Nepal, Annapurna Circuit....Tatopani To Ghorepani

Something isn't right here! After days of descending and relatively easy walking we were suddenly confronted with the idea of going uphill again. Not just a little bit either, the route to Ghorepani involved an ascent of around 1700 metres just when it seemed as if all the hard stuff was behind us. In any case it was another fine sunny day, and we began the day with a great view of the Nilgiri behind us.

Just below Tatopani we left the valley that we had followed for several days and with an initially fairly steep climb we reached a broad track - the result of road construction work. We were climbing up a green valley with small attractive villages scattered amongst the terraced fields of rice, millet and corn.

The path was not difficult, and often paved inside the villages. Some stretches were made up of stone steps which certainly helps to preserve the path but which also became tiring to walk up on a hot day. About half way we passed through the beautiful village of Sikha. Some of the houses even have their own beehive.

After this point the landscape began to change as we got higher. Soon we reached the beginning of the rhododendron forest that dominates the upper slopes of this valley. In my ignorance, I had been completely unaware that there was such a thing, having only thought of rhododendrons as being smaller ornamental bushes. Some of the trees in the humid forest had thick, twisting branches. Almost everything had a coating of lichen.

The latter part of the walk was tough, not so much because the path became more difficult, just a result of the long climb and perhaps some effect from being again at a higher altitude, around 3000 metres. The views were fabulous looking back down the valley we had ascended.

Ghorepani itself is not an especially attractive place, but there were plenty of people there and the reason for that is called Poon Hill. This nearby hill is supposed to be one of the great viewpoints for admiring the surrounding mountains, and we had high hopes for it following the disappointing time we had with the weather over on the other side of the Annapurna massif. It was a bit cloudy in the afternoon, but we got some glimpses of distant peaks from the village and the weather had been so good the past few days that we didn't really expect to be unlucky the next morning on Poon Hill.

It was cold up here though, especially after the heat of the previous couple of days further down. By later afternoon we were already ordering tea and huddling round the stove in the hotel. It didn't matter too much, we were not planning to stay up late as we would be getting a very early start before dawn the next day.

View Nepal - The Annapurna Circuit in a larger map

Before You Leave The Crisis Make Sure You Pay Your Toll

For some it doesn't seem to matter how bad the crisis gets, they always land on their feet. The banks, of course, are the shining example of this philosophy that says profits must be privatised for the benefit of the (very) few whilst all losses get picked up by society as a whole. Other companies have clearly learnt the lesson of this, the latest example being those that have the concessions to run toll roads in Spain.

These companies probably thought they were onto a guaranteed winner with their concessions, but it appears that not enough motorists are paying the tolls to compensate for a change to the law on compensation for expropriated land that was introduced by Aznar's government. This change meant that landowners had to be compensated based on possible future changes in the value of their land rather than just the value at the time of expropriation. I would hate to speculate on the possibility that any wealthy PP supporters benefited enormously from this, so let's knock that idea firmly on the head.

Sadly it seems to have been a law based on the assumption of a never ending bubble for all involved, but don't worry because it will be those most affected by the cutbacks in government spending who may well get to pick up a tab estimated at €800 million. It doesn't matter that the major shareholders of these companies are the same construction companies who did fabulously well out of the boom years, the companies concerned are now - to use a phrase popularised by a prominent Madrid politician - "pobre de pedir". I'm sure those who have had their pensions frozen this year will understand that there are needs much greater than those of the retired.

Madrid Takes The Quick Route To Cleaner Air

It could hardly be simpler. Whilst other major cities around the world grapple with the question of how to deal with tighter restrictions on acceptable air pollution, Madrid has shown the way forward. Forget all those schemes that try to reduce traffic, all you need to do is move the machines that measure contaminants from those areas that have high pollution figures to others that have lower ones.

This, it seems, is how Madrid has managed to achieve an impressive reduction in nitrogen dioxide levels in just 12 months. Nicely timed to coincide with tighter European legislation. This is a change from the previous, slightly cruder strategy, of claiming that the machines taking the readings were broken whenever there was an extended spell of calm sunny weather. So there you have it. If you find that you are having problems breathing at any time in Madrid it's because you have chosen to live in the wrong area. It could become a new selling point - living near one of the city's air quality measuring machines.

Felipe Gonzalez And The Return Of The GAL

Former Spanish prime minister Felipe González has captured newspaper headlines in Spain for the first time in years following his interview on Sunday with El País. What caught most attention was his declaration that his government once had information concerning the time and place of a meeting of the entire leadership of ETA, and that he decided against blowing them up. The administration led by González has been accused for many years, on good grounds, of having been behind the GAL dirty war against ETA in the 1980's. The GAL group carried out kidnappings and assassinations, frequently involving people who had no connection to ETA at all, and their activities probably gave a significant boost to the Basque group given that they didn't need to invent an argument about state terrorism.

González declared that he wasn't sure whether he had made the right decision, the presumed logic behind his doubts being that organising such an act would have dealt a potentially fatal blow against ETA. It's unlikely, given the way in which ETA has so far survived several times the detention of its leadership. ETA in the 1980's was a much stronger organisation than it is at the moment. It's fairly clear from the tone of the interview that González regarded the decision as a strategic question rather than one involving any questioning of whether this is an appropriate way to respond to terrorism. More interesting in some ways was what he had to say about the GAL because his claim that the kidnapping of Segundo Marey was ended on the orders of his then interior minister amounts to what is effectively the first open admission that the GAL's activities were under direct government control. It's one thing that almost everyone believes that to be the case, quite another that it is said in such an open way.

Only González and those who are close to him know why he should choose to speak this way about the issue after so many years. The right-wing press has already been hammering away on the GAL ever since the recent government reshuffle that effectively made Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba the new strongman of Zapatero's administration. Indeed, El Mundo has been headlining with it all week. The dirty war against ETA did not begin with the GAL, but it certainly reached disastrous heights during the time González was in charge. What's depressing is the feeling that may of those who use it as a hammer to beat the PSOE and González would almost certainly have approved of it had their own party been the organizer. That, and the ambivalence shown by so many vocal opponents of terrorism when it is a government that plants the bombs.

El Laicismo Agresivo

That elderly German priest has been back for another of his occasional holidays in Spain. Despite getting a luxury all expenses paid trip to Santiago de Compostela and Barcelona, it seems he has been a bit critical about the Spanish. Not religious enough apparently, but we already knew that. Benedicto sees things as being a bit more serious, going so far as to compare the situation now in Spain with that which existed in the 1930's before the Civil War. You have to say he has a point, the way in which the Catholic hierarchy in Spain consistently sides politically with the right is very reminiscent of those days, although I have the feeling that's not quite what he meant.

Instead he warned his listeners about the agressive laicity that seems to be rampant in modern Spain. Take, for example, the Spanish state which is so anti-church that the national tax agency collects most of that institution's income directly from taxpayers so that the priests don't have to pass the plate around. Then of course there is the massive influx of public money into schools run by the church. In addition all of us get to pay the salaries of religious education teachers. Some estimates put the figure at around €6,000 million worth of fanatical anticlerical funding of the church and related institutions. We have to suppose, given the complaints by his infallible holiness, that it's not enough and that Vatican S.L. is hungry for more. Judging by the disappointing attendance at this weekend's events, what might be needed is a bit of extra money to persuade people to turn up and cheer next time he comes. It will be Madrid in 2011.

Rubalcaba....Zapatero's Prince Of Darkness?

The promotion of Spanish interior minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba in the recent government reshuffle has really got the right wing press and sections of the Partido Popular very excited. Partly it is because of Rubalcaba's long political history stretching back to when Felipe Gonzalez was prime minister of Spain in the 1980's and 1990's. This allows the PP to associate Rubalcaba with the GAL scandal, the government sponsored dirty war against ETA that led to entirely innocent people being kidnapped or murdered. Not that this aspect is what really bothers PP supporters, it's just that the GAL was one of the main political levers they used to get Gonzalez out of power.

Combine this with the fact that Rubalcaba is now in charge of the police and you get the perfect combination for the PP. We have even seen a minor resurgence of the conspiranoia surrounding the Madrid bombings, with PP general secretary Maria Dolores de Cospedal promising that the PP would reveal the "truth" about the bombings when they return to office. This act of transparency is of course not expected to include the documentation which the PP removed or destroyed on leaving office after the bombings. Instead the suggestion will presumably be that it was Rubalcaba who placed the bombs, rather than Zapatero himself.

Then there is the question of corruption. Every time a new scandal concerning PP corruption emerges (and we now have a very fine collection), the PP attempts to claim that the case is purely the result of government persecution as opposed to many of their leading representatives having their noses so firmly in the trough that they can hardly breathe. This line permits them to ignore the question of whether those accused of corruption should stand down from their positions. In the latest cases to hit the headlines, involving widespread influence peddling in Alicante, 22 PP representatives involved continue to carry on as if nothing has happened, whilst two PSOE representatives with a fairly tangential involvement have been removed from their positions. Cleaning up the party is far too arduous a task for Mariano Rajoy, reportedly "agotado" after giving two interviews in a week, so the easiest solution is to claim it is all the work of the sinister Rubalcaba.

I Can't Take It Any Mou!

This is from today's edition of Marca:

A fuller selection of front covers from the Marca-Mourinho love story can be found over at La Libreta de Van Gaal.

Productos Regionales

It's quiz time on South of Watford. We did a little bit of shopping on our holiday weekend, and what I want to know is where you think the products on display here came from. Naming the comunidad autonoma doesn't count, I'm not even sure I'll accept the province. Naming either of the villages where these items were purchased will win up to 1 million special South of Watford bonus miles.*

From left to right and starting at the back we have:

Cecina de chivo

Longaniza de chivo

Queso de oveja

Chorizo de potro

Cecina de vaca

Lengua de vaca

* bonus miles usable only in participating establishments

The Last Testament Of Don Gerardo

It was a situation that really couldn't continue. The Spanish employers association was being led by someone who was facing an ever increasing number of legal difficulties caused by the fairly rapid collapse of most of his business empire. Even before he lost most of his companies, Gerardo Díaz Ferrán hardly set much of an example although that didn't seem to worry those who had elected him as their representative voice. After the collapse of Air Comet came the fall of his insurance company, to be quickly followed by his extensive chain of travel agents, Viajes Marsans.

If the way in which Air Comet ground to a halt didn't teach us enough about Gerardo's special approach to business management, then the way in which Marsans was disposed of closed the master class. Marsans was sold off to an asset stripper, who took on the dirty work of dismissing all of the employees. Just before the sale took place, Gerardo and his partner put themselves on the payroll of the company and claimed an annual salary of €170,000 each paid in advance.

There were rumours of rebellion inside the employers association for a few weeks before Ferrán finally gave way and agreed to call elections for his position. Still, he couldn't leave his post without a final touch of class. The way out of the crisis, he declared earlier this month, was for Spaniards to work longer hours for less money. We assume he was talking about this as a way out of his own crisis, because Spain already has a longer working week and lower salaries than much of the rest of Western Europe. It's a sign of the vision that these people have of the future, because long hours and low salaries are more associated with poor countries than with rich ones. Or with very unequal societies.

Ferrán had also dismissed the recent labour market reform as being insufficient. This is a surprisingly common view. Companies that use the same creative accounting techniques that they use to avoid paying taxes can now get rid of an employee with only 20 days notice. Add to that the bizarrre proposal from the government to subsidise dismissals next year and you can bring that down to 12 days - from 45. That so many commentators continue talking as if nothing has changed makes you wonder what they are looking for? Severed heads on a stake perhaps? The formal reintroduction of slavery?

We still won't see an end to the flood of crocodile tears over Spain's "dual" labour market until all of the unfairness has been rubbed out by leaving all employees in the same precarious situation. It's not as if the latest reform even affects the usage of temporary contracts anyway. Although the Partido Popular tends to keep much of its neocon economic agenda hidden from sight, they have floated the idea of extending a contract that currently guarantees no rights at all and the minimum wage to workers under 21 to all of those under the age of 30!

Anyway, the pretence that making dismissal easy is the key to creating jobs is now going to be put to the test. Nothing less than an employment miracle can now be expected in Spain. Except that the excuses will change, something else will become the key obstacle to progress. Perhaps it will turn out that education or training, or even changing the culture of Spain's employers are important issues after all. As for Don Gerardo, he will be placing his hopes on the PP returning to power and being generous enough to farm out some public services to him in return for his efforts on their behalf. So that once again he can lead by example.

