Image-wise, Nepal is universally synonymous with Mount Everest (Sagarmatha). Admittedly, I never had a chance to climb Mt. Everest. I wish I did – but this mysterious mountain is certainly in my ‘bucket list’ of the places that I intend to visit before I die. I only had a glimpse of its majestic beauty from a distance.

Having been to Kathmandu (Nepal’s capital city) in 2011 was more than enough. I already felt that I had been to the ‘top of the world’, at least once. I was invited to present a paper titled Sustainability of Small-scale Fisheries and Aquaculture Sub-sectors. If you are neither an academic nor a professional researcher, you may find this paper bland, if not outright boring! Thus, I will not even attempt to share its technical details. 

Rather, I will write a blog about a few of my observations during my brief stay in Kathmandu. Most of the grocery items were imported from neighboring countries. Canned goods in particular came all the way from the US and Europe. I was amazed with why the casino used the Indian currency (Rupee), and not the local currency.

Our conference group visited a place called Nepalgunj – and I intend to write something about it. I had a glimpse of agriculture and rural development in the highlands, that is quite different from other landlocked countries I visited such as Laos (Lao PDR). The setting was more akin to India and Bangladesh.