Round-up and the next chapter of the Nepal story
We taxi'ed closely past the crashed plane, giving me a very good look at the mess. By then I had learned that Nepal is one of the most dangerous places to fly airplanes.
Caught my eye
Extremely elegant and cute visualisation of an important marketing and sales truth.
Why it took decades to replace steam power with electricity in factories. Via
I read an interesting article on the reason it took decades for electricity to replace steam in factories. I found it very interesting to learn how factories used to be organized, how and why electricity was transformative, and why it took really, really long for that transformation to happen.Small steam engines are terribly inefficient. Therefore, steam factories had one huge coil fired boiler (located in the boiler room of course) to create steam for one massive steam engine that powered the entire factory. A central drive shaft would run across the length of the factory, and intricate steam-punk like systems of gears and pulleys would power hammers, presses, and other tools.
This meant of course that everything had to be organised around the idea of this central drive shaft. When electricity first appeared, factories tried to switch to it. They replaced their massive steam engines with massive electric motors. There were some benefits. It was cleaner, and it was no longer necessary to keep the engine running all the time. But in general, you can imagine the savings were quite disappointing.
The transformation only happened when people started to realise that small electric motors ARE efficient. With wiring and power sockets you can cheaply and instantly ‘pipe’ unlimited power to every place in the factory. Instead of only being able to position presses and hammers along the central drive shaft, you could now put them wherever the hell you wanted! Factory floors were completely reorganised.
Steam-powered factories had to be arranged on the logic of the driveshaft. Electricity meant you could organise factories on the logic of a production line.
..
Old factories were dark and dense, packed around the shafts. New factories could spread out, with wings and windows allowing natural light and air.
In the old factories, the steam engine set the pace. In the new factories, workers could do so.
That was when the real transformation happened. There are parallels with the way companies are now trying to shoehorn Generative AI into their existing processes. But I won’t belabour it today.
What I’m listening to
Reminds me of the old Hed Kandi CDs I used to listen to in the 00s. Hed Kandi was an interesting cultural phenomenon actually. From the famous drawn women in bikini cover-art, to the truly excellent selection. Everyone in my environment was obsessed with it in the 2005-2007 heydays:
Kid Kudi released a couple of new songs, banger:
I was at the Singapore F1 a few weeks back, and I happened to catch Kool & The Gang. One of the songs I caught them perform was “Let’s Go Dancing”. Of course I knew that song, but it had never ‘landed’. I’ve been playing it every day since. What a great vibe! My 3 year old agrees.
Several people told me they enjoyed the Nepal story, so I wrote the next chapter
The trip to Pokhara
The flight to Pokhara ended up leaving about 2 hours late. We taxi'ed closely past the crashed plane, giving me a very good look at the mess. By then I had learned that Nepal is one of the most dangerous places to fly airplanes. The mountainous terrain makes it difficult to build runways, leading to the abomination of an airport at Lukla, where treks to the Everest Basecamp start. This also means delays due to fog, wind, or other weather patterns are more the norm than the exception. Turkish Air, I had heard, flew into Kathmandu every morning at 7am, and that flight had a bad track record of delays, often circling over Nepal for hours, waiting for the morning fog to clear. Why not schedule it to arrive at 9am instead? I wondered as I looked over the various airplane parts dispersed on the grass. The reason for my current flight's delay was, naturally, also weather.
The delay was a bit sad, because I was only going to have one night in Pokhara. My plan was to rent a Lee Enfield motorbike and drive up to a village called Birethani, stay the night and then come back. It was an almost desperate scratch at fulfilling a fantasy I had had for the last few months. When I got hired by Rocket Internet, it was not yet sure if I would be going to Cambodia or Nepal. Either one seemed awesome to me so I didn’t have a strong preference either way. A few weeks later, it became clear it would be Nepal. Excited, I had started to look into how I would spend my weekends. As a motorbike rider, just back from a trip renting Harleys and driving down the west coast of the USA, I knew one thing. Asia is the continent of driving dirt bikes through incredible landscapes. I had already searched online for where to buy a bike, and put great consideration into what brand and type of bike it should be. But just a week before my flight, the Nepalese parliament ended up having a full-on fist fight trying to pass a much needed new constitution. If I remember correctly, chairs were even thrown. This made us reconsider our choice of countries. Nepal had 26 million people, and was close to rock-bottom on the "ease of doing business" rankings. Next door was Bangladesh, with 160 million people and a ranking two positions higher. Not that the ranking made any difference to us, but the market size did. We decided that I should go to Dhaka instead. But since I had already booked my flight, and also because it was clear to everyone that the lifestyle delta was almost as large as the market size delta but with the benefit in this case going to Nepal, my boss and I agreed I would get on the plane anyway and spent my first week working from Nepal. That gave me exactly one weekend to explore the country, and I was determined to make the most of it.
As the plane taxied to the runway, I struck up a conversation with the woman next to me. In an incredibly unlikely coincidence, she turned out to be a close friend of a former colleague of mine. She was actually living in Pokhara! We chatted the whole flight and she kindly connected me with some folks, among those the owner of the shop I had booked my bike rental from.
When you move to the other side of the world, if you ever get lonely, it won't be for lack of company. The extreme openness to making new friends that characterises people who live outside of their own country continues to be one of my favourite things about living abroad.