The Last One Out Of Madrid Won't Need To Turn The Lights Off

Even though José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero managed to avoid the booing during the military parade on October 12th, he couldn't evade everyone who had a bone to pick with him. Zapatero was cornered at least for a few minutes by Madrid's mayor, Alberto Ruiz Gallardón, who tried to convince ZP to lift the credit restrictions imposed on those municipalities who are heavily in debt as part of the crisis measures imposed by the government. Madrid is of course a leader in the debt league table, although it seems that Gallardón has at least found some sort of temporary solution to avoid the rubbish collection in the Spanish capital from coming to a standstill.

Madrid's ruler has, however, opened a new front over the lighting for the M-40 ring road around Madrid - one of the ring roads he didn't get around to burying before the crisis hit. The city administration is responsible for paying for the illumination on this road, and as part of the war over the blocking of further credit Gallardón has threatened to let the lights go out. That is, of course, if the thieves don't get there before him. According to a report I read last week the road is steadily getting darker because the high price of copper is encouraging those entrepreneurs who operate on the wrong side of legality to rip out whole stretches of the copper wiring which enables the lights to work. I'm glad I live in the centre, it's all getting a bit Mad Max out there in the outskirts. The city has for the moment decided its not worth replacing the copper that gets stolen, so at least some of those living near the road might get to see the occasional star...or traffic accident.

The Partido Popular, to which Gallardón belongs, has something of a double standard when it coes to public debt. Anyone surprised by that? Having criticised Zapatero for the national debt and even proposing at one point that deficits should be made illegal, the administrations run by the PP manage somehow to be amongst the worst offenders. Gallardón, in particular, has shown himself to be a master in this respect. Before becoming mayor in Madrid he managed to triple the debt of the regional government. The PP reminds me of the Republicans in the US who slam a Democratic administration for any budget deficit but then (as under Reagan and Bush jnr) manage to run huge deficits when in office that never produce any general benefit of any kind.

One right wing commentator who I read only occasionally, because reading "Zapatero is to blame for everything" every day isn't that interesting, attempted the other week to explain why Zapatero was personally responsible for the deficits run up in PP strongholds like Valencia. The piece was a classic of the genre, whilst acknowledging that the PP rulers of these regions might bear a teeny share of responsibility for the situation it turned out that Zapatero was really behind it all simply because he allowed them to do it! This leaves people like Francisco Camps as having less personal sense of responsibility than the average two year old. I know, it's a bad example, and in passing let me apologise to any two year olds who might feel offended by the comparison. The comments on this piece were almost worth framing, as it was pointed out to the author in a not very gentle way that this is what they call the "estado de las autonomías".

This weekend, in the PP's regional conference in Madrid, the party leader Mariano Rajoy explained why there was no need for him to be spelling out any kind of alternative to the government's policies. The PP, he said, was already showing what it would do at national level in those cities or regions where it currently holds power. So there we have it, any future PP administration will presumably be run on an ever increasing debt mountain coupled with rampant corruption and favours. As a programme for the elections I think it needs touching up a bit.

There's A New Balance Of Power In Spain's Government

Having effectively transformed the agreement with the Basque nationalist PNV from one that supported this year's budget into a broader one that should guarantee the government's survival until the end of its term in 2012, Spain's prime minister Zapatero has today decided to relaunch his team. The changes have been far more significant than expected, as Zapatero had previously hinted that he only intended to replace outgoing labour minister Celestino Corbacho.

The big winner in the reshuffle is almost universally regarded as being Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, who remains as interior minister but also gets to be a vice-president with powers overseeing government business. The rise of Rubalcaba involves the departure from the government of María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, who had occupied the vice-presidency since Zapatero was first elected in 2004. Nobody should feel too sorry for her, she gets a cushy position on the Consejo de Estado, a body which does very little except provide a comfortable lifetime paid position for its members! None of that fixed term nonsense on the Consejo.

Rubalcaba generally figures as the most popular minister in opinion polls, but belongs very much to the old guard of the PSOE dating from the times of Felipe Gonzalez. His power behind the scenes has been increasing and this has led to him being seen as one of the possible successors to Zapatero. Other candidates are Jose Blanco, who keeps his post but also gets some of his former power in the party machine back. The defence minister, Carme Chacón, was also once seen as a possible successor to Zapatero and she keeps her post too. Rumours that she would join Corbacho by being sacrificed at the front in the forthcoming Catalan election campaign don't seem to have foundation.

Blanco regained influence through the move that takes Leire Pajín from being in charge of party organisation to taking over the health ministry. It seems that Blanco and Pajín did not get on well and there has been a bit of a turf war between them. Much has been made today of Spain getting a health minister who likes to wear one of these worthless hologram bracelets that work by separating the gullible from their money. Public finances probably don't allow for them being available on prescription, unless the hospitals are simply closed.

Space for Pajín was made with the promotion of Trinidad Jiménez to take over as foreign minister from Miguel Angel Moratinos. There's little doubt that this is a reward for Jiménez for standing against Tomas Gómez in the primaries to decide the PSOE candidate for next year's regional election in Madrid. She's done quite well out of losing that battle, you have to say. Moratinos has been running an increasingly lacklustre and low profile foreign policy which largely seems to consist of not doing anything that might annoy anyone. Not that this is likely to change now.

Then we have a new labour minister, Valeriano Gómez, who was photographed participating in the demonstration against the government's labour market reform on September 29th, the day of the general strike. If I was in the parliamentary opposition I think I would already have tabled a question on whether he decided the reform was actually a good idea before or after getting into the ministerial car for the first time? His close links to the unions are seen as a conciliatory gesture, perhaps the only one that will be offered now that the markets are given first call on all policy decisions.

The reshuffle also sees the end of two ministries, equality and housing. These have been merged into health and public works respectively. The equality ministry, headed by Bibiana Aído, has been a favourite target of the right-wing media. Mainly because they hate the idea of equality anyway, but also because Aído steered through the abortion law reform. The decision to abolish the ministry is surprising because it was one of Zapatero's own flagship innovations. To merge it with health is a very arguable decision, you could put a better case for it to belong to economy.

The housing ministry will not be missed as most of the powers in this area already belong to regional and local administrations. With no money available, the job of minister Beatriz Corredor had been more or less reduced to the annual, and still over-optimistic assertion, that house prices in Spain have stopped falling and that it was time for everyone to buy. Even Zapatero took that task upon himself recently. A further surprise came with the appointment of Rosa Aguilar, once a prominent and popular figure in Izquierda Unida, to be environment and agriculture minister. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that she gets the job as much for the political journey she has made as for any other reason.

