Early February in Kathmandu is part of the slow season. Temperatures are cooler. The nights, like elsewhere in the northern hemisphere, are longer.
This very religious country wedged between India and China has a population of about 31.5 million people, all in an area not much larger than the Maritimes.
Nepal is a fascinating country, known for its diversity and rich culture. It is also among the poorest countries in the world; unemployment is high, with tourism down substantially since last year’s deadly earthquakes.
There is corruption, there is a great deal of pollution, and there are the daily power outages. An online app shows how long the lights will be on and off, many days 12 hours or more.
Though Nepal remains open for business, these challenges are exacerbated by a fuel shortage prompted by an internal dispute that led to a blockade at the border with India.
It started in late September of last year after Nepal brought in its new constitution. Nepal’s Madhesi ethnic minority, who live on the Nepalese side of the border with India, didn’t like it, feeling it denied them political representation. Fuel deliveries to the landlocked country for the most part ground to a halt amidst protests, some of which turned violent.
Days turned into weeks and then into months, with limited amounts of fuel crossing the border. Lineups to fill up stretched overnight, with families often taking turns watching vehicles, as they inched closer to the pumps. 
Prices doubled, and then tripled. Motorists turned to the thriving black market, where prices are even higher. Many in Nepal blame India for the blockade, believing their much larger neighbour is influencing the internal situation for their own ends. For its part, India denies this.
Nepal did ask for help from its other neighbor, but fuel deliveries from China have been hampered by poor roads damaged by the recent earthquakes.
Just last week, a vital border crossing between Nepal and India was opened to traffic for the first time in more than four months, allowing hundreds of trucks to enter Nepal carrying fuel and other supplies.
Many Nepali remain desperate. If they can, some leave the country to find work, others will turn to selling drugs, or get caught up in human trafficking or sexual exploitation.
Fenwick MacIntosh arrived in Nepal in August of 2014 on a tourist visa. He promoted himself as a director of the Spice Journal, an online publication dedicated to enhancing the world's knowledge of spices. 
He was arrested later that year and charged with sexually molesting a 15-year-old boy. Last March, he was convicted and sentenced to seven years in Nakhu Prison in Lalitpur, not far from the country’s capital of Kathmandu.
Instrumental in his arrest is a group simply known as the Watch Project. They track suspected pedophiles, and according to child protection advocate Sulakshana Rana, MacIntosh was their first successful arrest and conviction. 
"That was the first taste of success for us,” Rana says. “And the arrest of MacIntosh made us realize that the government system that we need to work with, they are not very hostile, they are very receptive. If you approach them nicely, they're willing to help you.”
MacIntosh is an inmate along with nearly 600 others at Nakhu Prison.
He refused to meet with CTV News when asked, but prison warden Chakrapani Gautam did confirm MacIntosh is being treated for leukemia. Gautam says his condition is stable, with regular monitoring and visits to hospital.
The 72-year-old has had little, if any, interaction with Canadian authorities.
Reading from a board hanging on the wall opposite his desk, Warden Gautam said among the inmates at Nakhu Prison, 66 are foreigners.
There are 123 convicted murderers, 109 drug traffickers, and more than 85 sex offenders, including MacIntosh. The list goes on.
It is a combined prison population, which means prisoners are not segregated. They all sleep under the same roof.
To help pass the time, the warden says MacIntosh is teaching English to his fellow inmates.
He is also biding his time while an appeal of his conviction works its way through the Patan Appellate Court in Lalitpur. His next hearing was scheduled for February 7 but there is no word on how the proceedings turned out.
Not far from Nakhu Prison is the St. Xavier’s Social Service Centre, a Jesuit-run centre for disabled and impoverished children. That’s where MacIntosh met his victim.
The boy had lost a hand in an accident, and MacIntosh promised to help. He took the boy to his hotel, the Cafe Brazil Guest House, about a five-minute walk away from the centre. 
There are different types of rooms at the guest house, including the suite MacIntosh rented. It has a small kitchen, a common room, its own bathroom and a bedroom with two single beds.
It was there, in room number three, that MacIntosh was arrested.
Hotel Manager Sushil Tamang visits MacIntosh in prison, sometimes once a week.
For those wanting to visit a foreign prisoner in Nepal, the inmate must first agree to the meeting. A letter from the embassy or consulate of the prisoner’s country of origin must be sent to Nepali prison officials.
In MacIntosh’s case, a letter was sent on his behalf by Canada’s Honorary Consul to Nepal, Dr. Buddha Basnyat. It asked that the hotel manager be allowed to visit. 
After showing CTV the letter, Tamang described how he receives money each month from MacIntosh’s business venture, The Spice Journal, via an online money transfer, about 10,000 Nepali rupees or about $100 U.S.
He says the money is used to buy MacIntosh food, clothes, whatever he needs that can be brought into the prison.
Tamang worked at the Spice Journal for MacIntosh, something he says the Canadian has promised will happen again once he’s freed from prison.
He says he feels sorry for MacIntosh.
