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Singapore is a no-nonsense coun­try. I know that because I lived there for three years. It has also been called a ‘fine’ country: you get a fine if you drop litter, jaywalk, bring in chewing gum, and a host of other, seemingly petty things.So what was everyone thinking in Singapore this past week as it hosted the Kim-Trump summit? I watched some of the scenes of Kim Jong-un’s first meeting with the Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong. A lot of genuine smiles, handshakes and the definite sense of brotherhood and equality. It may take some time yet for the full implications of the later Kim-Trump summit to be clear, but it certainly got me thinking.

I was also thinking of a friend of mine, Pinocchio, that little wooden puppet who came to life. Pinoc­chio was a naughty little boy and, like other little boys, a bit hard to handle. And, as we all know, Pinocchio had a nose that would grow and grow when he told a lie. Pinocchio was Italian, but what if he lived in Wonderland, aka, no, not Singapore (although you are forgiven for thinking that this week), but Kathmandu…

Once upon a time, after a partic­ularly bad beating from his father, Pinocchio decided to run away from his village to Wonderland where he heard the streets were paved. Not with gold. Just paved. Sneaking onto the roof of a bus, Pinocchio encountered a group of older boys. Where are you heading and how old are you, they asked? Fifteen, replied Pinocchio, and his nose grew. So Pinocchio found his way into the company of youths who lived in Wonderland and showed him around. Pinocchio was impressed with the tall buildings and the fact that everyone looked like they were hurrying towards important busi­ness. And look at all these shiny cars and motorbikes—why, everyone must be rich! That night Pinocchio slept in a shop doorway in Thamel. Next morning he was shown how to approach those strange people known as ‘tourists’; who he took for that magical being, an ‘American’. Hungry, said Pinocchio to the ‘Amer­ican’. His nose grew, but just a little.

As time went on, Pinocchio won­dered how people did business in Wonderland when it seemed quite obvious that all parties had growing noses. How was anything achieved? How did contracts get drawn up and kept, given the number of large noses in the room? Wandering into a bank one day, Pinocchio noticed loans being handed out on the condition of being repaid. No one seemed to notice the large noses in the room. Later he stopped to listen to a politician, standing on a raised platform, making promises that made Pinocchio think that maybe he was not such a naughty boy after all. Perhaps at the time of speaking the nose was just a little larger than normal, thought Pinocchio, but two or three years down the road when the promise was still not fulfilled, he noticed the nose dominated the conversation. Pinocchio shopped where he saw shopkeepers with small noses, ate in restaurants run by small nosed people, and tried to be friends only with people who also had small noses.

But then, a strange thing hap­pened: Pinocchio became aware that his nose no longer grew as much. He noticed that people who came to the city from overseas (those ‘Amer­icans’) or from other parts of the country, now had noses bigger than his! Somehow they had become part of Wonderland and accepting of all Wonderland had to offer. They had forgotten what it was like not to have a long nose and were mistrusting of those who did not have noses similar to theirs. They had simply become Romans, while in Rome.

A few weeks ago, if you are now a regular reader of this column, I suggested carpooling might be a good idea in Kathmandu. I was thinking of something more formal, like in some cities in other countries. But perhaps we have something better here… I suspect many of you have never heard of the Carpooling Kathmandu Facebook page. But it’s a great ini­tiative! During the blockade in the winter of 2015/16, a group of young people came up with the idea of sharing transport at this time of fuel shortages and strikes. I don’t actu­ally know who these young people are but what a great idea! Encourag­ing those with bikes, cars, or taking taxis to advertise their routes so that others could get a ride, this group has been idling in the background for the past couple of years, jumping into action when there has been a public transport strike. In addition to posting on the Facebook page, the group suggests calling at bus stops to offer rides to those waiting there. For those looking for rides, they suggest flagging down passing bikes and cars.

I saw this in action during the blockade and witnessed older, as well as younger, people being offered rides on motorbikes. I also saw a few funny incidents when the person being offered a ride obvi­ously had no idea about this sys­tem. A couple of young girls almost slapped the driver for suggesting they get on the back of his bike. An aunty shouted loudly at another driver, who was pretty taken aback at this reaction to his kind offer. I saw a few car drivers who were obviously clueless wondering why a group of people were trying to stop their vehicle - were they going to rob them of their precious petrol perhaps? I have yet to see someone offer a ride to a stranger on their cycle. Perhaps that’s just taking the whole thing too far!

Stickers were introduced during the blockade to advertise a car or bike was in this scheme. It would be great if these were reintroduced for the longer term – a kind of ID card for carpoolers so those not in the know will see that this is a legitimate offer. It would also avoid drivers getting slapped!