So it's a relaunch of the government, rather than just a reshuffle, and one which allows Zapatero to hand out rewards and adjust the equilibrium between those who might be looking over his shoulder. In doing so he keeps the issue of his own future open, with a stability agreement for the first time in this parliament that he hopes will give him time to close that ominously large gap in the opinion polls. He knows the strategy of his opposition, Mariano Rajoy continues to seek a place in the record books for sleeping the longest ever siesta as he relies on the crisis continuing to chip away at the government's support. The PP have been robbed of the prospect of early elections, but the question is whether 18 months is enough time for Zapatero to recover lost ground?

Tea With Espe

Much has been made of Esperanza Aguirre's declarations last week in favour of the ultra right wing Tea Party movement. Leaving to one side the xenophobic and fanatical nature of those who believe that Barack Obama is a foreign islamist/communist terrorist, Aguirre praised the movement as being about lower taxes and "more nation".

Whilst some claimed that these declarations implied that Aguirre wanted to import the movement to Spain, others pointed out that there is really no need. Not only does Spain have a larger lunatic right wing than it really deserves, many of its members also have television and radio licences. To the extent that they are even beginning to fight each other as the market share for ranting loonies in areas like Madrid is now divided between 4-5 contenders who all seek prime shouting time.

The only PP politician whose declarations I have much time for, Manuel Cobo, has of course pointed out that saying you're an economic liberal and acting like one is not necessarily the same thing. It looks like this difference could be emphasised quite sharply as the Gürtel corruption case has now incorporated the investigation into the Fundescam foundation allegedly used by the Madrid PP to disguise much of its expenditure during Aguirre's election campaigns.

The issue is not just one of illegal funding for the party, or even of underlining the very close links between the Madrid PP and the Gürtel companies. The money that went into Fundescam came from companies that have also benefitted from contracts handed out by Aguirre's administration, something that would fit nicely with the clientilism that is really much closer to the heart of the way Espe's government works than any notion of free market liberalism.

A Magnificent Display Of National Unity

Once again press coverage of Spain's national day on October 12th has been dominated by the fallout from the day's military parade being used by those from the far-right who seem to turn up only to shout insults at Zapatero. Liberty of expression, say their defenders in the Partido Popular, who you wouldn't consider to have much expertise to offer on that particular issue. It's fairly common for the Spanish right to view liberty as something which only they are entitled to exercise, but at the same time you have to argue in their defence that true freedom cannot exclude the option of acting like a complete jerk.

The attempts by the some in the PP to claim that the boos and abuse are simply a demonstration of growing popular indignation over Zapatero's handling of the crisis could perhaps have some distant relationship to the truth were it not for the fact that the same "facha" nutjobs turn up year after year regardless of whether the economy grows at 20% or -50%. The really odd thing about this behaviour is that you would have thought these people would be more respectful with an occasion that involves the monarchy, lots of soldiers and military hardware, flags going up and down, homages to the fallen etc. Yet they boo through everything, to the extent that even members of the royal family have started to protest.

Zapatero now turns up for this event in a semi-clandestine fashion, whilst every year sees the areas designed for the general public being pushed further and further back so that the ceremony doesn't end up as a complete farce. Those of us who don't have much time for military parades and other patriotic tosh wouldn't care if the whole thing was scrapped - that would be a justifiable austerity measure. We could all live our lives quite happily without having military jets practising over Madrid for a week before the parade. Undoubtedly those who would protest the loudest about such a move are the same ones who end up showing the least respect for the whole event.

How To Cut The TV Signal With A Single Sheet Of Paper

On today's edition of Handy Hints we're going to show you how you can use a sheet of paper to stop your local TV station from transmitting. I know what you're thinking - it sounds ridiculous but bear with me for a minute. In the best traditions of this kind of programming, here is an example we prepared earlier:



See how easy it is? There is some debate about what you should put on the paper to achieve the best results. It does seem that in Valencia the words "Gürtel" or "corruption" produce the goods, although there may well be others that work too. In future episodes we'll look at how to use the same TV station, a simple papal visit, and your neighbourhood bunch of thieves to make millions.

Polls Apart

In the wake of last week's general strike, El País published an opinion poll showing the PSOE over 14 points behind the Partido Popular. This was a significantly greater gap than most recent polls had shown. Following the general trend since the gap between the two parties started to widen, this poll didn't show any significant increase in PP support; the difference comes from the collapse in support for the governing PSOE.

This factor makes it even stranger that El País made no attempt to account for what is happening to those voters who have deserted the government. If the PP is only 3-4% above its vote in the last election, and the PSOE is 14% below then that means 10% of that fall in support is not accounted for. El País have taken to showing the results only for the two major parties, as if Izquierda Unida, the nationalist parties and UPyD didn't even exist.

Of course they are not the only ones who use polls to offer a distorted version of what is happening. The media in Spain are frequently accused of getting the results they look for from polls. In the case of La Razón, it is hard to find any evidence for the existence of their pollsters outside the pages of the newspaper itself; leading to the suspicion that pollsters and publishers belong to the same company and possibly share the same office.

Opinion polls are also published by a government agency, the CIS. The PP has frequently claimed that the results of CIS polls are manipulated by the government, although they seem to be quite a lot more trustworthy than many of those found in the media. Recently, the woman who was in charge of the CIS was replaced, allegedly because she refused to bow to pressure to change the time the organisation did its fieldwork in July to a moment potentially more favorable for the government. All of which boosts the credibility of the organisation, at least under its previous management.

Zapatero's Primary Problem Is Not Madrid

The right-wing press in Spain were gleeful today with the result of yesterday's primary election to choose the PSOE's candidate to contest the regional presidency of Madrid in next year's elections. The narrow victory for Tomas Gómez over the health minister, Trinidad Jiménez, is presented as being a snub to Zapatero because he had made it clear his preferred candidate was Jiménez. It is even leading some commentators to talk of this election as being the beginning of 'postzapaterismo', the start of the battle to succeed Zapatero as PSOE leader. It is claimed that Zapatero wanted a candidate capable of displacing Esperanza Aguirre to compensate for what are expected to be heavy losses in other regions in next year's elections.

