64 hours load shedding?

I'm back safely from my four days of home visits out in the countryside, only to discover load shedding has been increased to 64 hours a week (initially rumoured at 74h) - that's 6 days of 10 hours without electricity! This is about what it was last year in Feb, when we hit the peak of the load shedding, so we may have more losses yet. Since much of Nepal's power is hydroelectric, the amount of electricity available depends on the water available in the rivers. There was some backup of power that could be brought in from India, but most of those lines were destroyed in this summer's flooding. So basically too much and too little water means less hydro power. (news report here). Makes me wish I was back in the villages where people have their own micro-hydro plants, or solar cells to meet their needs, rather than depending on the main grid. Of course, many people don't have electricity at all, and life is timed to more or less match daylight hours. Which now is 6:30am to about 6pm, if you stretch it to get all the light available. Perhaps I'll have to stay on an earlier schedule here in Pokhara too, if we're up to 10 hours a day.

We managed to visit all four of the patients we headed out to see, plus two others who heard we were coming and connected with us when we were there. As I expected, most of the time was spent getting places, on buses, jeeps and walking. I rode on the top of one of the jeeps, one of those experiences that are both exhilarating and scary at the same time. It was a bit boring at first, as I was on the uphill side, and got to mostly only see the dirt wall of the road cut into the hillside. Then we came over the top of the ridge, and I was on the outside, able to look down the valley below us. Beautiful, but boy was I holding on tight!

After three nights on wooden Nepali beds, and four days in bumping vehicles, I am feeling battered and bruised. On the way home though, I was reflecting that I guess I should be grateful that I can feel every one of my bruises, and that I kept waking up to turn over at night. This ability to feel this discomfort is what the patients I visit have lost, and why they develop pressure sores. Having seen some quite bad ones in the past few days, I need to remember to appreciate my body's warning systems, even if they are uncomfortable.