A word of caution however: to my casual glance, there seem to be fewer females posting that they are offering rides through the Carpool Kathmandu page. Perhaps a section for female drivers offering rides to female passengers would be a nice addition and provide real and perceived safety for both driver and rider. The trick is of course that this service is offered free – or through petrol sharing on longer out-of-town routes. Carpooling is not supposed to become a business opportunity. That misses the point entirely.

Naturally, carpooling not only helps in times of shortages and public transport strikes. It can also lead to a reduction of pollution with fewer cars and bikes on the road. That might take some time to achieve but every journey starts with a single step. And how about it as a, yes lets use the same imagery, slap in the face for those taxi driv­ers who are now so precious that they decide which routes they will go and how much they will charge? With Tootle (a motorbike taxi ser­vice similar to that in Thailand) and the other Uber like services now on offer in Kathmandu, you would think taxi drivers would be a little aware of the consequences of turn­ing down work. Apparently not. But I digress…Next time a young hunk offers you a ride, or a gorgeous girl steps out in front of your car, don’t be overly flattered. They may simply be part of the carpooling group and want your transport, not your body! And, please, don’t forget to pick up aunty, grandpa or grandma on your travels. Happy sharing.

With the arrest and charging of Harvey Weinstein, for­mer film producer, comes a bittersweet victory for Hollywood and women in general. Him and the likes of Bill Crosby are high pro­file abusers, using their positions to exploit women. They are not the first of course. Abusers range from DJs, actors, and singers to an Olympic athletes’ doctor, members of the UN peacekeeping force, and development workers. But to my mind—and I expect criti­cal and strong feedback here—actors, directors and the like are idolized for their looks, fame, money, ability to progress ones career etc, by the women they subsequently abuse. These women may not be nearly as vulnerable as those being abused by doctors, peacekeepers and others in a position of trust. Now before you start punching the newspaper, let me say I in NO WAY condone any act of violence, physical, mental, or sexual against any female (or male). I also fall into the #metoo category, twice over (discounting the ‘small stuff’). What I am saying is that those who are physically in positions of trust, such as doctors and peace­keepers, are generally in close con­tact with people whose very lives are precariously in their hands. There is something particularly abhorrent about that kind of advantage taking.

As #metoo, correctly, intensifies is there a line to be drawn any­where? When does sexual innuendo and light teasing become sexual assault? There is not a single female on this earth who has not suffered some kind of teasing; and probably frequently. But what is seen to one woman as easy-going banter from a col­league is viewed as sexual abuse by another. I wrote in an earlier column about being verbally abused by a young guy on a scooter. To me it was just annoying and silly. Yet to the young Nepali girl who grabbed me by the arm when he started verbally abusing her, this was sexual abuse, and terrifying.

I’m reading today that Morgan Freeman has also been accused under #metoo. His ‘sexual abuse’ of colleagues was to his mind jokes and compliments. Being that he is 80 years old, he will have grown up in a society where joking and com­plimenting women with the likes of “your legs look fabulous in that short skirt” (my words), was per­fectly acceptable. But as time has gone on, this kind of comment is not only uncomfortable, but labelled “sexual abuse”. Men must now take care not to offend women by saying or doing anything that can be construed as abuse. Again I ask, is there a line to be drawn and where do we draw it?

Something those in Asia will find extremely strange and hard to understand is that in the West you cannot even talk to a young child that you do not know lest you be accused of child molestation. Ear­lier this week there was a child of about four crying on the stairs of the venue I was in. Naturally I stopped to ask why he was crying and where was his mother. If his father had not turned up at that point I would have lifted the child off the stair and tried to find someone who knew him. This kind of thing cannot now be done in the West without risk­ing being accused of kidnapping or abuse. Where do we draw the line?

Which brings me to another ques­tion—when is art, art, and when is art, pornography? This is certainly an age-old question but in the days of social media when is it right to post so-called art pictures which are, to the majority, merely porn? If someone, who is not a photogra­pher by profession, takes semi-nude pictures of (consenting) strangers on his phone and posts on social media under the heading “art”, is it art or is it pornography? Are we so numb and jaded by erotic imagery that we don’t even care? Where do we draw the line?

Being British I’ve been brought up to form an orderly queue from day one at nursery school. And it seems perfectly natural to line-up for everything—for your lit­tle bottle of milk at primary school, right through adult life and queuing in banks, for buses, in shops… for just about everything. No one tries to ‘jump the queue’ and if someone is busy looking the other way when it’s their turn, we will not try to rush forward, but we will let them know now is their time to be served. Here in Nepal I have really only seen orderly lines in two places—the ‘priority’ section of my local bank and in the theaters. Yes, most banks now have a ticket system but that is enforced queuing, not willful wait­ing one’s turn.

