Cycling around Kathmandu

Kathmandu is chaotic, there is no doubt about it. The mass sprawl, the crowds, the mental traffic of motorbikes, tuktuks, cars, rickshaws, and cows! Its not a huge city, but its pretty packed with people! With over 2000 years of cultural heritage, you catch glimpses of the buddhist stupas or hindu temples next to modern buildings and rickety huts.

I bicycle around the city as its quick to get around, and you can weave around the traffic and take the bumpy scenic back roads! Weirdly I am so comfortable cycling around Kathmandu, but have only tried it once in London - all those cycle lanes coming and going, with all drivers on autopilot, made me nervous! At least in Kathmandu, it is organised chaos - despite the traffic weaving around, moving everywhere, squeezing everywhere, they are all very aware of the road. You even get used to the customary horn 'beep' everytime a car passes any other moving object!

Its a lot of fun too; I have had plenty of random chats with taxi drivers or tuktuk passengers whilst at traffic lights, even lost a flipflop or two mid-cycle during monsoon. Its also a great way to learn about the city, find your way around - and sometimes you find the best places when you get lost!

Going for lunch with my producers

Ok so from this photo, i seem a little over excited about lunch with the producers at my leather factory - but you cant beat a lunch break for veg chowmein and good company!!

Posted via web from AURA QUE

Spring/Summer 2010 - Screenprinting AURA QUE Logo

For our Allo hemp products, the AURA QUE logo is screenprinted by hand onto each piece - see pictures below from the manufacturer that I visited this week, whilst developing new samples for our next collection!

Visit to Tannery in India

On my road trip from Delhi to Kathmandu, I visited the tannery that produces buffalo leather for AURA QUE's leather collection. I have visited many tanneries in various parts of India over the last few years, and am pleased to be working this well established tannery. They have a strong social responsibility policy and work to European regulations for Health & Safety and their treatment process, which I have seen first hand during my visits.

From Autumn/Winter 2010, AURA QUE will be working with leather made from high grade buffalo hides, that is a by-product of the local food industry. To create the colours and finish required, the tanning process uses some chemicals and waxes which are processed through the tannery's primary and secondary effluent treatment plants that extracts, contains and reuses any chemicals, and purifies water to be used for irrigation.

The tannery process the leather from raw hide to finished product. Once the raw leather hide has been processed, the leather is dyed in a large drum, dried, wax added, and then tumbled by a milling process to soften it.

I think its important to know how my materials are made, and having seen the whole tanning process from start to finish, its definately not for the faint hearted! But personally, I really think it is a necessary industry - realistically when is the world going to stop eating meat? Surely it is important to use all by-products to minimise waste?

Finally made it to Kathmandu

Once the strike was lifted, we were able to get transport to Kathmandu from the border of Nepal/India. An 8 hour bus journey, with incredible scenes of Nepal - through the farmlands of the southern Terai and the windy roads through the mountains, following the river to Kathmandu. Some of those bends were a bit hairy though...

And there is no limit to how many people can fit on a Nepali local bus...And we finally made it to KATHMANDU, despite volcano ash, food poisoning and a national political strike - phew!

Maoist Strike cripples transport links, causing Nepal to stand still for nearly a week

So we got to the Nepali/Indian border on Tuesday, filled with optimism that the strike that started last Sunday, would be over by then. But no; at the border, all shops were closed, all cafes, all buses stopped, with everyone just milling around with nothing to do.

With no one knowing when the strike would be over, we decided to head down to Varanasi, and see some sights at the River Ganges while trying to find out any information about the strike from the international news, local news and friends in Kathmandu. It has been surprising how little international news coverage the strike in Nepal has received - despite the country having stood still by Maoist protests for nearly a week.

Coming away from the Nepali border (so near but so far...!), I took a photo of all the trucks lined up waiting to take supplies into Nepal, waiting patiently on both sides of the road - miles and miles of them.

Now the strike has finally been called off, we will be retracing our steps over night, hoping to arrive in Kathmandu tomorrow - FINALLY!!

My love/hate relationship with the Delhi to Kathmandu Overland Trip

So I could take a 1.5 hr flight from Delhi to Kathmandu, but when possible I travel overland to see new places in India and visit my leather tannery firsthand.

Its a mission of a journey that has taken me between 1.5 days to 5 days and can never be fully planned it seems! You have to get an overnight train from Delhi to Gorakhpur (12 hrs approx) then local bus to the border (3hrs) then rickshaw over the border, then its anything from 6 hrs to 13 hrs by bus to Kathmandu.

The first time I travelled overland across this route was from KTM down to Delhi in June 2003 when I left Nepal after five months teaching English in a rural community. That journey still makes me shudder when I think about sleeping on the rail platform as our train was delayed by hours in Gorakhpur, and then the 40 degree heat blasting through our non-AC carriage, which was full of Indians curiously looking at my friend Hannah's long blonde curly hair. Sweaty parched panic resulted in me having to jump off the train at one stop to find some bottled water, only for the train to start pulling off and some indian guy having to heave me onto the train from the low platform - funny in hindsight!

Since then, I have travelled up from Delhi to Kathmandu several times, always with far too much luggage - mainly first samples, supplies and presents for some of the kids of my producers. Last summer, on the border, I bumped into ten members of the Kandel family who I lived with in South Nepal during my 5 months teaching - I nearly choked on my masala tea with surprise! So with their insistence, I had another impromptu return to the village.

Also last year, I was stuck at the border for 10 hours, waiting to go in convoy with other buses because of a Maoist national strike, which is why I am apprehensive about our travel plans to get up to Kathmandu on Tuesday.

From today, there is a Maoist political strike nationwide in protest about the government, said to last 'indefinatly' until a compromise has been found. Though many of the strikes are non-violent, the transport strike stops people travelling on the main roads around Kathmandu at least, which affects all industry (with minimal work force as people cannot travel to work), export/import (eg, road freight from India) and of course, tourism, one of the country's main sources of income.

Check out today's BBC News report here

So fingers crossed for Tuesday!