Nepal Now

Send us Fan Mail Hi everyone. Thanks for listening to this first episode of Nepal Now: On the Move . I know there are literally millions of podcasts out there competing for your listening time, so I appreciate that you chose this one. My name is Marty Logan. I’m a Canadian journalist who has lived in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu on and off since 2005. You can reach me with feedback on anything you he...

Send us Fan Mail Hi everyone. Welcome to Nepal Now , whose new title is Nepal Now: On the Move , for reasons I’ll explain shortly. Thanks for choosing this show from among the more than 2 million podcasts now competing for your ears. I’m back! And since my last episode was titled Thank you and goodbye! I guess I should explain. But first, if you don’t know me, my name is Marty Logan. I’ve been a j...

Send us Fan Mail Hi everyone. Thanks for joining me for this new episode of Nepal Now. I’m Marty Logan. You might have noticed that this is an extra short episode. Frankly, that’s because it will be the last one. After 3 years I’m saying goodbye. Why? Put simply, I don’t have the energy to keep the show going any more. I didn’t want to announce this at the end of the last full episode, because the...

Send us Fan Mail Hi everyone. Thanks for joining me for this new episode of Nepal Now, the podcast where we highlight different ideas and actions to move the country forward. I’m Marty Logan. Thanks to those of you who filled out the poll on our last episode, about Jumli Marsi rice. It’s available if you listen on Spotify, and I post a new poll and a question there with each episode. This poll was...

Send us Fan Mail Hi everyone. Thank you for being here for this new episode of Nepal Now, the podcast where we highlight different ideas and actions to move the country forward. I’m Marty Logan. Here’s something new — did you know you can listen to Nepal Now on your smart speaker? Just ask Siri, Alexa or whoever you’re talking with to ‘play Nepal Now podcast’ and you’ll hear my voice. OK, on with...

Send us Fan Mail Hi everyone. Thank you for being here for this new episode of Nepal Now, the podcast where we highlight different ideas and actions to move the country forward. I’m Marty Logan. A quick reminder that you can back the work that goes into creating this show, by clicking on the white ‘support’ button at the middle left of our homepage and making a contribution. If you have any questi...

Send us Fan Mail Hi everyone. Thank you for being here for this new episode of Nepal Now, the podcast where we highlight different ideas and ways of moving the country forward. I’m Marty Logan, a journalist and communicator from Canada who’s lived in Nepal for 11 years. Before we get into today’s chat, a follow-up from our recent episode about the satire-writing Ass of Nepali Times newspaper. You’...

Send us Fan Mail Hi everyone. Thank you for being here for this new episode of Nepal Now, the podcast where we highlight different ideas and ways of moving the country forward. I’m Marty Logan, and I hope you can hear those birds chirping in the background. We just had a light rain so they've come out to celebrate.  Before we get into this episode, I want to let you know that you’re now able...

Send us Fan Mail You can now support Nepal Now. Hi everyone. This is Marty Logan. Apologies for the long delay between episodes. I finally made it home for the holidays after four years being delayed by Covid and took advantage with a longer than usual break. So, welcome back to Nepal Now, if you’re a return listener; greetings to those of you who are here for the first time. What I’m trying to do...

Send us Fan Mail Hi everyone. This is Marty Logan. Welcome to Nepal Now. It’s been an up-and-down year for me, and for the podcast, as I’m sure it has for many of you. But thanks to support from you listeners I’ve been motivated to keep it going. So thank you all for that.  These will be my last words through the podcast for 2022, but before I say goodbye I want to ask you to do one more thing. I’...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Nepal Now, the podcast where we explore new ideas and innovations to move the country forward. My name is Marty Logan. Thank you for joining me today a in my noisy neighbourhood. It feels like it’s construction season in this part of Kathmandu – but on with the show as they say! Like what seems to  be a growing number of Nepalis, Rumee Singh always had an itch to return...

Send us Fan Mail Thank you for joining me today. I think it’s fair to say that the discussion you’re going to hear raises at least as many questions as it answers. We’re talking about domestic abuse and women who leave Nepal to work abroad. Labour migration is a huge part of the country’s economy and, as I think this episode reveals, it has a major impact on many other aspects of life here. Earlie...

