Cost of living in Nepal

Pff, the cost of living in Nepal...
I'll mention prices in Nepali rupees, at the moment of writing you buy 1 euro for 106 NPR.

Let me start by saying that the cost of your living totally depend on your life-style.
Nepali people in Kathmandu manage to get by while earning as little as 5000 NPR. a month.
Foreigners won't be able to survive on that little, but for about twice as much would be possible, though not very comforatable.

I can rent a nice, clean, quiet, four room appartment (one story in a 3 story building) with it's own toilet / bathroom for about 8,000 NPR.
Many Nepali live in a single room, and share facilities. This can get the price down to 2000 NPR.

Food costs again totaly depend on how luxourious you want to eat. I like eating well, and spend about 10,000 NPR monthly on my food. That means daily meats and lots of fresh vegatables and fruits. Always fresh european style bread (0.4 kg = 45 NPR) and Nutella (330 NPR / 400 gr. pot), eggs (1 egg = 8 NPR) sometimes a cold beer (1 bottle, 750 ml. = 165 NPR.) and very occasionally a bottle of wine (usually poor quality, still 1500 NPR).
Normal vegatables are rather cheap (though most Nepalese won't agree to that) compared to european prices, but fruits vary a lot, depending weather they are in season or not. Apples (1 kg. 50 - 150 NPR),
Mango's (1 kg. 50 - 300 NPR) Oranges (1 kg. 35 - 100 NPR). At the moment it's mango season, truely delicous fresh, ripe mango's cost 50 NPR. per kg, but apples are running out, and cost about 120 per kg. and are of poor quality. Oranges are not available locally, unless you go to the fruit shops where they sell imported fruits. Too expensive for the poor quality you get at the moment. But all this will be shifting in the next few months. Then bananas are coming, and a bit later the local oranges.
The bananas in my garden are almost ripe for picking...

Public transportation
A trip across Kathmandu by microbus (the most comon form of public transportation) will set you back about 25 NPR. Prices are calculated on travelled distance, so they vary...
For the same distance you can expect to spend about ten-fold that if you take a taxi.
Busses are availble, so are tempo's and riksha's.
Busses and tempo's are a little cheaper then the microbusses, but only just a little.
Riksha's are just plain annoying since they try over-charge foreigners about 100 fold compared to the prices that locals pay. I tend to avoid them, unless I am truely drunk, in which case they over-charge even more :-p

Health Prices
Uhh, not too sure. I know that medicine is usually very cheap, unless you need something really exotic.
Just today I bought 30 tabs of ibuprofen and 30 tabs of paracetamol for 30 NPR and 20 tabs of codeine for 120 NPR. (yes, codeine, just like that, over the counter).
An anti-biotics series of tabs would cost you about 150 NPR.
One time I had an X-Ray taken of my knee (2 photo's, about A4 size) which set me back a grand total of 500 NPR.
At that point I decided that I could bear my own medical expenses, and I have never bothered to look into health insurance.

Education prices
For sending your kids to school expect to pay about 750 - 2000 NPR per child monthly, depending if they go to grade 1 or grade 12. That is the school fees, excluding books, school uniforms,etc.
Professional courses for yourself can cost from 7,000 NPR for a daily 2 hours 3 months cooking class to 20,000 NPR for a daily 6 hours one month ICT training on some Microsoft programming subject.

Energy prices
Electicity costs 7.7 NPR per kWh., or that's what I pay for my office, plus a fixed amount for the type of connection you have to the grid. If you can manage to get your own residential connection, you might pay a little less, or if you have to pay your landlord for the submetered electricity you might pay a little more (and your submeter might not work entirely correct).
Petrol costs about 80 - 90 NPR. per liter at the moment I think, but not too sure - I don't drive a car or motorcycle.
A refill for a cooking-gas cylinder costs about 1300 NPR.

Internet
Broadband internet in not as broad as what you're used to in europe.
a 128 kbps ADSL uplink is already considered broadband, and costs about 800 NPR monthly.
Max. what a private person can get is 256 kbps ADSL.
Max. for a company is 2 mbps, which costs 9,200 NPR monthly.
(http://www.ntc.net.np/adsl/adsl_intro.php)
Cable internet and wireless (WIMAX) internet is also available, but was even more expensive then ADSL when ADSL was introduced about a year ago. I suppose prices will have dropped a lot by now, or all would be out of business, but I haven't checked on them ever since. I am quite happy with the ADSL service I have received sofar.

TV.
Cable TV with about 25 mostly english channels and 100 hindi / chineese / nepali channels costs 250 - 300 NPR. per month.

Telephone
My office line, which is being used a lot(!), costs me 2,000 - 3,500 monthly.
I think the monthly costs of a line including some couple of hundred free minutes is about 300 - 500 NPR.

Mobile
Most people use pre-charge cards to charge their mobiles.
A 500 NPR card allows you 6 months of telephone service, if you don't recharge after that your incoming calls will be blocked. Calling costs about 2 NPR per minute for local calls.
(http://www.ntc.net.np/tariff/mob_tariff.php)

Restaurant
If I go to the local eatery and fill my stomach with regular Nepali food, an all-you-can-eat will set me back about 150 NPR. When I go to the tourist area and take a really nice dish, either western, nepali, indian or chinese, it will set me back about 400 NPR.
That is exclusive of the beer. A beer costs from 180 NPR to 350 NPR, depending on the place...
If you want to try to coffee, it will cost you from 5 NPR to 50 NPR, but if you really like drinking coffee you will have to go to an italian restaurant...
Ordering coffee will get you Nescafe, otherwise ask specifically for filter coffee.

Cinema
50 NPR.


Phew, that was a lot of typing...
If you have specific questions, then feel free to ask, but for now I think it's enough.
Next time more, and I'll edit the typo's out sometime later. ;-)

And then just today an article in the Kathmandu Post printed prices (all prices for 1 kg.) for the following:

Commodity (1 kg.)    This year      Last year      Price Rise (%)

Mansuli rice         NPR. 43        NPR. 26        64.49
Maize                NPR. 67        NPR. 35        95.59
Sugar                NPR. 57        NPR. 34        67.64
Onion                NPR. 27        NPR. 20        37.50
Potato               NPR. 26        NPR. 14        84.64
Mutton meat          NPR. 462       NPR. 380       21.71
Chicken meat         NPR. 246       NPR. 180       36.60
Apple                NPR. 119       NPR. 80        48.75

Same article mentions the current inflation rate at 11.9%. How all this adds up or calculates I do not know, but I can say that the prices in the colom for 'This year' seem to be about the current market prices.

The cheaper the better.Im tired of overpaying for everything.