I wont complain about British Bureaucracy again, promise...

Although I would much prefer to talk about the women's festival of Tij - all the girls have a day off, they fast all day, no food or water, but are all very excited, have dressed up in their best saris and are off out for the day - I have a day dealing with Nepali Government bureaucracy!

Ritu, the Centre Manager, and I have managed to gather together the Auditor, the Shipping Agent and our Lawyer for a meeting this morning, which was no small feat in itself.

Apparently, although we are registered as an export business, there is some paperwork missing with the government which allows us a licence to do the physical exporting bit, so now we have to write an agreement between the shipping agent and Hatti Productions to confirm that the goods have been exported and not sold in the domestic market.

Then, it's an exciting trip around the maze of Government buildings - Oh joy! The first department we have to visit is the tax office and these visits usually form the ritual of me trotting behind the lawyer whilst he whisks from room to room, dishing out rupes here and there to jump queues, then back to the beginning and start all over again, or so it seems. Eventually I will get instructed to plant my finger prints on some document, the contents of which are a complete mystery to me, and when we have a precious piece of paper from the tax office, the deal is done.

Next we have to go to the Department of Industry with our piece of paper from the tax office and submit the audit - more queueing, or should I say queue jumping (you need a good lawyer who knows the right people), a dozen more offices, more purple ink on the fingers and prints verifying mysterious documents, a bit of sitting around while the lawyer does his thing and we're done, until....

The visa needs renewing, now I have collect my UK representative over here and we form an orderly line, trotting behind the lawyer as he rushes around in his pinstripe suit and trainers - yes, lawyers here wear pinstripe suits as well - more rupes, more finger prints and a dozen or so photographs just for good measure and the day is, hopefully, over.

I don't know how many days it will actually take, but my head hurts already and the first meeting hasn't even started.

In the UK, software does it all for me and I submit my tax returns on-line, it takes about 10 minutes, but every time I have to do it, I moan about it!

Incidentally, the Nepal Government isn't computerised at all, most bigger companies will be, but the 'powers that be' in the Government believe that computerisation will cause loss of jobs..... I'm old enough to remember the start of computerisation in the UK (which makes me sound scarily old), and came across similar attitudes many times then - how silly does that sound now?