All,

excerpt from today's blog, should you be headed to Nepal anytime soon.

Robb

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16 February 2008 – Katmandu

Our first day here, we were drawn from the terrace of our one star hotel by the echoing sound of woman’s pontificating voice bellowing from ancient loudspeakers a hundred yards away. Cresting the road over a small hill that led to a square, we were engulfed in a sea of red banners plastered with the archaic hammer and cycle. On the tops of a dozen buses aimlessly cruising these streets, hundreds of young members of the Maoist Party shouted slogans to the daunted pedestrians below. The rally kicked off a national strike which apparently had been brewing for sometime, but all of our standard news sources failed to pick up. The government’s flat rejection of the party’s demands have led to the near complete severing of all ground links between Nepal and India, its neighbour to the south which provides most of the goods consumed here. The primary target of the strikers has been the fuel supply lines which are via road tankers. The roads have been blockaded and fuel trucks who have attempted to cross the lines have been attacked and their drivers beaten or killed. The crisis is literally strangling Katmandu, the capital, as all but a few gas stations have consumed their stock and are closed. The ones which do remain open are scenes of chaos and misery as motorbike riders, taxis, truck drivers and everyone else dependent on fuel lines up for up to ten hours for little, and sometimes no fuel at all. Their anger seemed to have been kept in check by troops armed with automatic weapons guarding the stations, but conflicts with police in riot gear are now the norm. Nearly all households use bottled LPG to run kitchen stoves but this supply is depleted as well, so citizens are paying inflated prices for wood which enables them to cook a hot meal each day.

Nepal is one of the few countries on our route that I had never visited and I felt genuine excitement about traveling here in the days before leaving Bangkok. Now after four days in this city, I can honestly say I have never sensed such civic tension before. The papers read like a literal war between left wing supporters and the government, each spinning the situation in the way which suits them best. The left leaning paper’s headline this morning fumed about a police killing of a boy who broke the mandatory curfew. In the government’s paper, it was a small chunk of copy in which the boy was depicted as a man. It seems that everyone has an opinion but the points of view are so diametrically opposed, a flashpoint appears inevitable.

The most explosive element here right now is of course the fuel crisis. The streets which were as dense with activity as frenetic as an agitated fire ant hill a few days ago are now nearly silent. People cannot get to work or school, they cannot transport goods and they cannot cook food. The impact on us has been unnerving. After two days of negotiations with the help of the staff at our hotel, we were able to track down 20 liters of the precious liquid for about $16 per gallon. The transaction was like something out of a Bond movie: a young man whose uncle owns the gift shop at the hotel hops on the back of the bike and we begin to weave deeply into Katmandu’s narrowest old lanes battling to make a path through pedestrians, rickshaws, motorbikes and the odd taxi or two. The side cases making the bike over three feet wide, we took more than our share of taxi paint and motorcycle chrome with us as we scraped past. Amidst the incessant and deafening din of horns of all pitches and tone, we waded through the swarm like an icebreaker through the Northwest Passage. When we reached the small square which housed the motorbike rental shop and source of the black market gas, a steel door was rolled up and I drove up a narrow ramp into the store. The door was slammed shut behind and the transaction could take place. A five gallon container was brought in through the back door, we loaded up the tank, I paid my $80 and I was on my way back through the jungle of the old town to the hotel.

Adventure touring is the name given to the type of riding we are doing right now because with each switchback turn, each border crossing and each new culture, you never really know what to expect. These last few days in Katmandu have tested our ability to adapt to the most unexpected obstacles imaginable - adventure touring at its core. Our next test will be to make it to the next city, Pokhara, on a single tank of gas, arrange for another black market refill there, and then find a way to get past the Maoist strikers and on to India. These are the same people who have waged a ten year war with the government which has claimed 17,000 lives, and they currently stand in our path.