Every morning, high on the mountainous rim of the Kathmandu Valley, an Austrian cable system moves metal carriers containing fresh milk across a deep ravine to a truck waiting on the nearest road. Given the rugged topography, this three-mile link is a simple, cheap and efficient way of getting milk to market in the capital city before it spoils. This system – it is called the Bhattedanda Milkway and was funded by the European Union – is an interesting solution to a problem that, given Nepal’s remarkably crumpled terrain, is always cropping up. However, it was a solution that was lucky to see the light of day. It was, for a start, the first of its kind1 and there was much concern, within both the donor community and the various ministries, as to whether the local users would be able to manage its operation and maintenance without outside support. And the only way to discover whether such ropeways would work, as one of its champions, the British ambassador Barney Smith, observed, was ‘to build one and see’.2