Nepal is a beautiful country. Terraced hills and grass huts. Peasant farmers and shop keepers, almost everyone in colourful local dress. Goats and chickens everywhere, the odd cow snacking on garbage. The bus drivers think nothing of the cliffs dropping down beside us. The people riding on the roof, hardly seem to notice the goats that are bouncing off them every time the bus hits a bump. With the sound of the horn, everyone politely shuffles over and buses and cars and motorbikes and people and sleeping dogs all seem to squeeze by on these impossibly narrow roads. A man gets pick-pocketed and everyone gathers around to hear his story and tell there own similar ones. Then they depart, without a word, as though they hadn’t just that very moment been having a conversation. Another woman, waiting for the bus to take her two children to a village that is two or three days walking after the bus drops them off eight hours after receiving her kiss goodbye. This mother is looking for someone taking the same bus who can show the children the way to the village. Sacks of rice are being taken up the back of a bus by head. One man puts the sack on his head and he balances it up the ladder to the next guy who takes it off and stacks it on the roof. It makes for good seats for all those passengers who will be riding up there.

It’s the cripples who go around walking on their stumps and elbows (or stumps and stumps) who strike me as living in impossible circumstances. And the snotty dirty children who watch me go by with no hope in their eyes, wondering what my life must be like and being unable to imagine such riches as even I have. There are also the desperate mothers with their babies in their arm waving the bottle around saying, “Milk for baby! Milk for baby?” But mostly there are just men women and children who want desperately to survive who wander every street putting their hand to their mouth saying, “Khana, khana” (food, food). There is more of this than you can imagine. People are everywhere hungry in a land where people really do try to help the hungry. I see the help everywhere, from local people, foreign tourists, aid charities. Everyone seems to be trying to easy the suffering of the poor, but the poor are still poor. Children have no parents, wives have no husbands, low caste people simply no chance.