Zapatero can hardly complain that people interpret the result as a slap in the face for him, even where there are obvious political interests at work in reaching that judgement. He made it clear that he didn't want Gómez to be the candidate, and rather than just allow his own choice to contest the primary both he and other senior PSOE figures tried to force Gómez to withdraw from the contest. The national PSOE machine also seems to have been involved in the campaign to promote Jiménez with clear support from friendly media, notably El País. Rather than being a vote against Zapatero, the rejection of Jiménez probably has at least as much to do with party members simply not liking the attempt to link a vote for Gómez with disloyalty to the party leadership.

The contest itself was a dismal one, nobody is any the wiser now after weeks of campaigning about what either candidate thinks should be done for Madrid. Jiménez based her entire campaign around the idea that she was more popular in opinion polls than Gómez, whilst Gómez countered as being the candidate of the party base with the (unspoken) implication that Trini was being imposed on the party. It was all very uninspiring and inward looking, an opportunity for both candidates to present an alternative vision for Madrid was lost. One good thing comes out of it for Gómez, at least people now know who he is! That always helps.

Not that those parties who don't even bother electing their candidates have too much to celebrate. The Partido Popular has a couple of major candidate problems of its own. In Asturias the attempt by former PP general secretary Francisco Álvarez Cascos to force his way in as candidate for the regional elections has provoked a revolt in the Asturian PP. Cascos is hated by many of the influential figures in the party there, and it has so far only been the intervention of the national leadership that has kept his hopes alive against the local attempts to choose an alternative candidate. Cascos is a dinosaur from Aznar's PP, and it's hard to see why PP leader Mariano Rajoy would want another potential critic from that period in a position of influence. He's already got Esperanza Aguirre for that. It's no surprise that Aguirre is an enthusiastic backer of Cascos.

Then there is Valencia. The PP failed last week in an attempt to halt the transfer of that part of the Gürtel corruption case affecting Valencia to the courts in the region. This is no longer just about the suits that Francisco Camps is alleged to have received in return for political favours. The case now accuses the Valencian PP of far more serious offences, and the PP seems determined to try and slow down the judicial process as much as possible in the hope that nothing happens before the election next year. It helps that the highest court in Valencia is still in the hands of the man who last year came to the rescue of Camps, Juan Luis de la Rúa. This judge is supposed to be have been replaced, but political wrangling over who gets which position has so far kept De la Rúa in his post. Mariano Rajoy no longer likes to be photographed with Camps and there are those in the national PP who think the latter's position is untenable, but neither does Rajoy want the Valencian election to be dominated by Gürtel.

Spanish Salaries Are Just Outrageous

I had a Skype exchange on Friday with a colleague of mine who I'd worked with in Germany. Knowing that I was having one of my occasional "rest" periods in Madrid, he pointed me to a job position that might be of interest. Based in Madrid, the job is for a senior programmer in my field, with the requirements - being a "senior" position - of appropriate qualifications and several years experience. Then there is the salary; 25-30,000 per annum. Euros I assume, although it could have been in dollars. Life in Spain must be very cheap, he suggested. Not so, I replied. Not any more. He couldn't believe that a position with such high requirements would offer such a low salary. It's not just unemployment that makes many Spaniards look overseas for better prospects.

Financial Times Alphaville....Where Comment Is Not Free

Yesterday the Alphaville blog at the Financial Times kicked off its day with a potentially explosive story. They printed a summary of a report alleging that Spain had hugely manipulated statistics on the decline of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) during the crisis. The central allegation was that it was impossible for there to be such a high increase in unemployment together with a relatively small fall in GDP. The implication of the report was that Spain had maybe "done a Greece" by hiding the reality of its economic situation. The source of the report printed by the FT was anonymous and apparently it had been sent from a gmail account created only for the purpose of circulating the document. The FT claimed that the general strike had prevented them from getting a response before publication from Spain's national statistics institute (the INE).

The publication was enthusiastically received by many of those who follow this blog. However, as the day progressed it seems that others did the basic analysis on the report that the FT itself had failed to do. In the best traditions of classical economics the report had ignored factors - such as international trade - which have an important impact on the performance of the economy. Then came suggestions that perhaps the origin of the report had a political motivation as it had also apparently been sent to the extreme right wing Libertad Digital site. We don't know whether this is the case or not, although it wouldn't surprise me at all if sections of the Spanish right tried to provoke a Greek style crisis for Spain; regardless of the potentially disastrous consequences for their fellow citizens.

Nor, it has to be said, would it be any surprise if Alphaville and their keen followers in the markets also hoped for a bit of action following the publication of the report - nicely timed for the same day as the revision of Spain's credit rating by Moody's. Instead the FT ended up pulling the original article (if anyone has a copy please send it to me) and replacing it with a fairly lame piece telling us what a stressful day they'd had and how much they needed a drink! Now we are often given the impression that the markets take their decisions assisted by a legion of highly paid expert analysts and the professionalism of the journalists who cover economic issues. The sadder reality is what happened yesterday with Alphaville. Forget professionalism, the reason this story got published is because those publishing and many of those reading badly wanted it to be true, such stories help the roulette wheel to spin. You can feel the disappointment as the game ended on a whimper. One comment I read this morning lamented the possibility that Spain's economy might start to recover before the "truth" is revealed. Yes, that would be terrible wouldn't it? We don't want recovery to start anywhere until the takings have been counted!

I left a comment on the FT's revised post. It wasn't an abusive or insulting comment. I simply made the point that the FT's publish rumours without checking and accept no responsibility for the consequences line, combined with the evident enthusiasm of their readers for such stories, made an excellent case for curtailing the power of the markets. The comment was published on the site, but then about 5 minutes later someone inside the FT removed it. No criticism please, we're British.

Do Not Adjust Your Television - La Huelga En Madrid

I've written some very harsh words about Telemadrid in the past, so now it's time to put things right. Their programming today has been outstanding, their coverage of today's general strike in Spain is perhaps the best thing they've ever done. I'm sure that their dwindling but ever so loyal audience has loved every minute of it. Sadly, I can only share a small snippet of their coverage with you.

The inevitable numbers war over participation in the strike has already begun. What I can say, from my handy vantage point in the centre of Madrid, is that this has been far from a normal working day in the Spanish capital. Apart from the almost incessant noise of police helicopters this morning it's been amazingly quiet. I live with the noise of traffic normally.

I went out early this morning during the rush hour to see what was happening. I headed for Cibeles where the planned 'bicicletada' was assembling. There weren't many of them when I passed by, and it seems that later when there was more they were given a seriously hard time by the police considering it was just a bunch of people wanting to ride their bikes around holding some placards. Just up the road there was a noisy picket outside of the Banco de España.