Send us Fan Mail I reached out to Gyanu Adhikari wondering if I had missed the boat. I wanted to speak to him about co-founding The Record, an online news portal that started publishing in 2014, but the website had stopped posting new information this past July. I probably should have contacted him two years earlier, after I started this podcast, but I think as a media person myself I just took th...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Nepal Now, the podcast where we discuss new ideas and approaches to move the country forward. My name is Marty Logan. Thanks for joining me for this episode, which, if you’re counting, is #52. You might be wondering what happened to the video version of the last episode, my chat with Sanjib Chaudhary. Well, that’s a good question. I received a rough cut and suggested tw...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Nepal Now, the podcast where we discuss new ideas and approaches to move the country forward. My name is Marty Logan. I hope you don’t mind a slight digression to start. A few weeks ago I met a friend, someone I see every few months. One of the first things he said to me was, 'I see your podcast is on a break'. We chatted for a while and later I realized that...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Nepal Now. My name is Marty Logan. I’m back after a long break – thanks for joining me. Today we’re doing something different. On Aug 21st I was at St. Xavier’s College in Kathmandu, talking with journalism students about podcasting. Actually, I tried to keep the talking part to a minimum — our main task was to create this episode that you’re listening to now. The theme...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Nepal Now, the podcast where we discuss new ideas and initiatives to move the country forward. My name is Marty Logan.  A lot has happened around menstrual health issues in Nepal in recent years. And it seems that all that work is bearing fruit. In its last budget the government pledged to drastically cut the tax and import duty on menstrual hygiene products, while a to...

Send us Fan Mail Last Saturday two trucks carrying smuggled fertilizer across the southern border between India and Nepal were seized at Nepal customs. Police took charge and were escorting the trucks to the capital Kathmandu when they were blocked on the highway by desperate farmers in Dhading district, who seized 400 of the 500 bags of fertilizer and vanished, reported the Kathmandu Post.  Ferti...

Send us Fan Mail This is another episode in our series Nepal Then and Now, where we catch up with former guests. Before we do that, I have a request. We know that the show has some dedicated listeners because they’ve been saying really positive things about us, which have been passed on, and it is very encouraging. But, honestly, we need more subscribers in order for the show to be sustainable and...

Send us Fan Mail Today is the second instalment in our series Nepal Then and Now, where we catch up with former guests. We first spoke with Pallavi Payal in mid-2020 about the situation of women in the country during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. At that time she focused on unequal citizenship provisions for women in the country, particularly those living in the southern Madesh region...

Send us Fan Mail That is the sound of hundreds of students at Tilingatar High School in Tokha Municipality lining up for their midday meal of rice and veggies. This still unfinished concrete school of 1,100 students on the urban edge of the Kathmandu Valley is one among tens of thousands of government schools country wide that serve hot meals to their students. In two more years the midday meal pr...

Send us Fan Mail Today is the first episode in our new series, Nepal Then and Now , where we’ll talk with former guests and catch up on their work and lives. We created the series partly in response to feedback we got in our recent survey — that episodes were too long. If you are one of the listeners who felt that way — or even if you’re not! — please let us know what you think about this approach...

Send us Fan Mail One request  before we get to today’s episode—we’ve created a short survey to get your feedback on the show. It’s just 4 questions, and according to Survey Monkey the average person takes just 2 minutes to fill it out, so it’s fast. I’ve pasted the link in the episode notes . Thanks to everyone who gives feedback. Ek Ek Paila (which means step by step in Nepali) was one of many in...

Send us Fan Mail When I was thinking about the topic of today’s episode, veganism in Nepal, it seemed oddly out of place. It’s not that being vegan is new in Nepal—historically many Hindus and Buddhists have not eaten meat or dairy products—but I was associating veganism with the emerging movement in the west, which probably more than anything else reveals the overwhelming reach of western culture...

Send us Fan Mail As SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Jan 13th 2022, a group of friends took up positions on a rooftop in Kathmandu, laptops open, waiting for a signal. Inside Falcon 9 was the satellite they had spent years building, first as students and then working as engineers—Sanosat-1.  The size and shape of a Rubik’s Cube, Sanosat was one of 106 satellite...