In the days when the Gurukul Theater Company had its own prem­ises, somewhere near Battisputali, I was surprised and delighted to see they had trained their theater-go­ing audience (of mostly under 30s) to form neat lines and wait patiently until the bell rung and the door opened. This was adopted by other theaters. Perhaps those young drama enthusiasts thought it was part of the whole drama experience. Yet it was not something to be incor­porated into daily life, as if others did not know about this magical thing called a queue, more usually know as a ‘line’ in Nepal.

I was reminded of this recently while attending a theater I had not been to before. They mixed it up by having two ways to enter the main stairway to the theater hall. To my mind that would require two queues, flowing together like the slipway of a British motorway. But no, queuing in that theater seemed to have gone the way it is elsewhere in Kathmandu. Chaotic.

Someone (no doubt a beddeshi) did a little survey on how efficient was the system of a shop keeper serving several customers at once, rather than taking them turn by turn. It turns out that if there are, say five people to serve, and each one will take two minutes to deal with, then the shop keeper spends 10 minutes to serve the five people regardless as to whether he does this one by one or tries to cover as many as he can at the same time.

You know the scenario—customer 1 asks for eggs, customer 2 asks for tomatoes, customer 3 asks for biscuits. While the shop keeper is putting the eggs into a bag, he is throwing the tomatoes onto the scales and asking number 3 what kind of biscuits he wants. Meantime customer number 4 enters and asks for some beer. Eggs are now laid aside while he hands beer out of the fridge and eyes the biscuits.

Tomatoes are weighed and head­ing for a bag when customer 5 enters the shop. She’s after onions which she wants to select herself but she needs to have a conversation about the quality first. Meantime the egg customer is finally handing over the money and receiving the eggs and the biscuit customer has made his selection. The beer guy hands over his money and change is sought for both him and the egg customer. Finally the egg customer has got both eggs and change and is head­ing out of the shop while the onion conversation goes on and the bis­cuit customer is patiently repeating her selection.

Then enters a new customer, this one is a little influential in the street and of course gets priority. And I’m standing at the back, dizzy and frus­trated by now, and decide to go to the less busy shop next door… Yes, the shop keeper spends the same amount of time but for the quieter, less pushy customer, they can wait eight minutes for their two-min­ute transaction despite being first in ‘line’.

The strain of very badly played instruments permeates through the closed widows. Ho hum… must be a wedding in the neighborhood. And not just one! Weddings, like buses, tend to come along all at the same time. There is what are called, ‘wedding seasons’. I get the fact that there are days which are more auspicious than others for weddings and I understand that some months in the year are just not great for cele­brations. Planting, harvesting, mon­soon—all would have made it diffi­cult in the past to hold a wedding which might involve your guests walking for hours from nearby vil­lages. But I would have thought that in Kathmandu and other cities, the social calendar no longer needs to revolve around the agricultural year. Or does the agriculture year now revolve around weddings?Whether for genuine belief in the gods appointing an auspicious day for a wedding, or whether bowing to convention, weddings all happen at one time. Or that is how it appears anyway! I have friends who have to rush from one party palace to anoth­er on the same day to attend sev­eral weddings. The roads become even more congested than usual as the many wedding cars make their way from one location to the next. Last Friday, I was delighted to see a carriage drawn by two white hors­es near my house. The usual red-clothed brass band was present as well as a crowd of invitees and curi­ous passers-by. Well, not actually ‘passing by’ as the road was blocked. I had to squeeze through the throng of excited aunties and children.

I’ve attended weddings in villages, in a range of party palaces, and in 4-star hotels, and they all have one thing in common. What’s with the sad-faced bride? Even love marriag­es or marriages where the bride and groom are extremely happy with the choice of spouse, where does it say that the bride needs to look like she is in a dentist waiting room? She sits there in her fine clothes and gold jewelry on a raised platform so that everyone can see what a lucky man the groom is.

Well, yes probably I wouldn’t be looking too happy either under these circumstances. And not being able to join in the dancing? My face is falling by the minute! For what is a wedding without dancing? On the whole the main reason for me attending a wedding is for the dancing! Wheth­er that is a Scottish wedding with traditional dances such as the Gay Gordons and Strip the Willow (don’t these names sound a little strange today?) or a Nepali wedding with Bollywood and Nepali tunes, I just love to dance. And why shouldn’t the bride be allowed to dance also?

