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A rum place!

Preeti Mehra

India has several unique eateries, but this one in Nepal stands tall for not only its concept, but its tradition as well.

The Rum Doodle Restaurant in Thamel, Kathmandu, is frequented by every mountaineer worth his or her salt. Here mountaineers are treated at the 40,000-1/2 feet bar, as it is called, before or after their sojourn to the various peaks that dot the Nepali la ndscape.

Drinking a toast to the crisp mountain air is clubbed with signing an autograph on a large coaster shaped like the footprint of a yeti. There are several of them hanging all over the bar too.

Rum Doodle has greetings, comments and the thoughts of over 600 mountaineers who have scaled the snow-topped peaks of Mt Everest and the Annapurna Range.

They come from every nationality, speak a hundred different tongues and jot down their Nepalese experience with a warm spirit down their bellies. And they all have one thing in common -- their love for the mountains and a will to scale every peak.

Rum Doodle Restaurant has some great food too. From the hearty local cuisine to the much-loved Continental fare. And every Sunday at sundown, the eatery provides a great experience in jazz, as Chris Masand and the Jazz Commission treat visitors to Louis Armstrong, John Cottrane, The Lonius Monk, George Benson, Ella Fitzgerald, Dave Brubeck and Duke Ellington. Rum Doodle's yeti footprint coasters make great souvenirs. As this classic mountaineers pub makes a great drinking experience, for as their slogan goes -- ``40,000-1/2 ft bar... where the tales are as tall as the mountains.'' And one can easily add -- ``the food as great as the weather.''

Enabling Web site

S.Muralidhar

Joining the dotcom bandwagon, the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP) has launched what is considered to be the country's first and perhaps the only Web site concerning the employment of disabled people.

The Delhi-based non-profit voluntary organisation is hoping that the Web site -- www.ncpedp.org -- will be a vehicle for information dissemination on employment-related issues concerning people with disabilities. It is a user-friendly site providing info rmation relevant to disabled citizens.

The Web site is divided into five different sections including Why Us?, Working Together, Things We Do, Our Tomorrows, Online Forum and Bulletin Board. The Web site, launched earlier this month, is dedicated to the memory of the late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

NCPEDP works as an interface between the Government, industry, international agencies and the voluntary sector towards the promotion of better employment opportunities for people with disabilities. The centre has been registered as an independent trust a nd its board of management has Sonia Gandhi as the Chairperson.