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We are alive and well in Mahendranagar, Nepal on the far western border with India in the sparsely populated Nepali lowlands (south end).  We came down out of the mountains from Pokhara via Butwal (the only way out via the small 2-lane highway) about 5 days ago, down from the cool and the rain of the mountains to the intense heat and dryness of Nepal in the hottest month of the year before the monsoon, though we have had 2 or 3 thunder storms at night.  So we again are taking our daily rest from 11am to 3pm to wait out the heat.

Even Jim and Drew are coming around and are actually enjoying eating dal baht again, the Indian and Nepali standard meal that most people eat twice a day every day: rice, liquid dal (lentils), shubji (potato curry), with occasional vegetable sides and just lately, milk curd which has been an excellent addition.  The best thing about dal baht is that it is “full,” that is one eats until they are full, aka all you can eat.  This has been a great thing for me (the biggest eater on the FBR team) but a not so great thing for Jim and Drew who don’t have the insensitivity of taste and tolerance for the same mediocre food every day that I do, and apparently not great for Nakia as she contemplates her added weight.  The biggest lack of the dal baht meal is no meat, though that can be bought for extra, albeit usually doubling the cost.  However, due to multiple stories about getting sick from Indian meat, we usually just get the vegetarian meal and supplement our diets with eggs and milk in the form of lassies and curd. 

Moreover, the all you can eat meal is at most US$0.70 a person, or in West Bengal India in the countryside, US$0.30 a person.  These food prices are much cheaper than in China, where we’d usually spend US$1.25 to US$3.00 per person per meal.  So its been difficult for me to comprehend the supposed current “global food crisis” and rise in food prices.  I’ve never eaten this cheap before in my life, and again, the rice is unlimited when you pay the all-you-can-eat price, a whopping US$0.66 in Nepal.  The one-plate option is usually US$0.50.

I’ve read that one of the causes of the rise in global food prices is the rising price of fertilizers due to a higher demand, mostly coming from farmers around the world planting more corn for ethanol production, in addition to the direct effect of rising oil prices.  Although I haven’t done extensive research into ethanol, everything I’ve heard and know says that it is not a good option.  The energy it takes to produce ethanol from corn, combined with the fuel used in the trackors used to plant and harvest the crop is nearly the same as the energy given by the corn.  Thus, the fossil fuels used to produce ethanol might as well be used directly, freeing up land to be used to produce food, not fuel, to lower food costs for the poorest of the poor around the world.  What’s more, corn is a harsh crop on soil.  It is especially draining to soil’s nutrients, requiring even more use and increasing dependence on chemical fertilizers which have their own negative affects such as surface and ground water pollution and perpetuates this new cycle of rising food prices.

I would encourage you to look at ethanol critically and support other alternative energies like solar (the big one), wind power, and full 100% electric cars instead of the cop-out hybrid, which unfortunately is the best option on the market now after full electric cars, EV1’s, were taken off the market and destroyed in California around 2000 in large part due to political and economic collaboration for Fuel Cells by oil companies, car manufacturers, and the US government.  While modern electric cars with a 300 mile range were here in the late 90s and early 2000s only in California (little to the knowledge of most Americans), Fuel Cells will take atleast 20 years to research and develope so they’re both effiencient and less than US$1 million a car…and of course this time frame gives the world’s oil hawks ample time to wring out the last profits from the soon to be archaic energy source.

For now though, we are planning to re-enter India tomorrow and continue our last leg on bicycle - always the best environmental, physically healthy, community building, and anti Saudi oil money-funded muslim extremist madrasa schools option - to Delhi, which we expect to reach in 5-10 days.  There, we will make our executive decision based on if we’ve heard from our Iranian contact, if we can go to Iran or more likely, fly from India to Istanbul Turkey in the first part of June.  In Istanbul, we would start the European leg of our Eurasian journey for increased global understanding, friendship, and a quick response from all to take action now to slow and eventually stop the Global Climate Crisis.

In closing, here is one of my favorite quotes from one of many peace-loving moderate/liberal muslims:

“My heart has opened unto every form. It is a pasture for gazelles, a cloister for Christian monks, a temple for idols, the Ka’ba of the pilgrim, the tablets of the Torah and the book of the Koran. I practice the religion of love; in whatsoever directions its caravans advance, the religion of Love shall be my religion and my faith.”
                    -Ibn Arabi; Sufi Islam mystic and philosopher

Peace.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 18th, 2008 at 6:44 am and is filed under Pete's Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.