There was traffic, but much less than on a normal day. I headed to the Puerta del Sol, expecting to see something going on. It was almost deserted apart from another heavy police presence and a few lonely TV journalists who must have ended up interviewing each other. Turning up Preciados I came across even more police, all there it seems to protect the Corte Inglés!

Transport seems to have worked in the capital, despite the provocative attempt by Esperanza Aguirre to cause a confrontation over the minimum services required. Aguirre could easily have had an agreement with the unions along the same lines they agreed with the national government. But that would have affected her image as a self-appointed union buster so she looked for a fight as part of the PP's attempt to pretend the strike is against them. It doesn't seem to have worked.

Crowdmap - Huelga General 29S/General Strike

A few weeks ago, when I was doing some investigation on web mapping, I came across something called Ushahidi. This is an open source platform that was originally set up to map and monitor violence reports in Kenya. From this it has evolved into a crisis mapping platform that can also be used for any other purpose where there might be a need to combine different sources of information concerning current events. To make things a bit easier to use, the people behind Ushahidi have recently launched a simpler version called Crowdmap and so I decided that Wednesday's general strike would be a good opportunity to test how the technology works.

With Crowdmap you can set up your own site for the event you want to map, and this morning I set up a specific site for the general strike - you can find it here. I've already added some information mostly for Barcelona and Madrid, but this is a project where anyone can participate. So, because one is definitely not a crowd, I invite anyone else who is interested to join in by supplying information about the strike. The examples I've already added include minimum services, flights that are cancelled, political reactions, groups who have decided to join the strike etc. The categories of information are configurable and still being developed. Reports can be emailed to me, submitted directly via the site (I haven't tested that yet) or I just pick them up from Twitter hashtags. Apart from joining in, feel free to publicise the crowdmap page to anyone who you think might be interested.

Dirty Old Town

The wastepaper bins and recycling containers are filled to overflowing. Discarded furniture lies broken on the streets. There have been a significant number of complaints recently about the cleanliness of the centre of Madrid. The cutbacks in cleaning services provoked by the financial problems of the city's administration are starting to show, and things look set to get worse.

Still, there is always someone to distract attention from the real cause of the problem. Cleaning services in Madrid come under the expert control of Ana Botella, whose husband is currently busy defending the Spanish borders against the Moroccan threat. Botella, renowned for her political sensitivity, last week put the blame for the cleaning problems on the homeless people who bed down on the streets of the centre. We're still only one Gallardón away from having her in charge of the city.

There is, however, a more fundamental cause. It turns out that the companies responsible for the cleaning services have not been paid by the administration since September last year. The bill due is now approaching €300 million, and the companies concerned are threatening to stop paying their workers. The result of that will almost certainly be a strike, and an attempt by the PP to blame the unions for the uncollected rubbish that will then pile up.

The odd thing is that rubbish collection in Madrid is supposed to be financed by a specific tax levied for that purpose, and which of course is still being collected. So if that money is not being used to pay the contractors for keeping the city clean, then where has it gone? It would be wrong to think that Madrid is unable to pay for anything. The Calle Serrano, Madrid's most pijo shopping street, has recently been reformed and money was found for an expensive inauguration yesterday. With elections on the horizon we can expect similar events in the next few months. The homeless, of course, will not be invited.

Nepal, Annapurna Circuit....Ghasa To Tatopani

We would get few views more impressive on the Annapurna Circuit than that which we had at first light just a short distance back up the road from our hotel in Ghasa. The Dhaulagiri, one of the 8000+ metre peaks and the seventh highest mountain in the world, bright and clear in the early morning.

After breakfast we made our way down through the village, which stretches some way down the narrow valley. Just past Ghasa we crossed over the river to avoid walking on the main road. The path was shady, passing through some tiny villages and areas of lush vegetation.

Over on the other side of the river gorge we could see just how precarious the "main" road is for the traffic that passes along it. Despite occasionally having to rejoin this road we were able to avoid it for much of the day by walking on the opposite side of the river.

By now I was mostly used to the bridges that we had to cross, especially as most of them were in very good condition. There are always exceptions, although I suppose we should be pleased that had to cross this one after it had been repaired rather than before. Over on the other side local villagers were working on the path too.

Soon we found that we were back in rice country again, as water had become more abundant and the altitude was lower. This was not the only change, we had also left behind the Tibetan and Buddhist influence, the people down here were mostly Hindus. We stopped in the village of Dana for lunch, surrounded by citrus trees and fields of rice, millet, maize and beans.

Back on the road the main obstacle we had to deal with was a buffalo who had decided the puddle in the middle of the road was a good, cool resting place. That and the occasional flock of sheep and goats being driven down the valley towards the towns. It was another day of relatively gentle walking and we followed the valley down to Tatopani.

Our guide had been telling us for a couple of days about the famous hot springs of Tatopani, and we had perhaps a bit of a romantic idea about the long, relaxing soak we were going to enjoy there. That idea soon disappeared in my case when I saw the unimpressive looking pair of concrete pools down near the river in Tatopani. I opted instead to sit in the shade with a beer and a book, although Silvia went into the water; only kept tolerably cool by the hosepipe pumping cold water into it.

You have to say the springs have all facilities. Apart from the bar there is a changing room.

And a massage room too!

Tatopani is an attractive village and a bit more luxurious than what we had been experiencing higher up the valley. The temperature at night was just warm enough for us to have dinner outside and the food was good. As it was getting dark we got another impressive view to finish the day. I think this is part of the Nilgiri range.

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MR12

It seems that Partido Popular leader Mariano Rajoy was so impressed by the way in which Zapatero campaigned against him in past elections as "ZP" that he seriously considered using the same kind of political marketing ploy. Sadly, apart from being advised against the idea on the grounds of lacking originality, it seems that MR-12 has already been used for other purposes. The MR-12 was the name given to a Soviet rocket and some of the many elderly PP voters can still be a bit funny about any connection with the Soviet Union. Especially those that served in the División Azul. Other campaigning slogans that seem to have been rejected include the following:

"I need your vote. Or maybe I don't. Let me think about it and I'll get back to you."

"You would vote for me if you knew who my successor as PP leader would be!"

