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Autumn is here and its time to put the shorts away and dig out the woollens.  Working from home is great but it does mean that we have to pay for the heating, not the office.  We don’t lose 30% of body heat through the head as the US military thought in the ‘50s, but we do lose between 7 and 10%.  That’s still a lot and makes investing in a good wool hat a very good idea.  Wool is the ultimate insulator and is one of the most breathable fibres around.  After all, it kept polar explorers and mountain climbers warm and safe from frostbite long before synthetic fabrics were invented.  It’s been keeping sheep warm for quite some time as well.

As with the rest of the world, it seems that Covid is getting worse in Nepal.  They have now had 55,329 cases and 360 deaths.  The authorities have had to ease some restrictions after the ‘business community and wage earners complained of financial hardship’.  I guess that they are having to balance civil unrest with public health just as we are in this country.  Now shops can only open on certain days depending upon what they are selling and transport is allowed on the roads with an odd/even number plate system.

This is reported to be the 1938 Mercedes-Benz that Adolf Hitler gave to King Truibhuvan of Nepal in 1940.  The only modern roads in the country at the time were in the capital, so cars had to carried over the mountains from India along rocky, hilly roads to Kathmandu and this car was the first one in the city.

However, there is controversy about what the car was, to whom it was given and indeed where it actually is now.  Janak Rajya Laxmi Devi Shah, the daughter of Judha Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana, Nepal’s seventh hereditary Prime Minister claims that the car was not given to the King; it was given to her father who held the real power in the country and that it was actually a 1936 Daimler-Benz.  It was one of only two ever made, Hitler having the other one.  It was presumably given to him by Hitler to try to prevent the Gurkhas being sent into WW2 to fight for the allies.  When the Prime Minister abdicated in favour of his nephew in 1945, he went to live in northern India and took the car with him.