The motorbike rental place was easy to find. And not long after landing, equipped with a paper map with some scribbles I set off, hours later than planned but still theoretically just able to make it to Birethani before dark. When I was about two thirds of the way there, it started to rain. Not very hard, but it didn't look like it was going to stop any time soon. I considered my options. If I turned back, I would definitely only reach Pokhara after dark. And besides, it had been overcast the whole trip, I still had not seen the Himalaya. Having come all the way to tick that off my list, I decided to keep going. When I reached the point where my map told me to get off the main road and onto a trail, I made a brief stop to warm up a bit and get my bearings. I found myself in a very strange village. It was clear that tourists passed through, but that nobody stayed there. It looked completely deserted. As I started my Enfield again and set off on the unpaved trail to Birethani it was just starting to get dark. The trail was made up of rocks and boulders, and they were slippery in the rain. Every few meters my rear wheel started spinning on the slippery rocks and I had to push and struggle my bike over or around a rock. After spending 15 minutes to progress maybe two hundred meters I stopped. This was going to be tricky. The rain had gotten more intense, it was getting dark fast, the vintage motorbike's headlight was weak, I had know idea if the road would become better or even worse. Both seemed equally possible. To top it off, I did not even know what Birethani looked like, and if any of the hotels were open. The whole area was eerily devoid of human activity, almost as if it had been abandoned.
It was then that I learned firsthand one of the most delightful and comforting aspects of adventure travel in Asia. The locals are always going to have your back. A friendly man suggested that he had a hotel, and that it was only 50 meters away. I sized him up somewhat skeptically, but decided he was my best option. He led me to a house, where I met his wife and 19 year old son. They fed me, sold me a few Everest beers and even put a protective rain cover over the Enfield.
The view was nothing to write home about, but at least I was dry and comfortable. My sentiment changed a bit when after a few hours they showed me where I could sleep. It was a wooden plank with one of those plastic tablecloths stapled to the top and two fleece blankets. This was going to be an uncomfortable night, but hey, still much better than sleeping on the ground next to my motorbike. The couple's son asked me if he could practice his English with me and ask me some questions. He told me how he was about to go studying in Kathmandu and he wanted to become a programmer. The only computer he had was his cheap Xiaomi smartphone, but he knew how to use it. He made me go to my facebook profile on his phone so he could add me as a friend, and then he asked me to pull out my phone so I could accept his request on the spot. This would also be an amusing recurring interaction pattern in the months to come. It was fine with me. It struck me how much we had in common, despite the stark differences in our circumstances. This wooden plank where I slept for one night was where he normally slept. There was very little to do during the days, let alone at night. The occasional lost tourist providing a rare chance for him to interact with strangers. But he was looking forward to getting out of there and study. He wanted to make new friends, meet girls, buy new jeans, and make money working in the city. Seemed reasonable to me.
The next morning I woke up early and saw to my great delight that the weather had cleared. I told my hosts that I had to get going. They seemed disappointed. It became clear that they were already preparing breakfast. The truth was that I had to use the toilet. The toilet at the house consisted of a bunch of wooden planks over what seemed like an open latrine. Having been there a few times in the dark after the previous night's Everest beers, I could not bring myself to do anything there other than empty my bladder. The other reason was that I had a route back to Pokhara in mind, and a flight to catch. I wolfed down the eggs they prepared, thanked and paid them, and quickly set off on my trusted Lee Enfield.
The guy I had rented the bike from had showed me a scenic route, which I had more than enough time for today. It was unpaved and passed by some sort of mountain lodge. From the Google maps entry, the lodge seemed like it was likely to have a toilet and maybe even coffee, and it was only a 20 minutes drive from where I had stayed the night. After parking my bike, the first thing I did was find the rest room. The look and smell of the homestay's toilet fresh in my memory, I was prepared for the worst when I followed the signs for the men's toilet around the corner. But there it was, a spotless clean, Western toilet with plenty of toilet paper. What incredible luxury. The toilets were on the ground floor of the building, which was recessed into the side of a hill. There was a stairway and a sign that said coffee. When I came out of the toilet, I walked up the stairs and found the cafe, still unaware of what I was about to see. The staff at the cafe took my order and pointed me to a row of white canvas foldable chairs outside, a little bit higher, on a grassy area. They were all pointed in the same direction in a long line, which seemed strange. Until it suddenly dawned on me why. I almost ran over to the chairs to look at the view. When I reached the grass and could see around the trees and buildings, my jaw dropped. There it was. The full Annapurna range. Snowcapped mountains as far as the eye could see. I sat down and drank my coffee, a moment of complete happiness. This whole dumb trip suddenly 100% worth the effort. What a view.
The next evening, back in Kathmandu, new friends from a different Rocket Internet venture took me to a courtyard bar that served a variety of Belgian beers. We drank Duvel and Westmalle and spoke about Nepal, Bangladesh, the cashmere trade, and much more I can't remember. It would only be a few more days until my flight to Dhaka. But this short time in Nepal felt like a lifetime. When I thought back to the first moment I had arrived at my AirBnb it seemed ages ago, but it also felt that time had flown. This time dilation only happens when you pack a large number of new experiences in a short period of time. It happens when you launch a startup, when you move somewhere new, or when you learn a lot in a short period of time. Over the next few years I would come to associate that feeling with an enormous sense of happiness and fulfilment. That is what it feels like to have a 'full' life.