A few five minute drawings from my trip, drawn on traditional handmade Nepalese lokta paper from the Peacock Paper Factory in Bhaktapur. Seeing the factory again after so long was a delight. It’s a jewel: not only can you experience the whole process of lokta paper making, the entire building is also full of antique traditional Newari wood carvings, designed by Ram and created by his team of woodcarvers. That famous peacock window which attracts so many tourists to Bhaktapur each year? Ram has made 2! (Much better than the tourist spot, he says. I don’t disagree) He gave me this little notebook as a gift after I told him I was leaving Nepal that evening. Ram was wonderful as always, and is determined to keep working until he’s 90. He has a genuine passion for collecting “old things”, as he put it himself, and he showed me the different woodcarving projects he’s working on right now. Any money he owns from his shop gets poured straight back into these projects. “Life has no purpose but to create. Why have money if you can’t create?” He told me a little more about his family this time. His son is completing his third Master’s (or was it a Phd?) in Michigan, in Art History this time. I said to Ram, you must be very proud. He said he was, but it’s difficult to be so far away from his son, and he does not know whether his son will come back to Nepal or not. I asked if he would ever move to the US and he quickly shook his head and said no. “I told my son, I would hate it.” After I left the factory, I had a conversation with the owner of a singing bowl shop. When I told her I was heading back to Canada, she told me her son was trying to go there to get an engineering job. Our conversation echoed the conversation I’d just had with Ram. Her son wants to stay in Nepal. She wants her son to stay in Nepal. But there are no jobs, and there is too much corruption so very little to be optimistic about. It is difficult for young people to feel hopeful in Nepal. “If politics get better, he stays. If they stay bad, he goes.”