Hail stones hits Kathmandu

While scientists are fightings with 'global warming', almost at the end of winter season, Kathmandu is hit by large amount of hail stones. It was windy night and all of a sudden, I hear 'pop' sounds above my roof. I came out of my room and saw white balls hitting hard to roof, ground and my flower pots. Oh! in a very short period of time, the amount of hail stone was so high that I have not seen before. It covered the streets, ground and everything within five minutes time. Enjoy the pictures of the same event occured just yesterday.

A visit to Manakamana Temple

Few weeks back, I visited Manakamana temple. The devi is belived to fulfill the will of everyone. I don't know whether everyones will is fulfilled but I enjoyed the natural beauty on the way to temple and scenes from the cable car. Hope you will also enjoy the trip with these few pictures.

Grass on sale

When I was child, I had studied history of first Nepali poet, Bhanu Bhakta Acharya, where he has mentioned about 'grass sale'. However, selling grass is not common in many parts of Nepal even today. Some city farmers may buy grass for their cattle or hire some one to cut or fetch grass these days. Anyway, recently I was a old women selling grass. It was actually not for cattle nor the amount was large. The grass was 'dubo' (Cynodon dactylon) and sale was for worshiping gods. It is specially used to offer Ganesh God. Are the people so busy that they could not pick up this grass as it can be found any place? or there is no more open space for this grass to grow in Kathmandu city? I don't know how much the old woman could earn from this but it shows that the society is changing and reviving the history of grass sale. Check the green circle.

Yellow insect turn black

Earlier I had a post on social insects. I was not sure whether they are ants or spiders. When I checked the site of the picture again, I was surprised to see those insects again but with different colour. They have turned black. How could be? I looked closely. I found that they have developed wings and long antenna. Because of the wings they looked black. Though they have wings now, they have not flied yet. I will keep my eyes on what change they will have next.

Be social like these insects

This is the picture of group of insects grouped in a colony. It was very interesting to see all the small insects colonizing themselves and getting close to each other forming a very smooth surface. When the move due to disturbances, individual insects can be seen but in some minutes they again come close together to form the colony. I don't know exact scientific or common name of this animal but if you know, let all know. The insect look like ants but I didn't check the number of legs to confirm whether they are ants or spider. They are lying in cemented wall.

Aesthetic value of solidwaste

In Environmental Science, 'aesthetic value' plays an important role. Environmental pollution lowers aesthetic value of nature and man made environment. If you can not see beautiful mountains in Nepal, you blame it to air pollution or to climate change. Similarly, people in Kathmandu blame solidwaste for tourist's flow decline. It is true that solidwaste is not collected regularly from the streets of city. This has affected the health of people, city environment and economy of city people. Besides these, how solidwaste affects the aesthetic value can be seen from the following two pictures. The first picture is with the solidwaste openly dumped in the street and second is just after the collection of same waste. How do you feel with and without the waste?

Tuborg house

Nepal is rich in water resources. It should promote on water based industries for maximum profit as raw material (water) is available for free or in lower cost. May be because of the same, there are many beer factories, Tuborg being one of them. I saw an advertisement of the same beer painted in the wall of a nice traditional house in Nepal. The house is located in an agricultural area as corps can be seen around the house the has cattle. I don’t know how the house owner and beer advertisers take it but for me, it looks like a Tuborg house.

Robert or iron waste

I saw this item standing like a Robert near an area where engineering subject is being taught. This might have developed by engineering students as a part of their project or just arranged the waste items of their other works. However, it looks like a person in a weight lifting mood. I can clearly see shape of head and two eyes plus antenna. Two hands with fingers are holding an item. The body does not look attractive but standing with two legs. What do you think? Is it a Robert or just a waste product compilation?

Open tires burning, environmental pollution and health impact

Open burning of vehicle tires on street is becoming a part of life in Nepal. Even for small events, aggressive mass start putting fire on tires to show their yes or no support and put pressure on government. The question of environmental pollution and health impact of such activities has been raised several times but no one has changed this behavior.

Open tire fire emissions include carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur oxides (SO2), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). It also includes hazardous air pollutants such as polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), dioxins, furans, hydrogen chloride, benzene, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The tire burning emission also releases heavy metals like arsenic, cadmium, nickel, zinc, mercury, chromium, and vanadium. People exposed to such emissions show symptoms of skin, eyes, and mucous membranes irritation, lungs and respiratory problems, central nervous system depression, and cancer. In a long run people may start showing mutagenic effects and higher number of cancer cases. In terms of mutagenic effects, open tire fires emissions are 16 times more dangerous than residential wood burning and 13,000 times than coal-fired emissions.

May be we will start stopping lighting the tires only we experience such effects ourselves but that will be too late to act on. (Information source: http://www.elaw.org/node/2764; Pictures by blogger)