that declares "Welcome to Nepal". Sigh.

Asian Opportunity

After my last post there was a short exchange in the comments about how where you live has an effect on how you live and what you can do. While I am the first to recognize that much of what shapes your outlook on life comes with you as mental traits that can be changed in one location just as easy as in any other, I also feel very strongly that opportunities and life style can be strongly shaped by where you choose to live. My thesis is that what I am currently doing, or have been doing could not have been done if I had stayed in the States. I figured I'd make this into a full post because I realized I've never really fully explained much of the differences clearly and have only alluded to them in ways that someone who has never been to Asia might miss. So my response in this way also isn't fully aimed at Rob, who will undoubtedly already be familiar with some of the things I go over, but instead I'm turning it over to a more general accounting to readers in the west who have only some or little experience in the east.

Below are the relevant parts of the previous discussion;


Robert Hartman: Great post, but I tend to think circumstances are a lot like zip codes... I've had a lot of friends move to lots of different places over the past few years, pursuing a lot of different dreams and most seem to be discovering that, "Wherever you go, there you are."

Brian Smith: No doubt that you take yourself with you wherever you go, but to ignore the difference in opportunities that exist in some places over others is to turn a blind eye to the reality of vastly different terrain, economic, cultural, and weather differences. I simply couldn't do the things I'm currently doing in the US, I wouldn't have the time that I have, and the costs are much higher. Ultimately different environments allow for different living habits. Now had I not made a drastic move and just went to some other spot in the US, then I would agree, not enough of a difference to really change the circumstances of what your doing.


Robert Hartman: I don't claim that changing your circumstances can't positively or negatively impact your life. We should all exert all our effort to live the life we want to live... but ultimately if you are satisfied with whatever life you end up with that is a product of how you approach it, regardless of circumstance. In my limited understanding of buddhism, that seems to be a central theme.


One man's exotic locale is just someone else's backyard. I'm glad you are happy where you are, I really am, I'm just saying that if you are willing to put up with a stale fridge and lack of hot water for extra time in the day, you can pretty much do that anywhere.


I work all day with people who made the opposite migration and they see the opportunities in exactly the opposite way. I think there is a grass is always greener element here. Knowing you can always return home and be living in the world's upper middle class within 6 months is very different than having that door permanently closed to you.


Again, I'm not criticizing you personally, I'm just saying that opportunity looks very different depending on where you come from.


Ok, so where to start. First I want to be clear that I agree with almost everything Rob said in the last post, well at least in the first and the last paragraph and I essentially take issue with the two in the center. The issues I want to cover here are costs, opportunities, and finally the education/learning/social aspects of living abroad and how these vary widely from just migrating within the first world and varies considerably from staying within your home country.

A call to innovators

The following article was written by Akshay Sthapit, co-founder of Harilo.com, and was in the Kathmandu Post as a special for New Years. He makes some excellent points about not only starting up a business in Nepal but also calls out some very simple changes that Nepal could make to really invigorate new business and and investment in Nepal.


It's been an interesting journey, the last five months, which is how long it took Harilo.com to go from concept to launch to steady operation. While it's not the first company that I have started, this was my first in Nepal, and I have learnt a lot of lessons unique to Nepal. Some of the many lessons I learnt along the way might be useful for other Nepalis looking to start their own companies. It could also help convince many young and talented Nepalis who are either abroad or thinking of going abroad that opportunities do exist in Nepal—in the long run you will be better off developing a technology-based business in countries like Nepal where the cost of living to quality of life ratio is low rather than moving to a developed country and spending all your capital on rent and other living expenses. So start a company in Nepal, not just because it's your country and it's patriotic to create jobs and keep talent in the country, but because it makes business sense—there are a lot of problems in search of solutions in Nepal with potentially large payouts and it's a great place to be in startup mode to develop products for other countries as well.

