After a week in Kathmandu working on the website and my taxes, I’ve endeavored to get away. The place was getting on my nerves with all the pushy beggars, rickshaw drivers, guides, and hashish/mushroom salesmen. So I took a seven-hour bus ride to the Royal Chitwan National Park, Nepal’s jungle refuge for tigers, rhinoceroses, and, of course, sloth bears. It that lies at the base of the Himalayas at an elevation of 150 meters. Yup, Nepal’s not all mountains. The small kingdom goes from sea level to 8000+ meters. And since Nepal lies at the longitude of Florida, it gets pretty hot down here.

The little village outside the park is a bit dingy, and filled with tourist shops and restaurants. Not the sort of place I’d like to spend time. So I signed up for a two-day jungle trek. Hopefully this will be the jungle experience I didn’t get in Thailand. It was expensive at $40, but includes my own personal guide, Krishna.

The Land of NGOs

One thing I’ve noticed reading Nepal’s newspapers is the huge amount of foreign aid from NGOs (Non-Government Organizations), the UNDP, and private individuals. Not a day goes by when there isn’t an announcement of some project, such as a road or dam, a conference of human rights sponsored by an aid group, or equipment being donated to schools. Does all this activity and investment help the people? Is it lost to corruption? Is it destroying their cultural identity and imposing Western standards? I don’t know. But the fact is, people are spending huge amounts of money on the tiny kingdom of Nepal, because it has some big mountains.

This contrasts shapely with Myanmar, a country few people have even heard of, and thus doesn’t draw the tourists who will donate their time and money. On top of that handicap, the world has further isolated this impoverished country through economic sanctions, cutting the people off from many goods and services. For better or for worse, the people of Myanmar are on their own.