Most People Have Left The Floor, But Zapatero's Still Dancing

The agreement between the Spanish government and the Basque nationalist PNV to support the 2011 budget means that Zapatero's administration now has a fairly strong chance of lasting its full term. By this time next year there will only be 6 months of the parliament left anyway, and a failure to pass the budget is the one thing that most threatened the stability of the government. However, we won't be hearing much anymore about the variable geometry which Zapatero has used to keep a minority government going. The parties to the left of the PSOE have been estranged by the adoption of a right wing economic agenda, and the Catalan nationalists of Convergencia are far more interested in winning the forthcoming Catalan elections than they are in extracting concessions from the national government in return for support. It was more or less the PNV or nothing.

The agreement with the PNV means that the Basque Country will receive additional powers from the national government, most notably the control of employment policy. Despite the predictable howls of protest from the right wing press in Madrid, the deal involves transferring powers that many other autonomous regions already possess, and which are long overdue in the case of the Basque Country. Partido Popular leader Mariano Rajoy knows all about making such deals, when Aznar's first government needed support Rajoy more or less announced that he would concede whatever was necessary to get the PNV's votes. However, when the boot is on the other foot. Less comfortable with the deal will be the minority Basque administration by the PSOE's Patxi Lopez which relies on the PP's support. The PNV get the credit for extracting concessions and will be strengthened as the opposition to a regional government that is in any case far more popular outside of the Basque Country than in it.

Tomorrow we should know more about what next year's budget means, but we can be fairly sure that it will bring cuts, cuts and more cuts. The talk is of 15% cuts in government departments. Another consequence of the deal being done with the PNV is that all the talk from prominent government members of the wealthy also paying their part of getting the country out of crisis remains just that....talk. There may be a new income tax band for those declaring annual earnings over €120000, but this leaves untouched much of the barely taxed wealth that was pocketed by a tiny minority during the boom years.

I was reading today about the very real possibility of Ireland being forced back into recession as a result of the slash and burn economic recipes that are being applied across Europe. This, of course, is the country that did everything the markets and our distinguished economic analysts said had to be done by applying very drastic cuts. Now the poster boy of the neoliberal "solution" is being punished by the same markets because of doubts about the capacity of the economy to grow. I can't wait for someone from those responsible to come out and say "nobody warned us this would happen". I was also reading yesterday the comments on the Wall Street Journal's interview with Zapatero and it struck me just how many people evidently desire the continuation of the crisis. They are either sick or making a lot of money a lot of money out of it. Or a combination of the two.

Keep Quiet....Or Your Freedom Might Be In Danger

Things seemed to have gone very quiet concerning the judicial persecution of Baltasar Garzón by the Spanish Supreme Court. It was only to be expected that, following the frenzied activity provoked by his bid to leave Spain and work in the International Criminal Court, that the course of justice would resume the more leisurely pace normally expected of it. However, the end of summer has produced some new developments in two of the three cases brought against the exiled judge.

First of all came the rejection of Garzon's appeal against the conduct of the case against him concerning Franco's victims. Oddly enough, the appeal was heard by exactly the same panel of judges who intend to hear the main case when it comes to court. This highights an interesting factor in the whole situation, the persecution of Garzón is not necessarily being led by the Supreme Court as a whole, it is instead the action of a handful of judges who are seemingly determined to keep the case to themselves. This odd situation meant that the judges could not enter into the arguments presented by Garzón's lawyer for fear of jeopardising their right to hear the main case. So the appeal was dismissed without even being properly considered.

Another strange situation has surfaced in another of the cases against Garzón. This case is the one concerning the allegation that he favoured the Banco de Santander in a case after being sponsored by the same bank during his sabbatical period in New York. The judge investigating this case has clearly not found the evidence he is looking for to sustain the accusation. Faced with the somewhat humiliating prospect of having to drop the case, he has instead opted to get the Guardia Civil to trawl through all of Garzon's financial history in the hope that they come up with something. Its a bit of a desperate measure and very obviously a fishing exercise to try and find anything to bolster a faltering accusation. Garzón undoubtedly earns plenty of money and having his financial history opened to inspection in this way will be embarrassing, regardless of whether it brings up anything relevant to the case against him.

A couple of senior figures in the Supreme Court have recently issued renewed calls for criticism of the court's actions to stop. One senior judge even claimed that such criticism threatens democracy. The difficult relationship that always seems to exist between judges and freedom of expression continues to show itself. Perhaps it has something to do with their tradition? There could be a reasonable case, especially in these times when people who do the job they are supposed to do are having their salaries slashed, for deducting the salary of the judges for all the time they spend on settling scores with their enemies. But then in the situation concerning Garzón that might carry the risk of leaving the señorias without enough money to live on.

The Goal For The Millennium Is Staying Alive

Although Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is formally in the US for the UN meeting on the millennium development goals, it seems he has some other business there too. Apart from having a meeting with the King of Morocco, Zapatero had what was described in El País today as a frugal breakfast with a group of important financiers. Unconfirmed rumours reaching South of Watford have suggested that the star dish in the breakfast consisted of slices of Spain's successful state pension scheme drizzled with a good olive oil and topped with grated mileurista. The pending pension "reform" of course is the missing piece in the package to try and keep the markets off Spain's back, even though the country's pensions have absolutely nothing to do with what is alleged to be the root of the current crisis; the budget deficit. On the contrary, Spanish state pensions currently boast a healthy surplus.

The same cannot be said for private pension schemes in Spain, which so many of these financiers woud love to see as our only option available for retirement. After all, funds are needed badly these days to keep the casino running. Anyone thinking of investing their savings in a private pension here might be well advised to get hold of a copy of the report on their performance cited in this article from Público. The full report can be downloaded here. It seems that savers would have been better off in recent years investing their funds in, oh yes, treasury bonds! Which is where a lot of these funds end up investing anyway. As with the great private pension scam in the UK, a large part of any earnings that your pension fund gains soon disappear in commissions. So the solution for the industry is to slash public provision or spend public money to the point where the private pension becomes more attractive. As for the millennium development goals, I don't think anybody ever promised that they would be met in THIS millennium did they? After all, this stuff about clean drinking water, low infant mortality and basic education for all just doesn't seem to fit with the zeitgeist of the times we live in.

Aguirre The Great Liberator

A few months ago, just as Zapatero was beginning his turnaround on economic policy, many in the Partido Popular were howling at the Spanish trade unions because they were not taking action against the government. Now, when the same unions have organised a general strike for September 29th over the government's labour market reform, the PP and their media friends have turned on the unions because they are taking action. Nothing too surprising I suppose, that the PP should be opposed to strikes is something you can almost take for granted.

