Mostly the power at the top gets left alone, and then it appears telecoms cables are added when as and when required, by anyone with a ladder – at least I saw guys with ladders adding them. Scroll down for a close-up of the hank lower down the pole.

Left slightly too long at the bottom of a power/phone/data pole, this bike is buried in off-cuts and possibly loops of live cable which often drape close to the ground.

Where poles have started to fall over through age – or maybe too much strain? – another one gets put up next to it as a prop, and soon sprouts its own clutch of cables.

Almost always, the power wires at the top remain clean and un-touched.

Up in the mountains, power has been strung huge distances on poles, so mountainsides that appear uninhabited in the day time are dotted with lights at night.

Luckily for this hotel, this power fuse box (in which a lizard lived) was close enough to the phone connections to allow a Wi-Fi router to be installed.

Nepal, according to wikipedia, has standardised on three mains plug styles, and there are some brilliantly-innovative mains sockets that will accomodate any of them, and more. Unfortunately, it seems that folk can theefor ram quite thick pins into some of the holes, stretching the contacts so that Euro-style plugs sometimes fail to make contact despite favourable pin spacing.

It is a great country – friendly, safe, and with fantastic hiking and exhilarating rafting.

Circuit 732 is on this pole, i’m sure….