The good news is that, from a purely technological perspective, it's easier than ever to create products that can scale. Advances in cloud computing mean that you can develop massive applications with nothing more than a laptop and if business picks up, you can add resources on a need-to basis. No longer do companies with deep pockets have an advantage just because they can afford more servers and bandwidth. Internet speeds in Nepal, although not nearly as fast or as reliable as I would like, are getting better and it's finally possible to hold video conferences with our warehouse in Florida and use screen sharing to collaborate remotely with partners abroad. And I am happy to see that labs and student groups in Nepal are using Harilo.com to order hard-to-find items to move their projects along so they are no longer constrained by what is available in the local market.

Giving Thanks

Last Thursday was American Thanksgiving, and celebrating it away from home in Nepal is makes it a little more meaningful for me. I remember when I was a kid my dad telling me that Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday, and as a kid this struck me as an odd choice. I mean how could Thanksgiving compete with the sheer awesomeness that was all the gifts and decorations of Christmas, or the costumes and candy of Halloween, it seemed at best tied with Easter which gave a whole basket of candy but had the downside of a long church session. Thanksgiving seemed to just be a large dinner, some boring football games (which I no longer find boring). Point being is that it didn't seem to stand up to the other holidays that seem geared toward children.

The themes that a holiday is often supposed to make one reflect on are often overlooked for what is practiced in the practical terms. So for children (and maybe some adults) Christmas and birthdays are about the gifts, and Thanksgiving is about the food. As I've grown older though I've come around to my father's point of view, Thanksgiving is firmly my favorite holiday. Unlike other holidays that require gifts, cards and other distractions, Thanksgiving requires only that we come together in common company and give thanks simply for what we have. We do this by sharing a large meal together, and though the host often undertakes the larger part of the cooking, guests often bring plenty of side dishes and deserts.

Technology & Travel

My first big trip was back in 1999, it was a 2 and a half month backpacking trip around Europe. back then there wasn't much in the way of communicating with people back home. Internet cafes though were just becoming common and it was definitely nice to be able to send some e-mails back home in order to let everyone know where you were and that things were going well. I suppose you also had phones, but calls overseas were quite expensive and I have always traveled as a budget traveler even when I've had plenty of money...it's the only way I know to travel.

Fast forward to 2001/2002 and Kim and I are traveling fully around the planet for about 9 months or so. The internet has become a much more communal resource that even my parents are using quite often at this point. Digital cameras are also now commonly available allowing us to share our adventures with people back home in pictures and not just words. Another big development was the proto-blog sites, ones that allowed us to put up stories and post our pictures and our friends to post comments or messages to us as we traveled. All of this really made it easy to stay in touch with family and friends as we moved from one region to another.

A Tribute to Some Really Worn Shoes

I'm not one to pay too much attention to fashion, but when it comes to trekking I am very particular about my shoes. Each person has different things they look for; some want to make sure they have ankle support, or waterproofing- me I want light weight and grip and just about nothing else matters. I met my perfect shoe back in  the middle of 2007 when I discovered GoLite's Spike Tail. Love at first fit. These shoes are exceptionally light, get an excellent grip even on steep wet granite and dried very quickly if you happened to go wading across streams. They were comfortable to boot, making them my favorite shoe I had ever put on my feet.

This is roughly what my shoes looked like when I got them.

I purchased the shoes specifically for my planned ascent of Kilimanjaro and went to work immediately making sure they got broken in on the trail. The shoes not only accompanied me up that very large mountain in Africa, but have since been my default shoes for trekking back in New England and now here in the Himalaya. They were also excellent running shoes, so they got plenty of use running the streets of Kathmandu two or three times a week. Here is a quick list of the places this pair of shoes got me;

Harilo In the News Again

This article about Harilo was posted in print and online in Republica's The Week last Friday. It's great to see how supportive other Nepali businesses have been to the idea of online shopping, and teaming up with companies that offer a means of electronic payment such as Payway and others in Nepal is a win-win situation for everyone.