“He told me, ‘I don't have no one in Nepal, so if you could help me,’” says Tamang. “Plus, he's an old man.”
A man who was in on the arrest of MacIntosh, Lalitpur Metropolitan Police Inspector Radha Parajuli, says the case was a straightforward investigation, with the suspect’s age the only unexpected part.
“Certainly we were surprised, he was like our grandfather, 72 years old,” Parajuli told CTV News. “We never thought a foreigner; a guest to our country, would do what he did.”
Insp. Parajuli, a veteran of more than 25 years on the force who has international policing experience, says an arrest was made after it was determined MacIntosh had lured his 15-year-old victim to his hotel room with promises of food, clothing and cash. He said the Canadian then compelled the boy to engage in sex acts.
After his arrest, MacIntosh was placed in Nepal’s first so-called fast-track court system led by Judge Tek Narayan Kunwar.
It was a relatively new addition to the country’s legal network, designed to decrease the time abuse survivors waited to get in front of a judge. It’s also designed to clear up the backlog of cases.
The court was used initially for human trafficking offences, which involved mostly young girls, but has since evolved to include other cases like child sexual exploitation.
It has been Judge Kunwar’s work in human trafficking cases that earned him international recognition, being presented with an award by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in 2014. 
He has since been transferred to a city hours away from Kathmandu, to take over as chief judge of the Chitwan District Court. But, while in Lalitpur, he presided over the MacIntosh case.
Kunwar would not discuss the former Nova Scotia businessman’s case specifically, citing a conflict of interest, but did say there has been a shift in the way Nepali view human trafficking and child exploitation.
“People are aware of these types of crimes, there is an increased rate of reporting to the police,” says Judge Kunwar. “Courts are very sensitive in handling such cases.”
That said, according to the U.S. State Department’s 2015 Trafficking in Persons Report, Nepal remains a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking.
Last year’s earthquakes didn’t help the situation.
“We heard some cases in our court in the period after the earthquake,” Kunwar told CTV news. “Many girls and children were transported from Nepal to India. Some NGOs and social workers brought them back.”
Here in Canada, there isn’t much sympathy for MacIntosh and his plight.
Bob Martin, once a victim of MacIntosh's and now an advocate against sexual abuse, says the Fenwick MacIntosh now sitting in a Nepalese prison sounds like the same man he knew in Canada.
“MacIntosh is playing the system,” said Martin, referring to word MacIntosh is being treated for leukemia. “He's up to his bag of tricks. And he's conning the system over there like he conned me when I was a teenager."
The married father of three says he believes MacIntosh may be using money and an unproven medical diagnosis for sympathy and easier jail time.
“I guess if I were him, I’d want to be out at the hospital too,” Martin added. “I’m sure the time out of the incarcerated spot is good time for him.”
The Port Hood, N.S. man says the last thing he wants to see is MacIntosh released early because of his medical condition, saying it’s about justice not revenge.
Prior to his 2014 arrest in Nepal, MacIntosh fit in nicely with Kathmandu’s ex-pat community.
Jan Beaderstadt is a retired American Methodist minister now living in Nepal. He runs a charity in the country, along with working to promote tourism. 
He met MacIntosh several times.
“I was shocked, cause I had gone to dinner with him one night here in town," Beaderstadt says. "As two ex-pats, we talked about Nova Scotia, some his work, the sort of things he did. No indication of any kind of behaviour as such.”
Like others, Beaderstadt was stunned to learn of his past. MacIntosh had been accused by a number of young men in Canada of sex-related allegations dating back to the 1970s.
Charges were finally laid in 1995, but by that time, MacIntosh had moved to India.
It wouldn’t be until 2007 that he was arrested on 43 charges and brought back to Canada.
He went through two trials beginning in 2010 and was eventually convicted on 17 counts of indecent assault and gross indecency against young males.
Those convictions were thrown out after the courts decided it took too long to bring MacIntosh to trial. He went free with no strings attached.
Despite his case falling out of the headlines in Nepal, most in that country who know about it, feel he won’t serve out his full sentence.
And, the fine of nearly $13,000 Canadian levied against MacIntosh at the time of his conviction, intended for his victim, won’t be paid.
“We’re very scared that he might be set free because of his failing health and because he’s old,” says Sulakshana Rana says.
She believes MacIntosh should ultimately complete his sentence in Nepal and pay the fine to his victim.
As for the problem of child exploitation in Nepal, MacIntosh’s case isn’t unique. There are other foreigners who continue to travel to that country to take advantage of a desperate situation. In mid-January, a 71-year-old man from France joined a growing list of foreigners who have found themselves in trouble, alleged to have sexually abused a minor.
For the Canadian government’s part, if Fenwick MacIntosh is released from prison in Nepal, what happens next remains under wraps. To protect his privacy, Foreign Affairs officials won’t comment.
There are no agreements between Nepal and Canada allowing inmates to transfer back to their home country to finish off their sentences. A special request would have to be made at the highest level in government to get a prisoner transferred. If that happened, it would have to be made at the cabinet level in Ottawa. At the moment, that doesn’t seem likely.
