My BFF  aka Best Friends Forever had come to visit me  this winters. I had to show her around the valley and also took her to all the tourist places from The Royal National Park – Chitwan, Lumbini , Bandipur, Pokhara to all the historic places and sight seeing  . She is a nature-freak and she loved every bit of this place. The best place she went crazy for was at the Sarangkot hilltop. ” What a mesmerizing view, I never thought i would be standing so close to the mountains. I just feel Heaven has come to earth.” – she said. Photography being her passion she had taken some amazing pictures. I fail to understand photographers when they take the same shot with every different angle possible.  She wanted to do more of  adventurous sports, but as it was freezing cold we skipped on quite a few of them.

Anyways, she also promised that  she would come to Nepal again once she retires and would spend the rest of her life. I was so amazed on hearing this. I asked her if the  load- shedding timings never bothered her. She said it was fine unless it went on for days without no lights in the capital. I was taken aback by her response and asked her in an assertive way what did she not like about this place . There had to be some thing that she did not approve of around the place as i could just see the love that she had for THE LAND OF HIMALAYAS.

So while she started talking, she pointed out quite a few of problems that  all of us are going through. The first one started with the street lights. It  gets  dark in the evening  early  as the days are shorter , and it gets so difficult for a traveller to find place and even for the commoner it gets pretty hard to walk around as the road construction is happening everywhere with holes and pitfall.  And then it went on to the electricity problem . I told her it does bother you. So she reverted back by saying , for you its fine, you can afford to get an inverter and the batteries , i am just thinking about the people who spent 10 hours in a day in candles and lantern. I wonder how they carry on their household chores and the children their studying in candle-light with no heaters in this cold.

When i gave it a thought myself , i could not visualize myself without the power- backup, Electricity is such a prime thing in our day to day life  and there are so many people who have totally been deprived of this facility !!