Back to Nepal - Part 1 - Tea and Hydro

In the middle of July I headed back to Nepal to have a holiday, catch up with some of my friends over there, try to learn a few more things about the actual implementation of pico and micro hydro and speak to people who now are electrified to see what they see the benefits are.

The first few days were taken up with rest. The previous 3 weeks had really taken it out of me, I was so tired but my mind was still working overdrive and sleeping was a real problem. The continual fly past from the mosquitos didn't help with sleep either. But after a few days I was relaxed and my sleep got better and better. I ate the Nepali staple food of daal bhaat twice a day, went for wanders around Patan where I was staying and watched some truly hideous Indian TV (so many talent shows and bad adverts - my favourite being the Bangur Cement advert when a little old man says Bangur Cement, similar to these).

I visited KAPEG again in Dhulikhel, who had been working with PEEDA (from my year out) on the low head pico hydro axial flow turbine project. They had redesigned the electronic load controller that allowed the voltage to drop below the reference voltage for a short time. This allowed motors to be started with the large inrush current they draw. This is a significant move for pico hydro controllers, as this will allow more industry to be used from the site, bringing cash into village communities. KAPEG had also installed a test site in Panauti, Kavre, where the turbine was installed beside a traditional Nepali pani ghatta, as originally envisioned by the designer. The site was installed next to a irrigation canal that was already constructed meaning that there was only minimal civil works needed. The site provided electricity to a school and a local chicken farm, and now could be used to drill, grind and cut material.

A traditional Nepali pani ghatta

The low head axial turbine casing and induction machine as a generator

The ghatta and turbine side by side in Panauti

Alongside the work KAPEG had been doing, PEEDA had promoted the turbine unit all across South Asia. They had received orders from Bhutan and India, which showed the potential of the project. They had finished their one year project, so during my second week held a workshop to present all the work done with the turbine, from the beginning of the project. This project is very close to my heart, as it is the project that I worked on whilst at PEEDA, and had inspired me to do the PhD. I was very happy that PEEDA had finally managed to get some movement with it.

Pico Axial Turbine Workshop (photo from PEEDA website)

After the workshop I left Kathmandu for a 2 week tour around Nepal. I first headed back to Ilam to see what they thought now they had electricity. I had visited the village of Amchowk last year, where my friend Krishna Panthi was instructing them on the installation of a 28kW micro hydro unit. Now they had it, what did they do with it and what did they think? To get to Ilam was not an easy trip. Last year I flew to Bhadrapur, but this year I decided to take the bus as it was a lot cheaper - around £10 compared to over £100 for flying. The downside was that it took 2 days to reach Ilam Bazar, instead of the half day it would take flying, before another day's jeep ride and walk to Amchowk. As I had arrived in monsoon season, the roads were impassable in many places, forcing a 3 to 4 hour walk to reach the village. Krishna was no longer in Ilam, working in another district, so I went out to Amchowk with NCDC, a renewable energy NGO in Ilam who I also met last year. They were going to a site nearby to do a commissioning test, so I tagged along. In Amchowk, I met with some of the villagers and asked them what they thought the best thing was. They all answered the same thing, ujaalo - the brightness. Before they were dependent on kerosene lamps for light at night, with a few torches. Now, with the energy saving lightbulbs they could see so much better, and even with the 'zero watt' incandescent bulbs - used as they were 10 times cheaper than energy saving bulbs - the light was so much brighter than the kerosene lamps. Alongside the bulbs, people used the power for TVs, radios, mobile phone charging and the community had invested in 3 mills that they ran to process rice and maize. There was also a computer institute that ran classes for locals and a couple of people had their own computer too.

The site in Amchowk last year

The site in Amchowk this year, finished and generating for the last 13 months

A 'zero watt' bulb in Amchowk

I also visited the village of Ekatappa which I had visited last year. They had recently finished their micro hydro system too, and had been running for about one month. As with Amchowk, they powered TVs, mobiles etc. It was interesting that in Ekatappa, as with Amchowk, when there was power, people ran their bulbs, charged their phones, even if it was bright outside. I supposed that this was the advantage of hydropower, the power is always there, you don't need to pay for more fuel to provide it, so you might as well use it whilst you can.

Ekatappa's Deu Mai Micro Hydro project

Ilam is the centre of the Nepali tea industry, and so in Ilam Bazar I went for a walk through the chiya bari - tea gardens. They are a most amazing place a very strange place to wander.