I’ve been at weddings where the brides look petrified. At a friend’s village wedding I sat talking to his bride for quite some time as she looked completely lost and vulnera­ble. Years later, I was introduced to my friend’s now smiling and happy wife. She did not remember me, despite me being the only foreigner at her wedding. The whole day for her was just a blur of ritual, red vermilion, and no doubt the fear of what was to come. While the rest of us were dancing and eating to our hearts content and generally having a great time, she, like so many other brides, was not.

So when I hear that far-from-mu­sical wedding band, I usually feel quite unsettled. The young bride has no idea what is in store for her. But, hopefully her ‘new’ family will be good to her. However, I suspect a little bit of her dies that day. And if you have no idea what I am talking about… you must be a man.

Stepping into a vehicle in Nepal is, I sometimes feel, a bit like playing Russian roulette. On my very first trip here as a tourist, the bus I was on coming from Pokhara to Kathmandu had a minor crash. Now whether it was the driver’s fault or the fault of the bridge rail­ing which was just kind of standing there, right at the edge of the bridge, I may never know. Luckily, the only one who was injured was me. Due to nerve damage, it was more than seven years before feeling came back into my big right toe. But it was ‘only’ a very minor accident. But every day we read about bus and jeep crashes as the complexity of the landscape, combined with some less than perfect driving, takes its toll. So where does that leave us, the passenger, who needs to get from A to B? Even driving our own bike, cycle, or car leaves us open to others’ bad driving or the whims of the universe. Sure, in every country there are accidents, and some pretty major ones, but what I am really getting at is: why, given the hilly and often bad road conditions, are drivers so gung-ho?

Bus drivers are more often than not young guys with an image to keep. And who doesn’t like a young, leather-clad stud, with his own (albeit 48 seater) vehicle? When I lived out in the sticks, the local girls’ eyes lit up at the arrival of certain bus drivers and more often than not there was at least one female sitting up front to keep him company.

Even the older guys drive as though the devil is on their tail. Overtake on a blind corner? Why not! Every driver gets excited when a bit of the road opens up. Here is a chance to demonstrate his ability to be in the next Grand Prix. I’m quite surprised there are not more road accidents in Kathmandu than there are. Despite the lack of official driving lessons and knowledge of road signs, drivers in Nepal are fully present 99 percent of the time.

Avoiding a stray dog, cow or child is part of what driving is all about, and at that they are experts. Wander onto the road in a British town and you are likely to become toast whether you are a distracted human, stray dog (highly unlikely), or a cow (extremely unlikely). Fully trained and well equipped with a deep understanding of correct road procedures, your average British driver is under-prepared for unusual occurrences. So, yes, despite being, on the whole, horrible drivers deal­ing with horrendous roads, Nepali drivers do have their plus side.

And, what is with this extreme, yogi like patience? Being stuck in a traffic jam does not ruffle feathers. Drivers will wait not only patiently but with what appears to be medi­tative mindfulness while the line of cars in front does not move for 10 minutes, or a truck is unloading its goods. Or, my favourite and a reg­ular occurrence on my road, baby chicks are herded up by mother hen.

Indeed, maybe us pedestrians need to adopt the guise of chickens in order to cross the road. (I’m sure there is a joke in their somewhere!) Certainly those of us in the guise of zebras are not doing too well. I have noticed that most pedestrians have taken to using zebra crossings. So, obviously it must be those motor­bike helmets and the metal walls of vehicles stopping the flow of infor­mation on these odd, and often fad­ing, white stripes on the road from entering the heads of drivers.

While road safety is a very serious topic, sometimes you just have to shrug your shoulders and smile. That, or cry…

To many, Jan Salter was both a marvelous and sensitive artist and the founder of the Kathmandu Animal Treatment Centre (KAT). Her paintings of different ethnic groups and peoples of Nepal, aptly entitled, “Faces of Nepal”, were taken from drawings she did while trekking around the country in the 1970s and ‘80s. For anyone who has been in Fire and Ice, the icon­ic poster for this set of portraits has been hanging on the notice board for as long as I can remember. The Faces of Nepal book was co-authored by the Late Dr Harka Gurung, geographer, anthropologist, conservationist, and visionary. For this collection of work, Jan received the Gorkha Dashin Bahu medal from Late King Biren­dra. Her other poignant collection of works is ‘All our Daughters’. For this, Jan worked closely with Maiti Nepal and returnee and rescued trafficked girls to produce touching portraits. The fact these ‘daughters’ trusted Jan to portray them in a sensi­tive and kind manner says a lot about her ability to connect with people.

