Lest conscientious readers imagine I’ve been dawdling by the Trishuli these past six months, well, it’s not so. But I’ll pick up where I left off, starting last week.

Further down from Kurintar lies the fishing village of Malekhu, where sticks of deep-fried fish still slow traffic, even if their provenance is more likely a fish farm in India than the fast-flowing waters of the Trishuli. If this surprises you, the Prithvi Highway should give you a clue. Certain sections bear no resemblance to a national highway any more, thanks to the 30-tonne trucks that rumble down to the border, one after another, filled with sand and gravel excavated directly from the riverbed. So much for nationalism when we are literally giving it all away to India.

The damage to the country’s infrastructure far outweighs the tax government levies on these so-called entrepreneurs, but the damage to our environment is immeasurable. Suffice it to say that rivers stripped of their living substrate don’t host healthy populations of fish, decimated already by electrofishing, bank-to-bank nets, and poisoning. Perhaps Malekhu should simply diassociate itself rather than wait for the next flood to wash it away.