(Trekking) Map of Nepal: It's kind of interactive and good quality

This is the best map of Nepal on the entire Internet. Well Google maps is there but currently there is very little information about place names or trails on that. This maps gives an excellent overview of the mountain geography of the country. The map has been made by Himalaya Map House to show the Great Himalaya Trail route as proposed by Robin Boustead. See http://www.thegreathimalayatrail.org/ for more about the long distance path, or long distance trail which extends across the Nepal Himalaya.

Anyway, enjoy the map. Click below and give a few seconds for it to load.  

Nepali coffee and how to prepare it

I've just imported some espresso coffee making things from China. I still don't really know what to call them. I say "Coffee pot" but they also go by macchinetta, caffettiera or moka pot. I heard that every home in Italy has one of these in its kitchen, though some of these will now be packed away now that electric espresso machines have become so affordable. Still, such a coffee pot is probably the cheapest, simplest way to make good coffee at home. If more people can make good coffee at home, won't the home market grow just a little bit more benefiting farmers in rural Nepal? So this is the attempt to add a little caffeine boost to the wider public in Kathmandu and beyond. 

http://coffeepotnepal.com/

This mission started in Langtang after 10 days of Nescafé in a country with some pretty good coffee being produced. In these trekking areas all lodges have to have fixed menus and fixed prices set by the local tourism committee. While it stifles culinary-creativity somewhat, it stops price wars and thus tries to focus the lodge owners minds on keeping the lodge looking tidy and its bedrooms clean.

Still, with competition rampant, it was hard for lodges or tea-shops to differentiate themselves from the next one along the path, or rather, the one big fancy one that all the guides assumed their clients would want to go to. Perhaps a bit of real, freshly prepared coffee would be enough to attract people to a smaller, less conspicuous (and less successful) lodge?

This has not been proven yet as it took around 8 months from placing the order to getting them to Kathmandu. In the coming months, some good Nepali coffee should make its way up to Langtang. Let's see how the tourists like it.

Ok, I'll bite - Make Money Blogging Free eBook review

A week or two ago, I visited Gulmarg in Kashmir to snowboard. A few days before arriving, there was an unusually big storm which left somewhere between one and two meters of snow lying around. And naturally some of it wouldn't stay put and, in one particular case, a huge and record-book making avalanche hit an army camp sadly killing 18 servicemen.

While everybody's concern was with the victims and those being rescued, at the same time, people were desperately waiting for the gondola (the longest in the world no less) to open so that they could head up onto those dangerously avalanche prone slopes. This is how people are of course.

Gulmarg, like any ski-resort, has a snow patrol that monitor the safety of the slopes. It is headed by Brian, from New Zealand. On several occasions he came out to address the waiting crowds before the gondola station. Dressed in tighter-that-usual, all-black ski gear, with neatly cropped ginger facial hair and aviator specs, he cut a dashing figure and thus commanded great authority. As a consequence, no-one seemed to mind too much when he gave the bad news, that, for the time being, the slopes would remain closed.

To move on to the point of this blog entry, he ran a blog on snow safety (which has a fantastic header image) which you can check here: http://www.gulmargsnowsafety.com/. It looked like a nice simple site and I thought the template might be worth using again some time. At the footer, the origin of the template used is always shown. In this case: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/wordpress-themes/. To get the themes you have to sign up to the newsletter which seemed like a worthwhile exchange.

As part of this exchange, I got a free copy of "Make Money Blogging Free eBook" which I read. I blog, so could I ever make money from it? If you own or manage a website then I recommend that you get a copy of it here:


http://www.dailyblogtips.com/make-money-blogging/

I don't think I will ever make money blogging, I'd still like more people to read what I write however. For that to happen, I need to do a few things differently. One is to write more often, and be useful, unique while I'm at it. Importantly I need people to link to this site, and I need to link to those who link to me. These are some of the simpler things I learned from the eBook, and this is why I am writing this post. My quote: "It's changed the way I blog"