A bottle of ice-cold Everest beer by candleight, in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Kathmandu may be the world’s only capital city with a power issue. I am not speaking of politics, I mean actual electrical power. They call it “load shedding” and several hours a day the electricity is cut in different neighborhoods to give everyone in the city an equal share of the misery. It is so frequent, the schedule is posted.

The first night in Nepal, for example, I went to a pub and ordered food and beers before six o’clock, because that would be it until 10:30pm for electricity. Sure enough, nearly six o’clock exactly the music died, the lights went dark, and all us patrons heard was the gentle sound of rain falling on the canvas roof. The soft glow of candles on each table gave it a cozy, warm, comforting feeling.

Since it’s a regularily scheduled occurance (the following day was 5am to 10am, and again 6pm to 8:30pm) most places are well-prepared. Slowly the generators were fired up, the music came back on and life went on as usual. For the few minutes the power was out, it was a nice reminder of how we all can take the simple things in life for granted. At home, I have hot running water 24-hours a day, and enough electricity to power anything I could imagine. Here, they’re fine with electricity only half of the day, and adjust accordingly the rest of the time.

And God love ’em for keeping the beer cold.

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