One thing I’ve reflected on from hiking the forested foothills of Kathmandu, is the obvious absence of ants. I don’t think I saw one. In the dried mud and high ridges, on the dusty roads, on the side of the ridges leaning down, not one. Here, in Australia, amid the sand of silica or limestone, they are almost always to be expected, cultivating the old land. In the upspringing claymud of the Himalayan foothills, nothing.