Politics is a pretty depressing business in Nepal at the moment, with an interim coalition government of 8 political parties (the former 7 parties plus the Moaists who recently joined) seemingly unable to come to a agreement on anything. Elections to decide the future structure of the country have recently been postponed, with each party blaming the other. Outside of Kathmandu, politics seems to be irrelevant to most people, who just want the freedom to get on with their lives. The police are often visible, but don't like to venture far from the safety of their vehicles.

Corruption is rampant – when questioned about bribary recently, the transport minister was quoted in a newspaper as saying 'I have instructed my staff to reduce their kickbacks from 60% to 30%'.

Politics is very left of centre here – apart from the Maoists, the coalition features a 'United Marxist Leninist' party and other communist parties. A bizzare example of the way the state meddles in everyday life is in the supply of petrol. The government fixes the price of petrol at an artificially low level – about 7rupees per litre less than in India (total price ~50p/litre). Now, all petrol in Nepal is supplied by the state oil company (NOC) and comes from India, but because of the low selling price, NOC loses money on every litre it sells. The government can't (or won't) make up the difference, NOC is racking up huge debts, and the Indian suppliers are understandably cutting back their shipments. There are currently severe shortages in some parts of the country, with long queues at the few filling stations that have supplies and no-one in the government will talk about abolishing the fixed selling price for fear of losing popularity. To cap it all, some of the fuel that does make it to Nepal, is then smuggled back to India where it can be sold for a profit!

Despite the Moaists now being in government, their youth wing, the Young Communist League have been making a name for themselves. When in a good mood, they help with directing traffic and clearing up litter, but get them on a bad day, and they are not quite so friendly. There have been reports of them seizing land, and they was a recent spate of statue smashing, as they tried to remove all references to the monarchy. They have long memories – these are before and after pictures of the statue of Prithvi Narayan Shah who ruled Nepal sometime in the 1700's and used to stand on a roundabout on the entrance to Pokhara.