The Ilam chiya bari

From Ilam, I headed to Lalbandi to see Didi and Bibek, who I spent a lot of time with during my year in Kathmandu. The road to Lalbandi passed by the Koshi river. 3 years ago the Koshi burst its banks and flooded across Nepal and India causing widespread devastation and loss of life (news reports from the time can be seen here). However, still in Nepal, the road across the Koshi had not been rebuilt fully, several sections still washed away and people's houses still temporary. I did wonder whether these people had been forgotten, once the initial emergency is over, how does life go back to how it was before? What has been done to prevent this happening again? Well, from the news I watched they still have been doing emergency work on the river dyke to ensure it remains firm, more firefighting than fixes though.

The dykes along the skyline

The rebuilt houses

The Koshi Barrage - meant to prevent the type of flooding that happened

That's all for part one, there still more to come. Lalbandi - Pokhara - Gorkha then returning to Kathmandu for Janai Purnima!

SAM

Back to Nepal!

After a little volcano trouble (grrr...) I finally made it back to Nepal, a year and a week to the day after I left. It was strange going back. I really wanted to see my adopted family again. Saru had had a baby boy, Bibek would be a lot bigger, and my Nepali language skills would be put to the test.

I also had some work I wanted to do. They were 3 main things:

1. Visit a project site for pico or micro hydro

2. Go to Kathmandu University at Dhulikhel, where they had a propeller turbine test rig installed.

3. Collect some data on river flow - which would probably mean a trip to a Nepal Government office.

It was weird descending back into the dust bowl of cacophony that is Kathmandu. It had been a year since I was last here. I had spoken some Nepali sporadically, I had tried - and failed - to cook Nepali food, and I had done my best to keep up with the politics (nothing had happened). But sitting in the taxi weaving in and out of the traffic, reminded me how much I really missed the place. Yes, it was noisy. Yes, it was polluted. Yes, it stank. But there were things here that really never failed to touch me. When the taxi pulled up to my adopted Nepali home, I forgot all the chaos around and remembered the joys of Nepal, the warmth of the people, the taste of the food, and the unpredictability of the electricity supply - which disappeared 10 minutes after I arrived.

I spent the first week re-acquainting myself with my old Nepal life. I went to the PEEDA office, and presented them all the T-Shirts I bought in Bristol, with bristolian slang on it (http://www.beast-clothing.com/). It did take some explaining what each meant though. I spent a lot of time with my adopted family. Saru had had a baby boy, less than 1 month old, and now was living at the house for a few months as is traditional in Nepali culture. I visited the International Church, KISC, and met up with my old lunch friends, those left anyway. A great catch up.

Biraj from the PEEDA office arranged for me to visit Krishna Panthee, a hydropower installer that I met in Bhanbhane (see March 2009). Krishna was currently installing a few micro hydro schemes in Ilam. Ilam was somewhere I really wanted to go. It was in the far east of the country, and known for its tea growing (map). There was going to be a strike in a couple of days, and as Ilam was at least a days bus ride from Kathmandu, I took a flight to Jhapa in the eastern Terai, then caught a jeep back up to Ilam bazaar.

In Ilam Bazaar, I met Kumar Shrestra from NCDC (ncdcilam.org.np), an office that operated as the government service centre for micro hydro. He delivered me to my hotel, and then left me to eat dinner. In my room, I had a visit of a local cockroach, a bit of a shock when it decided to climb over me whilst I was sleeping. The next morning, there was a knock on the door. I opened it, and stood there was a small little Nepali man. He smiled at me, came in and sat down. I didn't quite understand what was going on. So, I just started to chat. I found out that his name was Amrit Pandey, and was a resident of the village Krishna was working in. He would deliver me to Ekatappa, where Krishna would meet us.

Amchowk's power house

The destroyed dam site, with the locals clearing the rock

Sitting with the locals in Amchowk

Ekatappa was a 6 hour jeep ride from Ilam Bazaar. The jeep was rather full and uncomfortable. After an hour or so, we started to go off road, bouncing along between the ruts and stones. And as normal, slowly and surely, people disembarked as we reached their villages. By the time we reached Ekatappa at the end of the road, there was only 5 of us left. In Ekatappa, there was Krishna waiting for us. The next week, I went around 3 different micro hydro projects in different states of construction. In Ekatappa, the scheme was just starting to be built, with the base of the intake canal laid. In Amchowk, they were a lot further on. There was a few metres of intake canal to be built, the dam required rebuilding after it was destroyed in floods the previous year, and an extension to the intake canal was being built using penstock pipe. The third was up stream from the Amchowk site. It had been operational for the last 2 years, and was still working well.