Jan was the founder of the Kathmandu Animal Treatment Center, which was the outcome of a long held dream to help the dog population in Kathmandu. Jan abhorred the cruel annual cull­ing of street dogs that took place at that time and was the first person to lobby for animal rights in Nepal; something that brought a lot of negative feedback. But she persevered. In 2010 she was recognized for her efforts in animal welfare when she received the "Extraordinary Commitment and Achievement Award" from the Humane Society International. She was later honored with an MBE from Queen Elizabeth for her work on animal welfare in Nepal.

To those who knew her, Jan was all of the above and much more. She had a dry sense of humor, referring to Nepal as Alice’s “Wonderland”, and a humility despite the honors. And she was always ready with a plate of scrambled eggs and toast for unexpected guests. To me, she was the first British person I met in Nepal when I replied to her advert for an apartment for rent. I never took that apartment but we became firm friends, particularly during the conflict years.

Those who visited her in her small apart­ment and studio in Gairidhara will remember it was not possible to leave without becom­ing covered in hair from her dogs, particu­larly the long-haired blonde one, or without becoming engaged in heated conversations on animal welfare. I knew her at the time when KAT was just an embryo of an idea, and we spent many hours discussing how the culling of street dogs could be brought to an end. I watched her paint many of her ‘All our Daughters’ canvases and also watched sadly when her eye-sight deteriorated so much it made further painting impossible.

Living just around the corner from Jan, I could run over during the curfews around the time of the Royal Massacre. As a Gorkha Dashin Bahu medal holder, she told me she had the right to give her last respects to King Birendra. But being that we were all in a state of shock, she did not do this and it was something she told me later she very much regretted. Instead we stood together at Kamal Pokhari and watched the procession snake its way down to Pashupatinath Temple.

As it often happens, our lives took us in differ­ent directions around the second decade of the 2000s. But we often bumped into each other at functions and gatherings. Jan, I truly treasure these years when you were just a phone call away, and my place of refuge in hard times. You will be missed. 

As per her family’s wishes, the web launch of Faces of Nepal will still go ahead as planned on May 15 at 3 pm in the Nepal Tourism Board. Everyone is welcome

I was told about some people who trekked up to Poon Hill, visited Chit­wan, went paragliding, kayaking etc while missing limbs, being sight impaired or suffering from other debilitating afflictions. But on closer inspection, these amazing people are veterans and ex-policemen with disabilities gotten in the line of duty. These are not your average ‘mobility challenged’ people. To my mind, people who are mobility challenged are not only those severely affected, but also those from among a grow­ing number of retiring baby boom­ers (those born between 1946 to 1964) who have reduced mobility due to age and are not necessarily officially termed ‘disabled’. Many of these people now have the time and financial means to travel. But they are not, on the whole, mountain­eers, trekkers or adventure tourists.

So let’s not focus too much on the big adventures, let’s focus on acces­sibility on a more mundane level. Is it too much to ask for ramps in hotels, handrails in cafes and bars, larger bathrooms, disabled-friendly toilets in public places such as the TIA, and in government offices? It has been, I believe, the aging baby boomers in developed countries who have been pushing for better accessibility on transport, in public buildings, schools, housing, hotels etc. But who is pushing for better accessibility for the elderly and the disabled here in Nepal?

There are two strands to this issue of accessible tourism: the rights of the mobility challenged person, and the possibility of a new, prosperous source of revenue for the country. The size of the potential tourist market cannot be denied, but with less than one million tourists currently visiting Nepal, can the Nepali infrastructure cope? And can Nepal develop its infra­structure to such an extent as to entice this new tourist to come in the first place? Perhaps more impor­tantly, should Nepal develop infra­structure to meet this demand at the expense of infrastructure for its own citizens?

In a country where it’s often a struggle and a bit of a trek for able-bodied people to walk along the sidewalk (if there is one) of the capital city, is it possible to meet the challenges associated with providing disabled-friendly accessibility for its own citizens as well as visitors?

There are people working very hard for the rights of dis­abled Nepalis, both in local and international organizations, and I wonder what they think of the idea of accessible tourism. True, at the ICAA, it was mentioned that highlighting disability in any way is a positive thing, and that accessible tourism will open up employment oppor­tunities for disabled Nepalis. The conference also included a Mayors’ Panel, where city mayors came together to learn and share what is happening in their city with regard to accessibility. This, I thought, was an invaluable addition to the conference. Unfortunately, only three mayors from the whole country found the time to attend.

Accessible tourism could be the start of something really innova­tive and progressive, benefiting everyone. Or it could just end up benefiting those already in the tourism sector while the rest of us continue to show signs of age related reduced mobility, and continue to climb over rubble, struggle to get onto public transport ad nauseam…