First to sieze the moment has been the ever vigilant Esperanza Aguirre, usually far quicker off the mark than the national party; especially as Mariano Rajoy now has such a colossal mountain of issues that he is busily thinking about. He'll get back to us in a while. Aguirre knows a thing or two about the opportunist, Sarkozy style, politics of distraction. Ineffective, pointless, but headline grabbing measures are the name of the game. So she launched an attack on what are known as the "liberados", union representatives who are able to dedicate themselves to union activities instead of the job they were originally contracted to do. Aguirre has waited for her chance to strike at the unions, for the last few years it has been common for Madrid's regional government to claim that all protests over the creeping privatisation of health and education in the region are just a result of the liberados having too much time on their hands. So she has launched a bid to slash the number of liberados in her administration, even having the cheek to try and present this as an austerity measure. Not unless she's going to sack people it isn't.

Much has been made in the right wing press about the difficulties of knowing how many liberados there are. This is actually not too surprising. The liberados are more or less the equivalent of shop stewards in the UK, but the law in Spain does not establish anything on full time union activity. What happens is that a certain number of working hours can be dedicated to such activities by elected union representatives based on the number of employees they are representing. The existence of liberados comes from these hours being pooled, so that some representatives carry on working full time whilst others take their hours and effectively become full time union representatives in the workplace. Not a situation that is unique to Spain by any means. Whilst the law sets a legal minimum, the number of hours available for union activities in any given workplace can be increased by negotiation. This is what has happened in Madrid where the unions agreed the hours available for their representatives with...er, the administration led by Esperanza Aguirre!

You want real liberados, I'll give you liberados. How about if we start with all those very highly paid posts that Aguirre's administration created for so many who faced the awful prospect of getting a real job when the PP lost power at national level? Safely ensconced in Madrid, they have little else to do except follow the well established Gürtel procedure for handing large amounts of public cash over to friends in the private sector. Every one of them a true economic liberal you understand. Or how about the security force they set up to spy on people in a regional government that has no power to have such a force and where no documentary evidence exists to tell us what those people employed are actually supposed to be doing? If funds are really the problem then I'm sure all the political allies of Aguirre who have received radio and television franchises from her government will have no objection to these being sold off to the highest bidder? That is, after all, the ideology they espouse as they rail against anyone (else) who receives a public subsidy.

Back From Bali

I got back from my trip to Bali over a week ago. However, I had to prepare almost immediately for a work trip to Germany and this combined with the effects of the 24 hour return journey from Indonesia meant that I had little time for thinking about blogging. It was an enjoyable holiday in Bali and Lombok, with Lombok getting our vote as the better destination. I survived the Mount Rinjani experience, a three day trek that counts as one of the toughest walks I have done. It is a special place, when you get to the crater rim and see the view then the effort of the climb seems more worthwhile. Recovery from the trek was helped by the discovery of the tiny island of Gili Meno, one of the most peaceful and relaxing places I have ever been.

Back on Bali we were a bit disappointed by the supposed artistic and cultural capital of Ubud, although it's a much nicer place than the awful Kuta. I can't really understand why anyone would want to spend 20+ hours of travelling to end up spending their holiday in Kuta, although I'm sure many people do just that. If you really need McDonalds, the Hard Rock Cafe and the rest of the chain store crew then why not just go to Madrid? We climbed another volcano on Bali, Mount Ugung, and this was also a fairly tough ascent - not least because the walk up was done during the night. The compensation afterwards was another relaxing stay by the sea in Amed, a string of small villages and beaches along the north coast of Bali. A lot of travellers seem to use Bali just as a landing point before setting off to explore other islands like Flores or Komodo. I suspect that the best time to visit Bali was a couple of decades ago, although it still has its attractions. Lombok is still significantly less developed for tourism.

The food was good and a special mention should be made for Bintang beer. It's very hard to have problems with people in Indonesia, everyone seems so gentle. Even though people have a keen business sense when dealing with tourists, even the act of bargaining never gets unpleasant. I don't think we had any problems with people the whole time we were there. Transport was also extremely easy. With a relatively short time to explore two islands we paid the extra for the fast boat connections between Bali and Lombok. These tickets can include onward transport to your final destination, and also the treks which we paid for included being picked up in one place and dropped off in another destination afterwards. Some of this will get some extra posts, in the meantime there are things happening closer to home to blog about.

Nepal, Annapurna Circuit....Marpha To Ghasa

A gentle start leaving Marpha on another fine day. The route continues to follow the almost flat and broad river valley and above the high walls of the valley we could see something of the surrounding mountains before the clouds began to move in later in the morning. We were walking on the road and there is some traffic, but those who suggest that walkers on this stretch are constantly breathing traffic fumes are exaggerating the situation. A few jeeps, motorbikes, and the occasional small bus came past us.

The first village we came to was Tukuche, which had similar whitewashed houses to Marpha and a few with stylish wooden balconies. The villages in this area are peopled by the Thakalis, and the Tibetan influence is still strong.

Progressing down the valley, we came to the pretty riverside villages of Kobang and Larjung, which lie close to each other. The valley at this point is green and forested and ahead of us lay the Dhaulagiri range.

Then we hit an obstacle. A broad river comes down from Dhaulagiri to meet the valley, in truth the obstacle on the day we passed through was not too daunting but it did involve taking our boots off and wading across. The water was icy cold. In the rainy season it has to be more complicated. Even the buses have to cross this way too.

After this point the valley curves round and the trek starts to go closely beside the Annapurna range again. The wind picked up at this point, as we headed down to the village of Kalopani. This was supposed to be our final destination for the day but in the end we decided just to have lunch there and continue a bit further. As we arrived in Kalopani we managed to see the peak of Annapurna 1 rising above the valley. It reminded me of the glimpses we had of Annapurna 2 on the the first half of the trek, only for the clouds and bad weather to rob us of the opportunity to see more. We were hoping for better luck from now on and at least since we crossed Thorung La the weather had been very good.

From Kalopani the valley narrows and starts to descend more steeply. The river which consisted of multiple streams further back was now unified into a single, fiercer, flow. I felt a thousand times safer walking as we watched a bus negotiate the narrow, bumpy, road that at times was high above the river. Just one lurch to the wrong side and it could be over the edge.

Our destination now was the village of Ghasa, a narrow strip of a village surrounded by green hills and fields of crops and vegetables. A nicer place to stop than Kalopani.

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