The access road down to the power house site

The new intake, with bamboo scaffolding

Installing the transmission lines

I watched the people in Amchowk rebuilding their dam, and talked with them about their aspirations for electricity. Some people wanted TVs, others to charge their mobile phones, but most were just looking forward to clean light. Something that we in the west take very much for granted. In Amchowk, I stayed with the Baskota family, a wonderfully friendly family who welcomed me in with typical Nepali charm.

An old lady from Amchowk

A traditional grinding stone

With the Baskota family daughters and Krishna in Amchowk

At the time I was in Ilam, it was the same time as the UK General Elections. When I woke up the morning after the elections, Nepali radio declared Labour the winners. 2 hours later, the Tories had won an overall majority, by the end of the day the coalition Con-Lib was going to be formed. It was strange listening to UK politics on Nepali radio, another countries take on your so-called democracy. They were in awe of the way we voted. It made me feel a little bit guilty. This was the first election I was going to have voted in, and even this time it was by proxy (thanks Hannah!). But in a country like Nepal, the vote was something that was cherished, that people not one generation back had fought tooth and nail for, and there we were with turnout 65%. It felt pathetic - did we not recognise the importance of our votes?

The strike kept on going. After 5 days, I had seen everything that I wanted to, and really needed to get back to Kathmandu. However, there was no transport. When the strike finally ended after 8 days, the rain started, and the roads became impassible. So, Krishna and I had to wait a couple of days more before returning to Ilam Bazaar. Krishna saw me down to Birtamod in the Terai, from where I caught a bus to Didi's house. The bus ride was fairly uneventful - apart from the goat's backside in my face for a good hour - until I had to change buses. I was to catch a local bus to Lalbandi, which was 45 minutes from the road junction I was stood at. The first bus that pulled up I climbed aboard. It was packed, nothing new for a Nepali bus, but now the heat of the day had really started to kick in. Outside was a balmy 40 degrees, but inside it must have been over 50. There was nowhere to sit down, and I was forced to stand up with my head twisted parallel to the ground, the roof of the bus definitely not made for tall people to stand up in. By the time I fell out of the bus in Lalbandi, I had lost several stones through sweating and my clothes were reduced to towelling.

Bibek, Didi's son, had lived in Kathmandu during my year in Nepal. We went on several adventures together (here and here). But now, he had returned to live with his Mum and Dad in the Terai. I got a lift on a bike from Lalbandi to their village, about 5km away, and saw Didi outside her house working. We chatted for a long time, then I succumbed to the heat and fell asleep upstairs. I was warned about the snakes that would be there. next thing I knew, I was woken by Bibek staring at me shouting 'Sam-mama' (Uncle Sam). Kathmandu didn't seem the same without him, but I was glad he was here. In his village he could play, be with people his own age and do all the things that naughty little boys should do. We spent the next day walking around the village, Bibek showing me the maize that they were just about to cut, the cobra holes and how low the river had got - it was non-existant now, very different from the time I bathed in it with an audience.

After two nights in the heat of the Terai, I returned to Kathmandu, via Samjhu's house in Hetauda. Samjhu had got married just before I left last time (here), and now was the proud mother to a first son, her son was born one day before Saru's. I was really happy to see that Samjhu was looking well and enjoying her married life. Back in Kathmandu I spent my last week with my family. I had named Saru's son Bob, mainly because it was a name that Nepali people would be easily be able to pronounce.

'Bob'

After getting hopelessly lost around Dhulikhel, I went to visit John Cannell at Kathmandu University's Engineering Campus. There, he had set up a full size low head pico hydro test rig, and was conducting experiments on different propeller turbines. It was really interesting to speak with someone who had spent so long in Nepal working as a missionary, trying to build engineering capability, and seeing how he saw the world. I also had the great pleasure of visiting Kathmandu Alternative Power and Energy Group, who were currently running a project to build wind turbines out of locally made material and with local wood carving skills. Rakesh from KAPEG was a proper engineer, ready to turn his hand to anything and a fantastic experimenter. I left Dhuilikhel more inspired to get things up and going with my PhD in the UK.

And as always is the way, far too quickly it was all over again. I found myself packing, and getting ready to go to the airport. As I left, I was sad that I hadn't spent a long time here, a month flies by especially when last time was a whole year, but re-energised with the real life situations that I could put my research into practice with. I now have the task of trying to keep hold of that enthusiasm...

SAM