Tarun Varun's Nepal Trip with Suresh, 1998

The children travelled to Nepal with Suresh and this was a very beautiful experience for them. They took the long journey by road and stopped on the way to admire nature a lot. Somu has been doing a lot of Projects in Nepal and travel there very often. , Nepal is a land of sublime scenery, time-worn temples, and some of the best hiking trails on earth. It's a poor country, but it is rich in scenic splendour and cultural treasures make up for waht it lacks in terms of material wealth. Nepal has a strip of level land that is partly forested, partly cultivated. North of that is the slope of the main section of the Himalayan range, including Everest and many other peaks higher than 8,000 m. Nepal has a very long and turbulent history.In 1951, the Nepalese monarch ended the century-old system of rule by hereditary premiers and instituted a cabinet system of government. Reforms in 1990 established a multiparty democracy within the framework of a constitutional monarchy. A Maoist insurgency, launched in 1996, gained a lot of following and threatened to bring down the regime, especially after a negotiated cease-fire between the Maoists and government forces broke down in August 2003. 2001, was a very violent period in the history of Nepal . its crown prince massacred ten members of the royal family, including the king and queen, and then took his own life. The whole world reacted with a lot of surprise and many in nepal found it very difficult to come to terms with this incident. In October 2002, the new king dismissed the prime minister and his cabinet for "incompetence" after they dissolved the parliament and were subsequently unable to hold elections because of the ongoing insurgency. Again in June 2004 , the King Gyanendra, reinstated the most recently elected prime minister who formed a four-party coalition government. Citing dissatisfaction with the government's lack of progress in addressing the Maoist insurgency and corruption, the king in February 2005 dissolved the government, declared a state of emergency, imprisoned party leaders, and assumed power. The king's government subsequently released party leaders and officially ended the state of emergency in May 2005, but the monarch retained absolute power until April 2006. This was followed by large scale mass protests organized by the opposition and the Maoists and the king was forced to allow parliament to reconvene in April 2006. Following a November 2006 peace accord between the government and the Maoists, an interim constitution was promulgated and the Maoists were allowed to enter parliament in January 2007. The peace accord calls for the creation of a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution. The Constituent Assembly elections, already twice delayed, were held in April 2008 and the Maoist swept the polls forming the Government. This was a very good example of a group which was labeled as a terrorist organization coming to the table to discuss power and then succeded in exercising it through the ballot. i wish all the other terrorist groupsd could also come to the table to discuss problmatic issues and search for solutions not through the bullet but through the ballot.