Dashain road travel
Potentially millions of Nepalis will be on the road this Dashain. As much as half the Kathmandu valley’s population of around 3 million could be heading out, in four-wheelers of various shapes and sizes, out and away through the crowded Kalanki junction. They will be in for a rocky ride. The Kalanki-Thankot stretch is in a wretched condition, enormous craters pock-marking the most-widely used road in Nepal. The road has not been blacktopped after the surrounding structures were demolished to widen it earlier this year. The Department of Roads seems to be taking its own sweet time. Beyond Thankot, many sections of the Prithvi Highway are also in need of repairs after their monsoon-induced damage. The same with the over 1,000-km-long East-West Highway, with sections of it near Hetauda in particular the worse for wear. With nearly three weeks to go to the start of the peak travel time, around Fulpati, which falls on October 8, there is not a moment to lose. A lot can be done in this time.
As bad as the roads are, we would not witness nearly as many deadly accidents—on average, five people die in road accidents in Nepal every day—if we had strict traffic rules.
As happens every year, this year too hundreds of thousands of Nepalis will choose to travel dangerously, as finding a seat at the peak of Dashain is simply out of the question for last-minute travelers. They will be ready to stand, cheek to jowl, for hours on end, in the dank aisles of these crowded buses. Others will fancy the roof for the long, ‘air-conditioned’ rides to their ancestral homes. So a bus that normally accommodates 40-50 passengers will easily pack in 90-100, or even more, during these heady Dashain days.
The highway police might sometimes ask the passengers to get down, but the cops are too few and far between, allowing conniving bus staff to easy game the inspection regimen. For instance the passengers might be asked to get off as the bus approaches a police post and to get back on the roof after they pass the post. There must be more random inspections, rather than the useless routine kind, if this dangerous trend is to be discouraged. The police must also be stern: there can be no relaxing of safety rules just because it’s festive time.
But that comes later. First, the highways must be put through running repairs so that the most dangerous sections can be made a little easier to navigate. The state owes this to its people. The well-off will travel by air, which is still by far the safest means of transport.
But there will be no such luxury for the vast majority of Nepalis of more limited means who have no option but to rely on the same-old roads and the same-old vehicles operated by the same-old syndicates—if they want to be with their loved ones this Dashain. Making sure that revelers get to their ancestral homes and back safely, for this one time in the year, is the least the state can do for its people on this auspicious occasion.
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