Nepal

Good day to all! :) well, it is not such a good one here...apart from my mood, it is absolutely freezing outside, and after the beautiful sunshine and 15 degrees few days ago, today it had to snow. But not the dreamy-kind of snow..it is the one which barely remains on the ground, yet roads get all frozen...so no biking today =/ and all this pile of mail will have to wait till Monday...argh!
On a brighter note, here comes a FANTASTIC card, which marks Nepal as a country where I have a written and stamped card received from (ok, not just one :P), plus it is a map card!! When Sissel said she'd be visiting Nepal among else, I hoped Ill find a card in my mailbox..but I certainly didnt expect it would be a map card.....I dont think ive even seen a map card from Nepal before! So I was so so so happy to find this one in my mailbox! Just LOVE it! Thank you Sissel for tracking this one down for me!

as it can be seen from the map, here you have the National Parks marked (and I could count, uhmm, 14?!) But dont take my word for it...the shades of green are barely distinguishable one from another (im not excusing myself :P). You have the settlements marked too (hmm, they seem very few in number), and you have the mountain peaks...among which you can see the very famous Mount Everest :)

There have been a few Macedonians too who have conquered this 8,848 metres high peak, where the first one was back in 1989, on 10 May, by Dimitar Ilievski, who was representing the former Yugoslavia back then. Unfortunately, he didnt make it on his way back...on the picture in the link you can see him with the two flags, one of Former Yugoslavia, one of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia (as it was known when it was a part of Yugoslavia).
It is really sad how some great achievements have to end....
a short documentary with some highlights from this expedition...in Macedonian though, but it does give you some idea about it

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and here are some fantastic stamps on the back of the card (makes me think again how much I suck with the stamps on my holiday cards :))
the stamp on the very right was issued in 2006 and represents the Golden Jubilee Year of the Nepal-Russia Diplomatic Relations.
the middle one was issued in 2009 and represents the Chhath Festival. while the one at the left is from 2002, from a set of two stamps, entitled "Let us not discriminate between Son and Daughter".  Hmm, well thats a good message, but makes me wonder if they really had such problems, so that they had to  even issue a stamp like that to promote the awareness about it...

thank you dear Sissel!!!