Tweet

Share

Note from Jonah: This is the continuation of a photo series from the Great Himalayan Mountain Range. The photos document a journey by car, foot, boat, plane and elephant from Tibet to Nepal.

Kathmandu: Full of mystery, culture, history — and trash. While in the last post I detailed some of the highlights of Nepal’s epicenter this post focuses on the not-so-nice side of the city. And there is plenty of it. In fact, it is really pretty gross.

Trash liters the streets in large piles almost everywhere you go. Worse than that, the place the trash is usually piled is on or next to are ancient temples. Visually and aromatically — this is pretty gross and is certainly one of the dirtier places I’ve ever seen. For those that have traveled in India, I’m sure there are similar sites. I’ve seen trashed beaches in Southeast Asia and witnessed how the North African population deals with their trash (they don’t) — but this was a big step in the wrong direction from those experiences.

In a city so congested like Kathmandu — the trash piles really become integrated into peoples lives.

On any given street corner you might see a vendor selling spices or vegetables off the ground. Five feet away a mound of trash grows. Animals are drawn to the garbage adding one more factor into the already gross equation. Beggers and homeless people sleep on the ground while shoeless children run through the garbage playing.

This isn’t a new issue either. Nepal has had continue problems dealing with its waste. In 2009, a Huffington Post headline reads “Nepal Drowning In Garbage After Strikes.” After talking to some NGO people in town, the word was they couldn’t afford to pick up the trash continually and at the point I was there, it was being collected monthly. So by the end of the month piles of trash just liter the visual and physical landscape.

I was also there during the rainy season which seems to create a filthy-slimy-film like cover to the ground in the ancient city. At points it was like walking around in a greasy kitchen. The shine on the ground on the photo directly above, shows this a little bit. When the water comes it seems to just spread the grease of the trash evenly around the roads.

Beyond the obvious lack of infrastructure to collect the trash, people’s respect toward their environment seemed equally disturbing. In the above example, a boy pee’s on a temple that was constructed in the 12th century. Even in the UNESCO World Heritage Area Durbar Square, people seemed to completely ignore the fact they were in a historic place. Locals sit in the temples, with seemingly nothing to do smoking and throwing an enormous amount of cigarettes and trash whenver they happened to be.

I should point out, I am by no means an expert on Nepalese social structure or government infrastructure. These are just consequential observations I had when I was there. its possible, all of these people were just on their day off …

I’ve had a big focus this year in trying to do more NGO related photography. My NGO related photography this year has focused on the environment, poverty and cultural preservation. While trash and the environment are directly related I would like to focus on this more. If any ‘trash’ related NGO reads this send me an email and I would love to get involved helping to create some media to show people the extent of this problem.

I think the temples get the worst of it because they are public space. If you don’t want your trash on your property, and no one will pick it up — I can understand the logic of putting at the temple. This way, your not dumping it on your neighbor’s property and if its no one’s property, no one can really yell at you for doing it. However, after a quick Google search one can see, this is not a new problem and it doesn’t there doesn’t seem to be a solution lined up.

Some general facts about the economic state of Nepal from the CIA World Fact Book:

Nepal is among the poorest and least developed countries in the world, with almost one-quarter of its population living below the poverty line. Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, providing a livelihood for three-fourths of the population and accounting for about one-third of GDP. Industrial activity mainly involves the processing of agricultural products, including pulses, jute, sugarcane, tobacco, and grain. During the global recession of 2009, remittances from foreign workers abroad increased 47% to $2.8 billion while tourist arrivals only decreased 1% compared to the previous year. Nepal has considerable scope for exploiting its potential in hydropower, with an estimated 42,000 MW of feasible capacity, but political instability hampers foreign investment. Additional challenges to Nepal’s growth include its technological backwardness, landlocked geographic location, civil strife and labor unrest, and its susceptibility to natural disaster.

Road Trip on the Himalayan Shelf: If you’re just joining now, here’s what you’ve missed:

1. Road trip on the Himalayan Shelf
2. Lhasa: City of Sunlight, City in the Sky
3. In Tibet, People’s Liberation Army (mostly) out of site, but not out of mind
4. Attn: Crayola — a new color for you — Tibetan Blue
5. Tibetan Cloudscapes
6. Tibetan Prayer Flags Littering Roof of the World
7. Should you pay for photos? The ethics of travel photography
8. 29 Minutes and 15 Seconds on Mount Everest
9. Desertification stretching from Inner Mongolia to Tibet
10. ‘The journey not the arrival matters’
11. Namaste and welcome to Nepal
12. Kathmandu: The greatest place on earth to get lost
13. Kathmandu: Full of mystery, culture, history — and trash
14. ‘A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles’
15. Who has the strongest necks in the world?
16. Hey hey, they’re some monkeys
17. After the Himalayan: The Terai
18. Watch where you step: Chitwan National Park
19. At the end of the road: Pokhara
20. Final Destination 8 (in 3D): The luckiest travelers in the world
21. Tibet to Nepal: ‘The Journey Not the Arrival Matters’