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Archive for June, 2011

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To finish an unfinished journey…..off the beaten track

Saturday, June 4th, 2011

It’s been over two years since our last trip was abruptly ended due to sickness including a hospital stay in Calcutta and a sickly time in Delhi. We decided to come home then and while I made a quick one day trip to Agra and the Taj my desire to ‘complete’ my Indian adventure only grows!

As my children are getting older it might end up being just a trip for Stephanie and I but even then, with Stephanie not being as intrepid (or silly) as me in her travelling desire it might in fact just be me for the main part with Stephanie joining me for a shorter, more structured trip.

Something about train travel overseas excites me and in spite of the bunk beds being too short, I still have that desire so my next trip needs to include trains…..

I also love to walk and hike so especially if I go alone I think that I’ll definitely try and make it to Nepal and Tibet, maybe with a trek to Everest base station along the way!

It’s still a way off but here are my thoughts……Red is where I want to travel before meeting up with Stephanie to travel the green route. If I have the opportunity I’d take the blue route as my start on the way to Delhi……we’ll see!

I think I’m the only one in my family to think this but something about India attracts me and resonates within me. Maybe it’s the intrepid and chaotic nature of India (at least the parts I’ve seen) as opposed to my structured, orderly life? Maybe it’s the undoubted spirituality of the place? Maybe it’s just the adventure and opportunity to meet with history and culture and humanity in a much more real way than my life in Australia ever offers……it’s somewhere I could spend much longer in!

As the old ad says….’It may not happen overnight, but it will happen!’

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‘W’ is for World Bank

Saturday, June 4th, 2011

In our travels in different parts of the world we’ve always learned to appreciate just how good Australian Roads are. Seems the World Bank needed a new country to loan money to and so increase the reliance on them under the guise of ‘wanting to improve Nepal’s roads and open up the country’ and here’s what happened…..I warn you though, it’s not funny!

The World Bank (WB) surmised that for Nepal to be on the way to development a priority would be a good road from the east to the west of the country linking up all the major sites on the way. This is obviously a sensible idea but the staggering thing about the project is that it demonstrates just how much it is possible to ruin a good idea.

When the route the road would take was being decided the WB in all its infinite wisdom opted to neglect the advice given to it by the locals (what do they know?). The WB wanted the road to follow the river through the country as rivers carve their way through mountains and therefore there would be less difficulty constructing the road. The Nepalis advised against such a route because the areas surrounding the river are the areas where most landslides occur (especially in monsoon season). The WB (as it always does) decided that it knew best and insisted that the road had to be built along a specific route, by the riverside.

The net result of this is that many are killed and injured by landslides every year on this road (around a hundred deaths in 2003 alone). The landslides also wash away huge chunks of the road and mountainside too which means that the costs of repairing the road are a constant drain. But is doesn’t end there. The frequency and severity of landslides has increased along the roadside because building the road where they did meant a large amount of deforestation. The WB were forewarned by the Nepalis about the effect this was likely to have but again chose to ignore it (the roots of the trees bind the soil together thus steadying it and preventing landslides).

After the problem became noticeably worse the WB decided to give another loan in order to replant as many trees as possible along the route. They insisted (for reasons best known to themselves – most likely because they were cheapest) that eucalyptus trees should be planted. These are not indigenous to Nepal. The outcome of this scheme was that the fragile ecosystem was put out of kilter by the non-native trees. But it doesn’t end there either.

The WB has now given a third loan to Nepal which is to be used to rip up the eucalyptus trees and plant native Nepali trees. All of this may seem to just be negligence or incompetence but it isn’t – it’s much worse than that. People die every year because of this incompetence and not just in the immediate way brought on by landslides. In a country where average earnings are $200 per year the average person simply cannot afford to be burdened with paying their share of three huge World Bank loans, two of which shouldn’t have been necessary and one of which was botched. Incompetence on this scale costs lives.

The details in this entry are taken from the website http://michaelgreenwell.wordpress.com/

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