Two new Nepali websites-and one old favorite... JIGGY GATON I rarely say anything nice about Nepali websites, but I think it’s time to give credit where credit is due. I discovered two cool sites the other day, and was pleasantly surprised with how non-Cybersansar-ish they are: Harilo.com and Payway.com.np Both these sites share two important traits: they are both simple in design and rich in usefulness. Harilo, an online “shop-in-America” site, was reviewed in this paper back in April, but just in the past month or so has started to catch on(line). Harilo.com is now getting over 3,000 visits each day, and as for the shopping activity, well, just see for yourself by going here: www.harilo.com/latest. Folks are buying laptops, guitars, phones, and even furniture. This is how it works: you order anything you want from America by just finding the online sales link (URL) for a product. For example, go to Amazon.com and pick out a product, and then paste that URL into Harilo. Your account is created instantly, as well as a promise of a quote that gives you the total price of the product in Nepali Rupees and is shipped to your door here in Nepal. I tried it out for a fancy USB microphone I need for my podcasting work (USA price: Rs 7,674), and within 17 minutes, I got back a quote from Harilo for a total cost of Rs 9,250, which reflects no domestic shipping charge (as you can pick up shipments at their Kanti Path office) and just Rs 512 for international shipping + Rs 1,064 VAT. Payment options included using a PayPal, Google, or Amazon account, as well as a VISA/MasterCard. Heck, you can even pay by old-fashioned cash or check! Harilo shipping costs vary by weight, of course, and Customs may slap duty on certain items (for shoes, it could be as high as 20%) and some items can’t be ordered at all (firearms, drugs, etc.) but this has to be the best way to get products from America to Kathmandu – short of having cousin-brother Samir fill his carryon bags on the way home. Two thumbs up for this site on usefulness, and for a clean uncluttered website design – complete with social networking features (connection to Facebook, avatars, and all of that). Another new site worth praising is Payway.com.np. This is the Nepali version of the famous Paypal.com, which allows users to send and receive money online, shop online, and to also create a Nepali gateway for their own online store. There are very moderate fees associated with transactions, but compared to PayPal, they are very reasonable. Having a Pay Way account is a way to pay for goods at any website incorporating the Pay Way gateway (the list of merchants is rather small right now, but sure to grow as more merchants discover this service). Pay Way says they will soon offer other services, like a debit card for department store shopping and connections to dozens of international banks. So stay tuned on that front. Important to note: This is a BIG leap in tech here at home as now Nepal’s merchants can easily jump on the online bandwagon, and accept Pay Way payments from Nepali customers who want to shop from their living rooms and offices (like everyone else in the free world is doing). After finding this site, I began to feel like I was living in the year 2010, instead of 1950. And like Harilo.com, Payway.com.np is designed clean and clutter-free, with an interface that your hajurama could understand – if only she could master the mouse and keyboard. Besides these two new sites, there is one favorite of mine that I want to share, and this site is for the coffee lovers here who want fresh roast at a great price, delivered right to your front door. Topoftheworldcoffee.com is not a fancy nor perfectly designed website (reminds me of a typical NGO website), but its lack of glitz and polish is made up by owner Dale Nafziger’s dedication to service and quality. They deliver over 1,000 kg of fresh coffee each year to Valley denizens, and you can get beans of any type – even organic. You also get great prices, compared to the local market (trust me, I drink alotta joe). And on my last order, I even got a free coffee cup! You pay when the delivery arrives, often to Dale himself, and if there is ever a problem with your order, this company will bend over backwards to make it right. But what I really find right about Topoftheworldcoffee.com is that you can have the best organic homebrew – without ever leaving your front gate. YES! Now when merchants like Topoftheworldcoffee and Harilo get together with payment gateway providers like Pay Way, you are going to see a radical change in the way that we shop here in the Doo. Instead of slogging through monsoon mud to get our necessities and niceties, someone else will be doing the slogging and delivering those items to our homes and offices. Our personal accounting will be online and accessible, and we will truly be part of the consumer revolution taking place elsewhere in the world, where consumers are discussing their purchases, rating their experiences with vendors, and overall becoming better and even more intelligent shoppers. The Original article can be read HERE at Republica.com. You can visit the Harilo website HERE.

