MICHEAL COX

With power cuts cutting any chance of a warmer future, perhaps Kathmandu could take a leaf out of a Jhamsikhel bed and breakfast and start promoting eco-heating.

Nepal Face to Face, uses a charcoal briquette made from decomposing branches to keep guests warm and help conserve the environment. The briquette burns for over an hour and heats a bedroom without giving off any smoke. "We have really good feedback from our guests,'' says owner Per Zetterberg. Once the briquette burns out the ash can be used to fertilise the veggie garden.

Face to Face also uses another eco-friendly fuel for its weekly cultural dinners: logs made from rice husk. It has turned out to be a hot way to bring people to "Patan's green oasis" on Thursday nights.

"I don't think anybody is 100 per cent green, but we can only try to do our best,'' says Zetterberg, who moved here with his family from Sweden to start a tourism business.

Other green ideas include growing veggies, buying chickens and being as self-sufficient as possible. Their focus, on being socially responsible extends as far as Europe where they recommend to Scandinavian clients to use Qatar Airways on route to Nepal, because it only stops once on the way to Kathmandu.

Being socially responsible is why the Swedish couple say they came to live and work in Nepal, and tucked away in the back of Jhamsikhel, Face to Face is a breath of fresh air. "It's an ecological thing how can we use business to make a good development in ways like helping the environment,'' says Zetterberg, who has been coming to Nepal for the past 20 years.