It’s a steep climb from city life to rural reality.

Because I am able to travel to many parts of Nepal it’s a constant reminder of the contrast between life in the city in Kathmandu for its 2million people and the reminder of the 25m population of this Himalayan former kingdom. Reading one of Kathmandu’s several glossy monthlies, dream a little, and you could almost convince yourself you were in any one of a dozen European capitals. Whole page spreads on flashy new cars, 4X4s, fashion, jewellery, perfume, the very latest TV and DVD players and properties with huge price tags.
The ads tell us you can party any night of the week or every night if you wish. Even eat “fresh” Scottish salmon and there are articles about famous people who have made Nepal their home. Well the city anyway, no doubt behind large walls and gates controlled by a security guard. Perhaps its many years since they experienced rural reality away from the well trodden trekking routes.

Yet this city, this Kathmandu currently experiencing weekly power cuts of 50 hours a week. Where you risk serious illness by drinking water that has not been filtered or just bought bottled. Where all to often rubbish is left to rot in the streets for lack of a systemic collection and dumping regime. Tourism continues to grow and many hotels have reported the best year yet. But wait, all the big hotels have back up generators, water filtering and food preparation that ensure that even the real city life that is what most Nepalese experience is kept firmly outside their carefully guarded walls and gates.

Take a bus ride outside the “valley” and what hits you firm between the eyes is a straight dose of rural reality. Even the bus ride could cause culture shock. Roads where the surface has parted from the foundations, past men sitting in the sun playing children’s board games out of sheer boredom and lack of meaningful work. Woman with some men working long hours in the fields or tending to a few animals just as has been done for countless generations. Others, trying to earn enough simply to put rice on the table for their family, sit at little roadside stalls selling the same as all the other little shops. Houses are mainly poorly constructed and most are without running water or electricity. Young woman carry water to their homes for personal and clothes washing. Children who ought to be in school work in a range of small tea shops and cafes to boost the families meagre income.

If the bus crosses a dry riverbed, and there are plenty of these in Nepal during the hot dry season, there could be a hundred people breaking stones by hand, or screening sand for building by simply throwing it by the shovel- full through small wire grids. Another squad of woman can be seen carry huge loads of sand and stones on their backs to the spot where men load ten ton lorries with shovels.

However some changes are happening despite government inertia. Where only months ago telephone lines in remote areas were few and far between with many stories of people waking days simply to make a call. Now thanks to the new generation of mobile phones the old land lines are increasingly being bypassed by people experiencing first world technology for the first time. And slowly every so slowly roads are being built, extended or black topped and thus the markets for locally grown food products are being extended.

There is no need for the high tech gyms of Kathmandu in the countryside for the reality is people are thin often very thin. For many the difference between food security and scarcity is a fine line. See anyone with a paunch in a rural village chances are they are visiting family on a short break from their job in one of the gulf states. The money they send back perhaps by sons and in some cases daughters is often the main income for that family.

Every now and then a politically motivated strike will cut supplies to Kathmandu. Shortages will begin to appear very quickly, usually petrol, diesel and bottled cooking gas. The city will experience a short dose of rural reality that’s life for most of the population for all of the time. Somehow its smoothed out or more likely bought off and we in the city can go back to our glossy mags hoping the rural reality stays just where it is.