Prime Ministers, Toaster Ovens, and Shipping Products from the U.S.

Politics & Prime Ministers
So the Prime Minister of Nepal, Madhav Kumar Nepal resigned five weeks ago. Does Nepal have a new Prime minister yet after three different votes? Nope. Most of it seems like politics as usual in Nepal to me. There was an interesting take on it in an opinion article in Republica today. The article basically makes the case that the coalition that formed to force the Maoists out of power needs to hold or there will be a People's Republic of Nepal. The article struck me as a little alarmist, and though I certainly am not a fan of the Maoists, I don't see any of the other political parties riding to the rescue any time soon. The Maoists actually seem organised and have a plan that they are following through on, to ends that I'm sure will not be good for Nepal. The other parties, instead of offering a real alternative seem to exist mostly to legitimize the government bureaucracy that fleeces the people here of more of their money then it seems to provide in meaningful services and often stands in the way more then helps development in the country. That's my take for what it's worth. The article in Republica by Kanak Mani Dixit can be read HERE if you are interested.


Toaster Ovens
The other day I broke down and got a toaster oven, as I hadn't baked anything in about seven months. Having gone so long, I was immediately quite excited with all the opportunities that opened up. Chicken and eggplant parmigiana? Check. American Style Nachos (full chili and vegies)? Check. Bruschetta? Yes again. To those of you sitting comfortably in the first world none of this sounds like much to you I'm sure. Try going without an oven for half a year and your perspective will change, I promise.


The only problem is that due to some damage at one of the hydro power plants we are back up to eight hours of dreaded load shedding again. They seem to pick the worst times to cut the power too. Today I was about to make some lunch in my new favorite appliance and the power got cut....and didn't come back on for four hours. Sigh. When I plugged the oven into one of my outlets powered by my battery the inverter started beeping, which I took to be a bad sign and quickly unplugged it. They also seem to like to cut the power right around when I make dinner, and although I normally can find the "Power Assassination Schedule" on lline, I haven't seen the latest one, so cooking is a bit of a gamble at the moment.

Summer Updates

Summer The monsoons are here and I have a couple of general updates as to what we are up to these days. We have been keeping ourselves quite busy and really enjoying our time here in Nepal.

After a lot of work and prep I think our online shopping company is finally almost ready to hit the ground and really get going. Kim, Akshay and I are all really excited about this companies potential and what we can bring to Nepal. we are formally registered in the U.S. as Harilo Inc. and in Nepal we will be Harilo Pvt. Ltd. and this Nepali entity should be finished a little over a week from now. Akshay has put a lot of programming into the new website, and all of us have been working to make sure that the user experience flows seamlessly. We hope to be opening up the website to online orders when the company is formally recognized by the government of Nepal.

A Walk to the Office

Our new office for Harilo is on New Road, which is a great location, but its quite a walk from the apartment, (luckily I can get a cab for under $2). It's an interesting walk, and I thought I'd share come of the photos along the way.

The K.C.'s garden at our apartment is in full bloom right now and is very nice. Tranquil, relaxing and green, unlike much of Kathmandu. It's a nice little oasis to have just outside our door.

Just on the north side of the palace walls heading toward Lazimpat road there is this area where there is always a mass amount of laundry being hung out to dry. The buildings highlighted in bright pastels are a nice contrast.

Introducing Harilo

I've already talked about our Nepal to US venture called Red Lotus Trading Company, and now I'm going to introduce on this blog our latest venture Harilo. Harilo is our US to Nepal company, designed to bring the online shopping and products that are available in the states to Nepal. Our biggest barrier is that people that have not been to both don't understand how exciting this can be. In Nepal there is a complete lack