Powerless in Nepal

We both realized how much we take for granted having electricity when traveling through Nepal. Apparently the country’s main export is hydroelectric power but within the borders there isn’t a constant flow. There are “load reductions” every day in every city that we went to. In Kathmandu, we had a schedule of these load reductions so that we could plan our day around when we would have light and the ability to charge our electronics. In Pokhara, they claimed to not know the schedule and so we just had to hope that we would have power at some point. In Bardia, there was definitely no schedule; the power seemed to go on and off throughout the day. As an experiment, try to avoid using electricity for one day… or use it for only an hour at 11am and an hour at 5pm, just be careful if you try to use candles for light! There was a couple in the cottage next to us that left a candle burning in the bathroom and accidentally melted the whole toilet and nearly set all of our straw roof cottages on fire (toilets including the water tank in Nepal are made of plastic instead of ceramic). Here is a pic of us having dinner in Bardia without electricity: