For years, the Middle East has been described through the language of fracture. Conflict zones. Proxy wars. Collapsing states. Yet here in the Gulf, and especially in the United Arab Emirates, a different narrative took hold. Stability. Efficiency. Ambition. A belief that even amid regional disorder, it was possible to chart a different trajectory, to pave the way toward a more stable and generous future.
Abu Dhabi became synonymous with planning rather than improvisation. With infrastructure rather than rubble. With innovation rather than despair. People from across the world came here to work, to build, to test themselves and succeed together. It cultivated belonging, investing in youth, knowledge, and possibility. It fostered a confidence that felt earned rather than proclaimed.
It was also a place where policymaking could be observed almost as a craft. Flexible yet disciplined. Experimental yet strategic. Institutions were built, adjusted, refined. Governance did not feel theatrical. It felt intentional. To watch that process was a reminder that the state can still function with competence and imagination.
In many ways, this place has resembled a modern ark. Diverse. Layered. Hopeful. A convergence of global citizens from countries rich and poor building lives together. The shock of what is unfolding here is not regional and certainly not local. These communities are now experiencing firsthand what hardened geopolitics feels like. And that experience will travel. It will reverberate far beyond this coastline.
And then the bombs fall.
It is one thing to analyze geopolitics from a distance, to speak of deterrence, escalation la­­dders, strategic signaling, calibrated retaliation. It is another to sit at home, phone in hand, watching alerts multiply, calculating distances on a map, wondering whether to stock up on groceries, whether schools will open, whether flights will leave.
When geopolitical analysis becomes lived reality, its vocabulary collapses.
Families here are not debating doctrine. They are calming children. Scanning supermarket shelves. Texting relatives abroad. Realizing that departure, in a moment of regional shutdown, is not simple. Authorities move quickly to reassure residents that systems are functioning, defenses activated, contingencies in place.
The instability is not internally generated. It is the spillover of wider confrontation. Which is precisely why the shock cuts deeper. When safety has been the baseline, its sudden fragility is both maddening and humbling.
For the strongest players in the Gulf, and especially the United Arab Emirates, the aspiration was clear. To anchor stability in a region marked by volatility. To project competence rather than chaos. To invest in education, culture, renewable energy, artificial intelligence. To become crossroads of capital, ideas, and mobility. The promise was not merely economic. It was existential. That one could live expansively, in confident openness, securely.
How quickly the horizon narrows.
There is a growing normalization of strategies in which weapons and attacks are treated as routine instruments of statecraft. Infrastructure becomes leverage. Shipping lanes become bargaining chips. Energy corridors become pressure points. The line between military signaling and diplomatic coercion blurs. Once that threshold is crossed, it rarely contracts. It expands.
Centers of power speak of necessity, red lines, deterrence. But the lived reality of those within range of missiles is fear, uncertainty, and vulnerability. The map looks orderly from afar. Up close, it is populated by parents, workers, students, retirees negotiating the fragile routines of ordinary life.
Those accustomed to secure and well-organized societies internalize safety as baseline, mobility as entitlement, connectivity as permanent. We forget how contingent these conditions are.
For many societies, instability is not interruption. It is structure. Perhaps this moment offers us a more honest proximity to that reality.
None of this flattens responsibility. The United States, Israel, Iran, and regional powers operate within distinct security logics. Yet one sobering reality remains. When force becomes a primary currency of political communication, the threshold for its use lowers. The exceptional becomes routine. The outcome grows precarious.
From Abu Dhabi this week, geopolitics is no longer abstraction. It is audible. It is logistical. It is personal.
Abu Dhabi will do its utmost to keep everyone hopeful and feeling safe. Systems will function. Reassurances will come. Stability here is cultivated, not accidental. A return to calm is in everyone’s interest.
But in this suspended moment, as alerts replace routine, we are given something rare. Time to reflect. To reconsider. To reckon, individually and communally, with the fragility of what we so casually call normal life.
And that should compel policymakers and citizens alike to ask what kind of normal we are willing to accept, and whether we are surrendering the very conditions that make ordinary life possible.
Sophia Kalantzakos is Global Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Public Policy in the Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Scholars Program (SMSP), New York University Abu Dhabi.&nbsp;
Reprinted with permission from <a href="https://www.ekathimerini.com/opinion/1296678/when-geopolitics-becomes-lived-reality/">ekathimerini.com</a>

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When geopolitics becomes lived reality

More than 43,000 overseas migrant workers have returned to Nepal during the Coronavirus pandemic out of 125,000 who registered to be ‘rescued,’ according to Nepal’s Labour Ministry. The pace of the repatriation exercise has been painfully slow, and many workers who have lost their jobs or cannot bear to be so far away, are desperately trying to return home.Many stranded workers have spent any savings that they had, and are barely surviving with support from friends, co-workers or other Nepalis, including from the Non-resident Nepali Association (NRNA). Others still do not know how they will manage to buy a ticket if they ever get on a flight list. Here are some of their stories as part of the Nepal Photo Project.<h2>KUWAIT</h2>Etubar Kisku went to Kuwait in 2017, encouraged by a friend from his village who was already working there. “I actually got lured into it — he painted such a rosy picture. I got excited about the idea of working at a hotel in a foreign land with a good salary. He told me that I would get 100 dinars (Rs39,000) per month. I have two daughters and a wife to look after, so I agreed.”“When I came here things were different, I wanted to return home,” says Kisku, 36, from Bhagudubba of Jhapa district. His job was not at a hotel as promised, but in a restaurant. He was paid about Rs36,000 and was sending home Rs20,000 from it every month. But the restaurant closed, and Kisku has been without work for four months. “Thankfully the company has provided accommodation and we don’t have to pay rent,” he says.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110915118/636bb5229c7e80680e07bbe6jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="655"/>When the pandemic started, Kisku and some of his Nepali flatmates stocked their pantry with essential items like rice, oil, salt and potatoes. He has been able to find some construction work through Indian and Bangladeshi migrant worker friends, but it is back-breaking. “The work is not regular, and for 12 hours I only make about Rs2,000,” Kisku says. “Still, it is better than having no work — it at least helps me to survive.”He has been waiting to return home for many months, but the flight costs more than he can afford. “The ticket home is Rs85,000 one way, I don’t have that kind of money,” he says adding, “At this rate, I wonder if I will be able to go home.”Kisku’s company still has his passport despite efforts to get it back. “I keep calling them, but they always say one thing or the other and hang up.”Kisku has built a community of Nepalis who he calls his ‘solti’ and ‘soltini’. Every morning after waking up he calls his soltini who works at the airport to check ticket prices. “I am not educated, I do not know the ways of the world, so I ask them, and I trust that they will help me in my time of need,” he says.-          Bunu Dhungana<h2>SAUDI ARABIA</h2>Raju Murmu — When we talked to Raju Murmu in late August, he was crammed into a room in Saudi Arabia’s capital Jeddah with 14 other Nepalis. They had pooled their money and bought an internet package to ensure that they could tell their story to the world, but the data pack was running out, and they could not afford to buy another one.Of the workers Murmu, 31, from Jhapa was the only one who knew how to use the internet. “Where are the concerned authorities? We want them to see the condition we are living in now, we want them to rescue us,” said Murmu then, via video call.Murmu had been stuck in Jeddah since December. After he lost his job as a cleaner at the airport, he tried to find another one in the city, but he was not allowed to work. When the Nepal Government announced that international commercial flights would resume in August, he asked his family in Nepal to send him Rs50,000 and paid Rs84,000 for a ticket home. He also paid Rs7000 for a PCR test.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110915118/636bb5249c7e80680e07bbe7jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="636"><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110915118/636bb5269c7e80680e07bbe8jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1280" height="960"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>Finally on 6 September, Murmu landed in Kathmandu and quarantined in a hotel in Bag Bazar, where last Thursday he did a PCR test. He tested negative and has been with his family in Jorpati since then.Murmu made the journey home with a heavy heart: “How can I be happy when the people I spent four years with are stuck, and have no hope of coming back? I can only be at peace when I know all my friends in Jeddah are home safe.”-          Nitu GhaleNarendra Sarwariya, Mahendra Hemran, Narendra Prasad Chaudhary, Ramnepal ThakurAmong those who shared a room with Raju Murmu are Narendra Sarwariya, 30, and Mahendra Hemran, 26, from Mahottari and Morang districts. They worked as cleaners in Jeddah but have been unemployed for the last six months.The men have been sharing the single room with up to 14 other Nepalis. They first pooled their money and bought an internet data pack to ensure that they could share their plight. The internet ran out, and now they are selling gifts they had bought for their families — blankets, chocolates, watches, etc — to pay for the internet.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110915118/636bb5299c7e80680e07bbe9jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="535" height="864"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110915118/636bb52b9c7e80680e07bbeajpeg.jpg" alt="" width="535" height="864"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110915118/636bb52d9c7e80680e07bbebjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="535" height="864"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110915118/636bb52f9c7e80680e07bbecjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="535" height="864">While two among them have managed to make it back to Nepal, the others whose families do not have money to send for tickets have remained behind. They are running out of food and water and have been ordered to vacate their single room. Weeks after we originally talked to Hemran, last week he left this voice message on our mobile phone: “Please help me get back home. I want to come home, I love my country. If I could come home everything would be good.”Also sharing the room are Narendra Prasad Chaudhary, 48, from Nawalparasi and Ramnepal Thakur, 53, from Dhanusha. They cannot go home because the company they worked for refuses to return their passport.Chaudhary says he was asked to pay Rs187,000 and Thakur Rs125,000 to get their passports back. “How can we pay such a huge amount?” asks Chaudhary. “We have been unemployed for the past six months.”He continues: “Having worked for 12 years, I should have received a bonus. Instead, I have to give them money. And have to pay an additional amount to go home. Why do we have to pay to go home in times like these?”-          Nitu Ghale<h2>UNITED ARAB EMIRATES</h2><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109151112/636bb5319c7e80680e07bbedjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="480"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>RajRaj (who asked us to hide his real name) from Bhaktapur resigned from his job in Abu Dhabi in February because he was planning to go to Croatia. However, his company did not process his resignation on time, so he got stranded in Abu Dhabi without work.After applying twice, he got his name on the Embassy of Nepal list for a chartered flight, behind 7,000 others. In June, he trusted a friend of a friend with 1,500 dirham (Rs48,000) to book his ticket. But the agent failed to get a ticket and did not return the money.Running out of cash, Raj, 43, started doing odd jobs like painting and moving goods to cover his basic expenses. With the help of the NRNA he got hold of the agent, who provided a small space in a room that he shared with two others, sleeping on the floor. Then the owner of the room asked him to move out or pay rent.While he struggles to return to Nepal, at home his family is also squeezed. Raj has a son, 13, who was studying in a private school. Without any earnings the boy will have to leave that school and move to a government one.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109151112/636bb5349c7e80680e07bbeejpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="480"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109151112/636bb5389c7e80680e07bbefjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="480">Raj has now found a new place to stay and has a flight ticket for 22 September, which he bought for Rs79,000 after collecting small amounts from many people. As of 9 September he has about Rs6,500 left, from which Rs4,800 is for a mandatory PCR test before boarding the flight.“I’m a very strong-willed person. I have faced difficulties in these past couple of months, but I have never given up. I was ready to go live on the streets if I had to. I took up odd jobs just so I could eat. I would not have survived if I was weak inside,” he says.“I have not shared the hardships with my family back in Nepal. Both my parents are old and I do not want them to be stressed because of something they cannot control. I do not think my situation will change if I share it with my 80-year-old dad — what is the point?”-          Tripty Tamang PakhrinKumar Shrestha<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109151112/636bb53b9c7e80680e07bbf0jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="640">After more than five years working as a security guard in Dubai, Kumar Shrestha had hoped to clear his loans and save a little with this year’s earnings. Little did he know that he would be stuck in a camp in Al Quoz without a job from March onwards.Things were going according to plan until January, when his company cut his salary after business declined. In March they told him to stay home until they called. Every day his roommates would leave for work while he waited for the phone to ring. “I was unemployed for six months. I was getting 300 dirham (Rs9,600) per month for food. It is not enough for an expensive city like Dubai but I do not have any other choice,” says Shrestha, 32, from Dhading.Frustrated with the waiting, Shrestha is resigned to his fate. “I do not want to come back now. I was planning to stay for another year, pay off my bank loan, save some money and go back to my own country. The plan has been shattered by this pandemic.”<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109151112/636bb53e9c7e80680e07bbf1jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="640"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109151112/636bb5419c7e80680e07bbf2jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="640">Now living with five others in a labour camp, he applied for a chartered flight from the Nepal Government but has not heard from the embassy. He planned to use his savings of Rs51,000 to buy a ticket home, but prices have risen to Rs84,000 so he cannot afford one.He dejectedly describes his life in the camp: “I have not been in a real jail but this does feel like one … there is nothing to do and I cannot go anywhere. I am just waiting for the ticket prices to go down.”-          Tripty Tamang PakhrinDipesh BhattaraiIn July, when Dipesh Bhattarai read that Nepal would resume international flights by mid-August he was thrilled. The 21-year-old has been stuck in Dubai for the last four months on an expired visa without a job, and no way to support himself. Then, his excitement turned to disappointment when the Nepal Government reversed the decision and announced that international commercial flights would remain suspended until 31 August.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109151112/636bb5459c7e80680e07bbf3jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="426"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>Bhattarai left Bardia two years ago to support his family. In Dubai, he worked as a supply assistant. He calls the Nepal Embassy in Abu Dhabi every day but has not been bale to get through to someone with information. “The embassy doesn’t answer when people like us call," he says.Bhattarai has no food, is running out of money and his passport is with his former employers.“They took our passports the day we entered Dubai because they think we will run away,” he says, “this is not my country, and my country does not want me — I feel like I do not belong anywhere."-          Nitu Ghale<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109151112/636bb5479c7e80680e07bbf4jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="571">Krishna Bahadur GandharvaKrishna Bahadur Gandharva, 30, from Sandhikharka of Arghakhanchi district was one of the 17 Nepalis who reached Dubai to work with Flex Facility Management in January 2020. The following month they were all left stranded, jobless. When their visas were cancelled, the company citing Covid-19 related reasons.The group did not have money to return to Nepal. Additionally, they had borrowed from friends and banks to pay Rs140,000 each to the recruitment agency in Nepal to get their jobs. For five months, Gandharva and his friends were stuck in the Jebel Ali camp. “It was torturous. We did not have money for food, there was no running water, there was no AC and it was 55 degrees,” he says. “The NRNA gave us food once in a while, but it would only last a few days. Some days we begged for food, some days we slept without it.”<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109151112/636bb54a9c7e80680e07bbf5jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2000" height="1333">Their lives were made harder by supervisors and camp personnel who mentally and physically harassed them to try to force them to leave. Finally their employer and the Nepal Embassy reached an agreement and booked their tickets for free for 10 August. “We were so delighted to return to Nepal. I forgot all the hardships we endured during those five months the moment I heard the news,” says Gandharva.When they reached the airport, the UAE authorities said they would charge them for overstaying their visas. “We were asked to pay 1,287 dirham (Rs41,000) each. It was a shock,” says Gandharva, adding, “we tried calling our employer but they told us to never contact them again. We had no money so we were sent back from the airport.”<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109151112/636bb54d9c7e80680e07bbf6jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2000" height="1333"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>The NRNA stepped in and provided them with a room in Bur Dubai, where they have been living ever since. “It’s been a month now and the NRNA has asked us to find a way to go back — the fine for living in Dubai without a visa is 25 Dirham (Rs800) per day,” says Gandharva. “Please rescue us and take us home.”-          Tripty Tamang PakhrinStories produced in collaboration with @NepalPhotoProject and the Photo Circle 2020 grant.

Nepali workers stuck in no-man's land

<figure><img width="1465" height="986" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101116/636b70999c7e80680e060087jpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>HONORED: Bipana Bastola, a Grade 10 student receives the Zayed Sustainability Award on behalf of her Bloom Nepal School from UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday. The school was among six from around the world that proposed sustainable energy solutions. Photo: Zayed Sustainability Prize</figcaption></figure>Schoolmates who studied at Budanilkantha boarding school in Kathmandu went on for higher studies abroad, some to MIT and Harvard, others to New York University, and another to an Indian college. They kept in touch, and often talked about what they could do to give back to Nepal. They decided that since it was the opportunity they got from scholarships at a top quality education in a premier government-run school, they would help set up a chain of similar schools that would inspire youngsters. The first <a href="https://bloomn.edu.np/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bloom Nepal School</a> was set up in Kathmandu with 17 students, but the earthquake struck and brought down its building, killing a security guard. It had to be restarted from scratch, and the school rose from the rubble to establish two campuses in Kathmandu and Itahari that today have 600 students, and aspires to be the largest network of schools in Nepal. <figure><img width="1000" height="1500" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101116/636b709b9c7e80680e060088jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>“People in the rural areas of Nepal are as capable as everyone else even if they are poor, they just need the opportunity to get a quality education like I did,” says Ram Rijal who graduated in 2012 from MIT, taught mathematics in his school in Kathmandu, and is now working on a PhD. “We want this school to provide a similar opportunity to other underprivileged Nepali children.”Indeed, what the former schoolmates have started is a project that will try to upscale the Budanilkantha model into a network of affordable schools providing world class education to Nepalis would never be able to afford it, so that they can go to the best universities in the world and ultimately return to Nepal like its founders did.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3zxuaIjTq0Bloom School’s first new facility is located in Lubhu, has grades 1-10 with 30 students in each class. Some one-third of the students are on scholarship paid for by sponsors and the school’s own budget. The plan is to have a Bloom residential school in each of the seven provinces, so that students can rotate between the schools every semester, seeing and learning from different parts of the country.“I was inspired by the teachers at New York University’s Abu Dhabi campus where I did my undergraduate engineering degree,” says Chandan Mishra, one of the trio. “It was a campus that gave students maximum exposure, broadened their horizons and made them capable of facing any challenge.” <figure><img width="1500" height="1000" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101116/636b709e9c7e80680e060089jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Bloom School received a $100,000 <a href="https://gulfnews.com/uae/environment/six-global-schools-among-10-winners-of-zayed-sustainability-prize-1.68980516" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Zayed Sustainability Award</a> this week in Abu Dhabi for a project to make energy self-sufficient campuses. In its citation, the Emirate award recognised the school’s proposal to ‘use a food-energy-waste nexus framework through the installation of biogas units that convert up to one tonne of organic waste into biogas and organic manure every day’. The biogas can then be used for cooking in the school’s canteen, generate electricity using a gas engine, while the organic manure produced can be used in sustainable agriculture. “I have been with the school from the beginning, and really enjoy it. It is very diverse, very friendly, everyone is like family. It is like a home for learning,” says Bipana Bastola, 14, who received the award on Behalf of her school. Bloom Nepal was among six winners this year for schools with sustainable energy projects who received the prizes from UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed. <figure><img width="1500" height="1125" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101116/636b70a19c7e80680e06008ajpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>The school further plans on forming a partnership with local municipalities to recycle municipal solid waste and convert it into clean energy, thereby promoting effective waste management, recycling, and clean energy generation, with the effective participation of students and the wider community. Mishra, who graduated with an engineering degree from NYU and turned out lucrative job offers in Dubai to return to Nepal to run the school says: “The award is a huge honour, and we will plough the prize money into our biogas energy program.”Bloom Schools have a strong environmental component, and students learn about reducing use of plastics, recycling garbage, and the biogas plant will be a part of the learning experience about climate friendly energy source that will cut Nepal’s import bill as well. <figure><img width="1500" height="806" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109101116/636b70a49c7e80680e06008bjpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Rijal and Mishra say they saw the benefits of residential education while at Budanilkantha, where students spent time after class learning to do activities together, and growing up to be “independent and interdependent". As an engineer, Mishra has tried to design the schools from lightweight earthquake resistant material, and wants to use rammed earth technology for future buildings. He adds: “Bloom Nepal will serve as a model for affordable high quality schools in Nepal so it can retain talent in the country and build a human resource base for the country’s future.”

Kunda Dixit

Giving back to Nepal what Nepal gave to them

Sudan Gurung is dancing. It is 2009. He has an emo fringe falling over one eye and is spinning on a polished floor. His dance shows dedication — moves that take years of bruised elbows to land. The clip is 16 years old, and had been sitting in the dead archives of YouTube and old Facebook pages, watched by almost nobody. This month <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@4gr4j/video/7621892206902725909">it has 1.9 million views</a>. Gurung became Home Minister on 27 March and resigned on Wednesday, barely a month into office. His<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@aayvik/video/7626069452177542408"> pre-political life had been put back into circulation</a> at industrial speed -- the b-boying, the DJ sets, and the YouTube video of him dancing in a music clip.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026042202040_71df4d531423e7c941abde95fb8106346c70ab0afb71bbeb520cc570f14ba178.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="2026042202040_71df4d531423e7c941abde95fb8106346c70ab0afb71bbeb520cc570f14ba178" data-rendition-name="original" width="2300" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="When aura meets audit"> </figure>  The youth of Nepal, well-versed in snappy TikTok edits and aura compilations, turned the archive into a meme economy almost overnight. TikTok remixed the footage to trap beats. The comments settled on a nickname that crossed into everyday speech within days: 'Homie Minister'. <div class="embed-block"><blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@yalexthwreal/video/7622325255792512276" data-video-id="7622325255792512276" style="max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px;" > <section> <a target="_blank" title="@yalexthwreal" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@yalexthwreal?refer=embed">@yalexthwreal</a> <a title="sudangurung" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/sudangurung?refer=embed">#sudangurung</a> new home minister of Nepal😎 <a title="fyppppppppppppppppppppppp" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fyppppppppppppppppppppppp?refer=embed">#fyppppppppppppppppppppppp</a> <a title="sudangrg" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/sudangrg?refer=embed">#sudangrg</a> <a title="home" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/home?refer=embed">#home</a> <a title="minister" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/minister?refer=embed">#minister</a> <a target="_blank" title="♬ original sound - •⪨н є α я т ❤н α ¢ к є я ⪩• - Music Universe 🎧" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-•⪨н-є-α-я-т-❤н-α-¢-к-є-я-⪩•-7308733170064231170?refer=embed">♬ original sound - •⪨н є α я т ❤н α ¢ к є я ⪩• - Music Universe 🎧</a> </section> </blockquote> <script async src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script></div> As Home Minister, Gurung was in charge of the Nepal Police, Armed Police Force, Department of Immigration, and the country's internal security apparatus. Calling him 'homie' collapsed the distance between that office and the Discord server where the movement that brought him into power had organised itself. What is harder to explain is why the nostalgic clips did the narrative work for Gurung's political standing right up until the moment the paperwork did not. A teenager on a dance floor in a Thamel club, filmed before smartphones had decent cameras, was functioning as political currency for a powerful home minister, while a share registry was quietly filling the other column. The footage was not an argument. Gurung was not doing anything in it that related to home affairs. He was just dancing. The comments compared him to <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@4gr4j/video/7621892206902725909">Korean film heroes</a>. A separate <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@tandavyt7/video/7622151050128018708">48,000-like edit</a> was captioned 'Our New Home Minister Aura'. The replies were full of people saying they got chills listening to him speak. Even after his resignation, most comments on his Facebook page were supportive, saying he had been punished for pursuing truth and justice.&nbsp; Political legitimacy in Nepal has been built out of many things over the last 70 years, but it has never been built out of this. The question was always: what happens when the job starts demanding things his style, boldness, and swag cannot provide. Political aura in Nepal used to be a slow harvest, now it isn't. B P Koirala spent eight years in prison under the Panchayat. He wrote fiction at Sundari Jal. The writing survived, the prison sentences survived, and that experience became the template for what a serious Nepali politician looked like: someone the state had tried to break and failed. Legitimacy was accumulated by having their lives taken away, and refusing to bend the knee. The old mechanics of legitimacy produced politicians who could be audited. The record was made of words, dates, votes, and years behind bars. A voter who wanted to know what a leader stood for read his writings. A journalist digging for inconsistency could find it. The system was slow, often corrupt, and frequently boring. But boring was part of the job description. A minister was supposed to be slightly dull — evidence that the person was doing the unglamorous work of reading files and sitting through committee meetings. Today, boring is a disqualification. The attention economy rewards velocity and visual charge, and a politician who cannot generate either does not exist in the feed, and that means does not exist at all. The legacy parties are still issuing press statements criticising the new guard in the grammar of paper trails and procedural failure. But the audience has stopped reading, users scroll for their next viral bite. Sudan Gurung, unlike the old parties, understood exactly which grammar the feed rewarded. On his first evening as Home Minister, he posted a photo of himself sleeping on a sofa inside the ministry. Caption: creation cannot be greater than the creator, government is not above the people. The image travelled further in 12 hours than any ministerial press release has ever done.&nbsp; A minister napping on a sofa, phone-shot, zero production, read by the public as evidence of a minister who had skipped the motorcade and got straight to work. Gurung used Facebook to announce the names of former ministers and businessmen he intended to arrest. The feed was used to pre-announce state security action.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260422010456_2fa1918e1dd031d01f38b4001ee306d9414073cec0b795fa43a75cb5a8deb8c7.png" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20260422010456_2fa1918e1dd031d01f38b4001ee306d9414073cec0b795fa43a75cb5a8deb8c7" data-rendition-name="original" width="926" height="868" loading="lazy" alt="When aura meets audit"> </figure>  INFLUENTIAL INFLUENCER This is not how the Ministry of Home Affairs has ever operated. It is how a YouTuber releases a series. Sudan Gurung was a political content creator. As home minister, he was an influential influencer kinetically doing something in the visual medium. Much like Prime Minister Balendra Shah's sunglasses, Gurung's aura, authenticity and swag were a brand asset, instantly recognisable at thumbnail size. Balen's rap career supplies a pre-political archive that authenticates him the same way Gurung's DJ sets and b-boying clips authenticated him. The aesthetic is doing the work a manifesto used to do. The work is authenticity, and the strategy is auramaxxing. The emo fringe predates the ministry. The DJ sets predate Hami Nepal. The b-boying predates the earthquake, the NGO, the September uprising, the interim cabinet, all of it. Whatever Gurung is now, he was already that person before the office existed. This was the real spectacle of the Homie Minister: authenticity. Nepal's youth have grown up watching heavily-polished, talking-point ministers speak in a language aimed at nobody in particular. But that grainy archival clip of the Home Minister from 2009 was honest.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260422010456_5d6dff3a09e8b7e77dc60c3aa567c9e02b6bd5f90f94e20737ec05cc9a09023b.jpg" data-media-id="editor_7" data-image-id="20260422010456_5d6dff3a09e8b7e77dc60c3aa567c9e02b6bd5f90f94e20737ec05cc9a09023b" data-rendition-name="original" width="1800" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="When aura meets audit NT"> </figure>  The effect transcended GenZ. <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@ektapokharel/video/7623242573481561365">A TikTok trend</a> captioned NOT ONLY OUR HOME MINISTER, WE ARE ALSO FROM THAT ERA <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@sonykhadka/video/7624106790266948872">has millennials posting their own</a> archive photos from the same period, aligning themselves with Gurung's pre-political aesthetic. The aura did <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@_thakuri/video/7623397397556645141">cross-generational work</a>. It was a shared legibility, spanning at least 15 years of Nepali youth culture, with the Home Minister standing at its centre.&nbsp; The traditional politician's entire adult life is a performance of identity. Every photograph is lit for the media, every statement is vetted. The persona is the product, and the product has been in development for 30 years. This makes the old guard legible but suspect in the attention economy. A generation raised on authenticity-as-currency reads the decades of careful performance as evidence of something to hide. The polish is the problem. The nostalgic Sudan Gurung party clips inverted this. The polish was absent. The footage could not be performance aimed at the viewer, because the viewer did not exist in 2009 and neither did the political stakes. The clip was therefore read as real, in a way a press conference can never be. It was just a kid dancing, and he happened to grow up to be the Home Minister. But Sudan Gurung's job was never to go viral. The Ministry of Home Affairs requires the person running it to file a complete asset declaration and to avoid holding financial interests in crony entities.&nbsp; None of that work is content. A correctly filed asset declaration does not get remixed into a trap beat. A functioning immigration database is not a TikTok. The paperwork that constitutes actual governance is structurally boring in exactly the way the old parties are structurally boring, and for the same reason. It is the slow, procedural, checkable apparatus that the old system was built to produce and that the new system has not yet learned to replace. And it is painstaking follow-the-money paper trail investigative journalists in the legacy media who uncovered the evidence. You cannot auramaxx your way out of a share registry. You cannot post your way past a conflict-of-interest statute. No amount of fire outfits and wild DJ transitions does anything for you when a journalist pulls the initial shareholder list of Star Micro Insurance and finds your name at number 49, with Rs2.5 million in shares alongside investors linked to Deepak Bhatta and Sulav Agrawal — two men currently at the centre of a Rs 3.7 billion money laundering investigation. <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@blox.drop/video/7622173520981658900">Auramaxxing was engineered</a> for the mechanics of reaching office. It is the reason Sudan Gurung became Home Minister and Gagan Thapa did not. The question that had not yet been tested, until this week, was whether the same weapon works when the terrain changes. The terrain does change when you assume power. This week, the answer arrived. TWO CLOCKS Two clocks had been running, and they did not sync. The first clock was built for auramaxxing. A clip posted at eight in the morning peaked by noon. A sofa photo was remixed before the minister had left the building. The feedback loop is fast and legible, and a politician playing this clock gets real-time data on what to post next. The old guard never learned to read it, which is a large part of why they lost the election. The second clock was the one the ministry actually runs on. It measures in quarters, court calendars, and the slow grind of investigation files moving between offices. A share registry takes weeks to pull. A money-laundering case moves at the speed of the prosecutor's office, which is to say, it often does not appear to move at all, until one morning it does. The legacy mass media is fed leaks, and the second clock does not care whether the minister is currently trending. The two clocks collided this week, and the second clock got there first. Faster than anyone expected. The first clock put Gurung in the Home Ministry in weeks. The second clock put him out of it in less than a month. On Sunday evening, Diyopost and Janaastha published documents showing Gurung as a founding shareholder in Star Micro Insurance and Liberty Micro Life — companies licensed by the Nepal Insurance Authority in 2022 following what reporting identified as political lobbying by Bhatta and Agrawal. A photograph also surfaced of Hami Nepal, the NGO Gurung chairs, honouring Bhatta as a donor on 21 December 2021. Gurung's first response was auramaxxed. A Monday Facebook post distinguishing ‘rumours’ from ‘facts’, insisting the shares were disclosed within his broader Rs20 million securities portfolio, promising to cooperate with any investigation. "Allegations and truth are not the same thing," he wrote. "Decisions should be based on evidence, not sentiment." It was a coherent clip, but it did not stop the clock. By Wednesday, Prime Minister Balendra Shah had sought written clarification. Leaders within the RSP itself were calling for his resignation. The opposition Nepali Congress had framed the question as one of democratic transparency.&nbsp; Gurung resigned, posting his decision to Facebook as he did everything else. Ethics, he wrote, hold more weight than any position. There is no power greater than public trust. He ended in English, invoking ‘my country … the respect of our security forces … the youths of Nepal’. Even the exit was content. And this is the asymmetry the office exposed. A politician whose legitimacy is built on fast 30 second videos is structurally exposed to a process that runs slower than the news cycle, because the archive of aesthetic proof was not engineered to answer documentary evidence.&nbsp; It was engineered to displace the demand for documentary evidence in the first place. When that demand returns, as it always does once a politician takes office, the digital archive keeps performing, but the documents keep getting uncovered. And the two tracks do not communicate. The old guard knew this clock because they had no other clock to know. What they lost in charisma they gained in durability: a politician built over 20 years of parliamentary record is harder to dislodge with a single document because they have already survived thousands of documents. The new guard has not been stress-tested against its own paper trail. Sudan Gurung has now been tested, and the test is over, and the template has been written in his exit rather than his survival.&nbsp; A politician can enter office on the strength of a dance clip, and the same class of evidence — share registries, company filings, founding-shareholder lists at number 49 — that would have ended the career of a politician in a previous era of Nepali politics has ended his. The second clock got there. The feed did not save him. Or not entirely. Because the resignation itself is now in the feed. The Facebook post. The 46 brothers and sisters. The epic sign-off. Within hours of stepping down, Gurung had already re-enrolled his exit into the same register that put him in office. The clip of the Home Minister dancing in 2009 is still in circulation. The sofa photo still reads as sincerity. The investigation into the micro-insurance shares will move at the speed of Nepal's prosecutor's office, which is to say, at a speed the feed has long since outrun. The movement that installed Gurung in the name of ending elite capture has had its answer about whether its own hero is subject to the same audit it demanded of everyone else. He walked — or was walked — before the audit ran its course. The resignation was framed as moral choice rather than forced exit, and the framing is already winning. Whether that framing holds is the next test. Auramaxxing, it turns out, is a weapon that works in one direction only: it got him the job, and when the documents arrived, it did not save him. But it may yet save the person. These are not the same thing. If the technique is wounded, it is not yet dead. The next Nepali politician with a pre-political archive and a phone is watching how Gurung exits, not just how he entered. And the answer is: you exit the same way you entered: on Facebook. In your own voice. Before anyone else writes the caption. Whether he comes back is the thing to watch. Whether the technique does is already decided. &nbsp; &nbsp;

When Aura meets Audit

At 6 feet and one inch, Hira Bahadur Ghalan was exceptionally tall for a Nepali. In 1936, when people came to his Tamang village near Tistung looking for porters, they recruited him on the spot. This was no ordinary job, Hira Bahadur would lead gangs of 30 or more porters to carry cars bought by Rana rulers from Bhimphedi to Kathmandu.&nbsp; Those were the days when the only motorable roads in Nepal were in Kathmandu, but the capital was not connected to anywhere else by road. So, before cars could carry people, people had to carry cars. More Nepalis had carried cars than ridden in one. The porters were paid Rs5 for the job, and sometimes the Rana owners gave Hira Bahadur a Rs25 baksheesh. One of the cars his community helped carry was a 1939 Daimler Benz gifted by Adolf Hitler to King Tribhuvan to woo Nepal away from the British. The rusted dusty vehicle is now in the Narayanhiti Palace Museum.&nbsp; Hira Bahadur hauled cars for 25 years until his knees gave way, he died at age 90 eight years ago — the last surviving car porters of Nepal from Chitlang Valley.&nbsp; Hira Bahadur Ghalan had three sons and three daughters, one of them is Maila Kaji Lama, who at age 68, is a chauffeur in Kathmandu. His son, Manjil Lama is a pilot with Summit Air, flying to remote Himalayan airstrips. Three generations of one family worked in professions that followed a century of transportation history in Nepal. &nbsp; After the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/the-long-and-winding-road-to-india">Tribhuvan Rajpath was finished in 1957</a> and the ropeway upgraded, Hira Bahadur was out of a job. He tilled the family farm, watching trucks and buses headed to and from Kathmandu on the hairpins.&nbsp; As a child, Maila Kaji was fascinated by cars and wished one day to be able to drive one. After he failed Grade 8, he came to Kathmandu in 1975 and got a Rs20/month job at a petrol station in Maiti Devi. “I watched King Birendra’s coronation and was impressed by the glamour of Kathmandu, and decided to stay here,” Maila Kaji says.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026041816040_a1a41e47dec8500727702f700e43af625f059043cbcd283f13b247344b3a20aa.png" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="2026041816040_a1a41e47dec8500727702f700e43af625f059043cbcd283f13b247344b3a20aa" data-rendition-name="original" width="1974" height="1608" loading="lazy" alt="car carriers"> <figcaption>Maila Kaji</figcaption> </figure>  Former minister Ramesh Nath Pandey used to bring his Volkswagen Beetle to the station, and Maila Kaji started taking care of his car. Later, he drove a Russian Jeep for former minister and geographer Harka Gurung. Along the way, he fell in love with the daughter of a Brahmin colleague, and married her. “My father back in Tistung did not approve of our inter-ethnic marriage, and not speak to me for five years,” Maila Kaji recalls. Manjil Lama grew up in Kathmandu, and did well in science in school. He had wanted to go the US to become a pilot like his friends, but was denied a visa.&nbsp; “The visa officer told him I did not earn enough,” says Maila Kaji, “so I sold some property and sent Manjil to flying school in the Philippines.”  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026041816040_e9091162840baa6d182de2d7cc6f09e43ec9cfd9a9b6e71e7e7b14bc72da3537.png" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="2026041816040_e9091162840baa6d182de2d7cc6f09e43ec9cfd9a9b6e71e7e7b14bc72da3537" data-rendition-name="original" width="1434" height="1754" loading="lazy" alt="car carriers"> <figcaption>Manjil Lama</figcaption> </figure>  After returning to Nepal, Manjil Lama now flies Let 410s of Summit Air to difficult air strips like Lukla and Simkot, and has logged over 2,000 hours. He has to go to the Czech Republic regularly for simulator training. Says Maila Kaji Lama: “My father worked hard carrying cars to raise us, I started from scratch to become a driver to support my family, and my son is now a pilot with experience in flying in the world’s toughest terrain.” &nbsp; Watch <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvT3iTi8yw4" target="_blank">video clip from S Dillon Ripley here</a>.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260419020448_40f8b1bdaace08106ca5c24819b6e7a34fb2109a9a3ec5c6ac179b3309e686ed.png" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20260419020448_40f8b1bdaace08106ca5c24819b6e7a34fb2109a9a3ec5c6ac179b3309e686ed" data-rendition-name="original" width="900" height="1582" loading="lazy" alt="car carriers"> </figure>

Grandfather carried cars, son drives cars, grandson flies planes

Only 70 years ago, Kathmandu was the isolated capital of a country that had no modern surface transport link with the rest of the world.&nbsp; The idea of building a road to connect Nepal with India actually first came up during the last years of the Rana regime, after the British had left India. Construction actually began in 1952, and the serpentine route took five years to complete.&nbsp; Named Tribhuvan Rajpath, after the reigning king who initiated it, the alignment was from Thankot (1,301 m) at the western edge of the Kathmandu Valley to Nagdunga, Naubise, Tistung, Palung, Daman, Sim Bhanjyang (2,504m), Lamidanda, and Bhainse.&nbsp; At Bhainse, the highway joined the existing road to Bhimphedi and it was another 31km to Hetauda and Amlekhganj. There was a railway line between Amlekhganj and Birganj.&nbsp; After regular bus and truck service from Raxaul to Kathmandu began in 1961, the entire road popularly became known as the Tribhuvan Rajpath.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026041610044_a11b48a75c7877a0f68634f8be07d26a3f354e78ebd9adddc7d17252fddf1d1b.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2026041610044_a11b48a75c7877a0f68634f8be07d26a3f354e78ebd9adddc7d17252fddf1d1b" data-rendition-name="original" width="4608" height="3072" loading="lazy" alt="Highways NT"> <figcaption>The village of Chitlang on the main route to Kathmandu before the Rajpath was built. In the distance is the Chandragiri ridge above Thankot. Photo: DAN EDWARDS</figcaption> </figure>  <h2>Chronology&nbsp;</h2> (Based on US State Department cables and media reports) November 1945: Gen Bahadur SJB Rana asked an American official if a road could be constructed from the Indian border to Kathmandu. Nepal wanted such a road built across the mountains after first constructing an East-West artery road in the Tarai, and the government was interested in purchasing US surplus war equipment. Gen Rana inquired if there were US firms who could conduct a survey. April 1947: The Nepal government told a US official it was important to upgrade the 20-mile trail from Bhimphedi over the mountains to the Kathmandu Valley into an all-weather road and sought an estimate from the US for doing so. May 1948: Bijaya SJB Rana informed a US official that a survey for a one-lane motor road between Kathmandu and the Tarai had been completed. The road was to follow the Bagmati River to Makwanpur, then connect at Bhimphedi with the road to Amlekhgunj. The road from Tripureswor to Bhainse along the Bagmati River and via Bhimphedi would have been about 60km. (The distance from Kathmandu on the Tribhuvan Rajpath is 122 km.)  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026041610044_bb531baf5d73e00d2032814ac8abb86979a87d781abc066fcb984997aad930e6.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="2026041610044_bb531baf5d73e00d2032814ac8abb86979a87d781abc066fcb984997aad930e6" data-rendition-name="original" width="4608" height="3072" loading="lazy" alt="Highways NT"> <figcaption>The road climbing the hills toward its destination of Kathmandu. Photo: DAN EDWARDS</figcaption> </figure>  July 1948: The government decided to go ahead and build a motorable road from Amlekhganj to Thankot and complete it in two years. December 1948: Construction of the motor road from Kathmandu to Amlekhgunj via the Bagmati River corridor was started. April 1949: Gen Singha SJB Rana told a US official that the motor road from Kathmandu to the Tarai and the Indo-Nepal border would be completed by the spring of 1950. February 1950: Nepal sanctioned Rs300,000 to make the 6-foot-wide road from Kathmandu along the Bagmati River to Hetauda. Of this, Rs100,000 was allocated for road-building material and machinery. Subsequently, the road would be developed into a broader motorable road at a cost of Rs7.5 million. February 1952: Nepal’s budget speech noted that a plan was underway for a road between Bhainse and Kathmandu. PM Matrika Prasad Koirala laid a foundation stone near Teku for construction of the ‘Kathmandu Hetauda Roadway’.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026041610044_e66d3b81848ec19da48be8b41cacfa8b8e2bad093719b39eda27755c9616ea9a.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="2026041610044_e66d3b81848ec19da48be8b41cacfa8b8e2bad093719b39eda27755c9616ea9a" data-rendition-name="original" width="4608" height="3072" loading="lazy" alt="Highways NT"> <figcaption>Rajpath winding its way north of Bhainse. Photo: DAN EDWARDS</figcaption> </figure>  February 1952: A party of Indian engineers came to Nepal to determine the best route for a road from Raxaul to Kathmandu. March 1952: Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru told Parliament: “So far as India’s security is concerned, we consider the Himalayan mountains as our border.” Ministry of External Affairs official (S.N. Hakar) told a US official that the Indian government was willing to proceed with constructing the Raxaul-Kathmandu road and had sent a survey party to determine the most suitable mountain route. May 1952: Swiss experts had made surveys for a proposed new road between Bhimphedi and Thankot. Nepal government requested financial help to build the road, and India was considering the project.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026041610044_35e390c1a4812f45af7892d681230e04c63727d9006b6614ed79aaa7c22c1ece.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="2026041610044_35e390c1a4812f45af7892d681230e04c63727d9006b6614ed79aaa7c22c1ece" data-rendition-name="original" width="4608" height="3072" loading="lazy" alt="Highways NT"> <figcaption>With a constant stream of trucks, buses and jeeps, the narrow Rajpath once was Nepal's busiest highway. Photo: DAN EDWARDS</figcaption> </figure>  Summer 1952: Work on a new road was at a standstill, so Nepal asked India for assistance. Indian engineers surveyed two routes: one following the Bagmati River, the other road through Daman that was later adopted. July 1952: Nepal’s Ministry of Planning decided to construct a road between Kathmandu and Raxaul, awaiting Cabinet approval soon. Prime Minister Matrika Koirala said the proposed road was longer than necessary, but it was a better route ‘for strategic reasons’, because it did not require many bridges. August 1952: King Tribhuvan said road construction from Kathmandu to Bhimphedi would “begin soon”. September 1952: An Indian Military Team began construction of the Kathmandu-Bhainse road without a formal agreement being signed with the Nepal government.&nbsp; February 1953: The Indian Ambassador said the road would be hard surfaced within a year. September 1953: Prime Minister Matrika Koirala inspected the completion of a ‘jeepable track’. December 1953: The road was named ‘Tribhuvan Rajpath’. April 1954: Reports circulated that Swiss engineers criticised the alignment, arguing it would have been easier, faster, and cheaper to build over the existing foot trail between Bhimphedi and Thankot through Kulekhani. July 1954: Heavy monsoon rain damaged much of the roadway that had been built.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026041610044_b5b2a1833f1366e532f1629f47c124d877df7b6f8a34b6c83f6c21ec3e4415dd.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="2026041610044_b5b2a1833f1366e532f1629f47c124d877df7b6f8a34b6c83f6c21ec3e4415dd" data-rendition-name="original" width="855" height="1123" loading="lazy" alt="Highways NT"> <figcaption>Crown Prince Mahendra inspecting construction progress on the Tribhuvan Rajpath in October 1954. Photo: ROYAL PALACE</figcaption> </figure>  November 1954: The Indian ambassador said flood damage was so great that the road would be delayed by two years. May 1955: Twenty military trucks brought rice from Amlekhganj to Kathmandu on the Tribhuvan Rajpath. King Tribhuvan died in Zurich. December 1956: A gravel road was completed, with trucks and buses plying between Amlekhganj and Kathmandu. December 1956: Nepal government abolished regulations that required Nepali nationals to carry permits for travel within Nepal, except for women below the age of 45. 1957: Reduction in price of goods carried to Kathmandu by truck: Sugar, Rs0.13 per kg. Wheat flour Rs0.13 per kg. Kerosene Rs0.25 per litre. February 1957: An article in The Motherland newspaper in Kathmandu noted urgent action was needed to avoid Kathmandu being cut off from the Tarai during the monsoon. The correspondent wrote, ‘In a recent journey from Amlekhganj I found that almost all the bridges are in a very bad state…Now, because of the dry rivers the scores of vehicles that ply the road cross the rivers on the water level. But during monsoons… these rivers will be impossible to cross without bridges. On the road itself, landslides and big holes have made the journey a great undertaking.” April 1957: The first regular passenger bus left Amlekhganj at 12:30PM and arrived in Kathmandu completing a journey of 14 hours.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026041610044_60807e067f2d0b80bdc5e59860e9bc240b495ef606efc9301ef54ea5731d42df.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="2026041610044_60807e067f2d0b80bdc5e59860e9bc240b495ef606efc9301ef54ea5731d42df" data-rendition-name="original" width="5211" height="4000" loading="lazy" alt="Highways NT"> <figcaption>Daman, one of the highest points on the Rajpath, often saw snow in winter. Photo: DAN EDWARDS</figcaption> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026041610044_baac4747267c751ab7b0e5ef24697fb5001c4c55e04a82d92c89282bd01a325c.jpg" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="2026041610044_baac4747267c751ab7b0e5ef24697fb5001c4c55e04a82d92c89282bd01a325c" data-rendition-name="original" width="648" height="960" loading="lazy" alt="Highways NT"> <figcaption>Travelers could view the Himalayas from a view tower at Daman. Photo: DAN EDWARDS</figcaption> </figure>  June 1957: Eight thousand Nepali workers and about 500 Indian Army personnel were at work on the road.&nbsp; 30 June 1957: India officially handed the road over to Nepal. India had spent INR32.5 million on the project.&nbsp; January 1958: The road from Amlekhganj to Bhainse was upgraded. July 1961: The gravel road from Raxaul to Birganj was blacktopped. Trucks began transporting goods from Raxaul directly to Kathmandu, avoiding the need for transshipment from train to truck in Amlekhganj, or use the ropeway from Bhimphedi. 1961: Passengers could travel from Raxaul to Kathmandu in a day, whereas it took a week by train to Amlekhganj, bus to Bhimphedi and then on foot. September 1962: Nepal’s 3-Year Plan aimed at broadening and black-topping the road between Bhainse and Raxaul, bypassing the Chure tunnel, and constructing several bridges along the route. 1963: Travelers going to Kathmandu by land: Road, 158,000, Nepal Government Railway, 66,500. Railway passenger service ended in June 1965.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026041610044_2a95eb144dad74271a0fa3a27fab6b45bbab0a1c4be59d21120ad14c08e258fd.jpg" data-media-id="editor_7" data-image-id="2026041610044_2a95eb144dad74271a0fa3a27fab6b45bbab0a1c4be59d21120ad14c08e258fd" data-rendition-name="original" width="2048" height="1344" loading="lazy" alt="Highways NT"> <figcaption>A bus providing ‘deluxe service’ in 1963 is ready to leave Amlekhganj for Kathmandu. Note the railway tracks of the Nepal Government Railway. Photo: RON ELLIOTT</figcaption> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026041610044_d02013692e84d6add7a6e0ce66c2b552cd53bb084db2aa8df0593bbcf84c2c04.jpg" data-media-id="editor_8" data-image-id="2026041610044_d02013692e84d6add7a6e0ce66c2b552cd53bb084db2aa8df0593bbcf84c2c04" data-rendition-name="original" width="2048" height="1352" loading="lazy" alt="Highways NT"> <figcaption>Vehicles found it difficult to pass on many parts of the Rajpath in 1963. Photo: RON ELLIOTT</figcaption> </figure>  1965: Tribhuvan Highway was considered a useful addition to Nepal’s economic infrastructure, but it could not act as a prime mover in the nation’s economic development. It did play a major role in the 1960s in transporting material and equipment needed to implement development projects in the Kathmandu Valley. September 1966: Nepal took over maintenance of the Tribhuvan Rajpath from the Indian Aid Mission.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026041610044_5488ba1e92f6395ff882392ccbaef2270622632682eccb412d8de7b128f6f397.jpg" data-media-id="editor_9" data-image-id="2026041610044_5488ba1e92f6395ff882392ccbaef2270622632682eccb412d8de7b128f6f397" data-rendition-name="original" width="1764" height="1184" loading="lazy" alt="Highways NT"> <figcaption>Trees still lined the Rajpath near Thankot in 1967. Photo: DAN EDWARDS</figcaption> </figure>  1971: A UN-Nepal study said the best alignment for an alternative road was from Kathmandu, Pharping, Kulekhani, Bhimphedi to Bhainse. 1975: Nepal's Department of Roads’ engineer concluded: ‘The Tribhuvan Rajpath has been built without design speed consideration… The pavement was not constructed to any designed standard… irrespective of quality of material, and later the road was black topped without consideration of traffic intensity and load-bearing capacity of sub-base… utilisation of low-quality material in the Bhainse-Thankot section… Quality control was neither maintained in Bhainse-Thankot nor the Bhainse-Raxaul section. Local materials were used irrespective of their quality to complete the work in the earliest possible time and in the cheapest possible manner. Brick work was done in negligible quantity. Cement used was ordinary portland cement…’ &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026041610044_26c74f45991efb3dc29d616e8acafb3163661ae6573c5314538e59c54d5ca0a5.jpg" data-media-id="editor_10" data-image-id="2026041610044_26c74f45991efb3dc29d616e8acafb3163661ae6573c5314538e59c54d5ca0a5" data-rendition-name="original" width="2368" height="1365" loading="lazy" alt="Highways NT"> <figcaption>Bhainse in 2017. The road divided here, one going to Bhimphedi on the right, the main road proceeding to Kathmandu on the left. Photo: DAN EDWARDS</figcaption> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260416100416_4d9321abf4d912796842fe963a493501e1aceff462300ecdd9bd5e0b8ba7f294.jpg" data-media-id="editor_11" data-image-id="20260416100416_4d9321abf4d912796842fe963a493501e1aceff462300ecdd9bd5e0b8ba7f294" data-rendition-name="original" width="649" height="1667" loading="lazy" alt="Highway info NT"> </figure>  Even 70 years after it was built, there is still speculation about India's security concerns vis-a-vis China, and how Indian Army engineers purposely made the road longer than it needed to be over the 2,500 Sim Bhanjyang pass instead of following the river route.&nbsp; There is also some evidence that although the Rana regime had first requested the US for help with the highway, Nehru did not want the Americans involved in Nepal. Which is why the Tribhuvan Highway became an Indian military project.&nbsp; There was similar concern from India about the Kodari Highway linking Kathmandu to China, and King Mahednra is famously supposed to have said: "Communism will not come here in a taxi."&nbsp; Geopolitics still affects Nepal's strategic highways. After decades, links to China are still rough and often blocked. Kathmandu-Tarai Fast Track is delayed by years, and not expected to be completed during this decade. Trucks and buses still bypass the Tribuvan Highway with a 200km detour via Mugling because the other alternative routes like the Tika Bhairav or Chhaimale routes are not suitable for heavy vehicles.&nbsp; The shortcut through Chitlang that the Swiss proposed in the 1950s is still too difficult. And a 25km section of the Japanese-built BP Highway to the eastern Tarai has been knocked out by the 202 flood. Dan Edwards was a Peace Corps volunteer in 1966 and is the author of several books on Nepal. This is the fourth instalment in a new limited series in Nepali Times on the historic transportation infrastructures of Nepal.

The long and winding road to India

The series Nepal Made profiles Nepali products and the people who make them possible. Named after the mythical bird-like creature, GarudX is Nepal’s first precision manufacturer of UAV platforms. They offer a wide range of drone products and services. Last month, GarudX won first place at the US-Nepal Startup Weekend Challenge, a three-day accelerator-style program that gathered 25 of Nepal’s most promising early-stage companies. These include custom drones, cinematography, virtual tours, first-person-view (FPV), drone racing, 3D reconstruction, ground control software, and drone light shows. “I think they liked that we pitched the company as a Drone Enterprise System, as a company providing large-scale, integrated drone services,” says Dipawoli Malla, an AI software engineer with GarudX. The company sees a lot of potential in AI-based aerial computer vision, which is already used for infrastructure planning and land surveys, and could be vital in tracking wildlife poachers and assisting search and rescue during disasters. “Our vision for the company has always been to be the one stop solution for every drone problem,” says GarudX CEO Avash Thapa, who also oversees video production. Drones have gained high profile in the past five years due to their widespread adoption in war. While they do work with the Nepali army, GarudX wants to focus on the idea of drone for good. For Nepal, the potential is great for civilian applications especially because of the country’s terrain. Past efforts have been experimental, like a project to deliver tuberculosis treatment in Piuthan in 2019, and for wildlife censuses in Chitwan. Journalists now regularly use drone footage to get a bird’s-eye view for investigative stories on illegal sand-mining or delays in infrastructure projects. Drones were vital during the GenZ protests last September, in which aerial videos provided clues about what actually happened when the crowd surged towards Parliament. They also captured the dramatic aftermath of the destruction of government buildings featured in this paper. “A lot of people do not know or appreciate that drones are also made in Nepal,” notes Malla. “We export a lot of technology as software. It is a big achievement that we can also export hardware.” GarudX was informally started and active on social media since 2018, and officially registered as GarudX Multipurpose in 2024. Founder and Managing Director Adarsha Raj Bhusal had experience working with robotics and FPV drones when he launched the company, as an engineering group interested in custom-built high-performance aerial robotics. “I design our products,” says Bhusal. “We send designs to China where they are manufactured as individual parts. Costs are low when importing from China. Then we assemble and sell them here. It's a system that works well for us.” Among the UAVs GarudX makes include the Skyreaper, which is a long-range drone with advanced obstacle sensing; the GX8 Pyro which is Nepal’s first cinema-grade cinelifter; and the Aether Zoom which is a 4K UAV camera designed for tactical, industrial, or reconnaissance missions.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260417150440_d9f36b32e0b4d65dedded3e705aa7bf8769fd72417fc53669e77ce7a32f8ccd1.webp" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20260417150440_d9f36b32e0b4d65dedded3e705aa7bf8769fd72417fc53669e77ce7a32f8ccd1" data-rendition-name="original" width="960" height="1280" loading="lazy" alt="garudx"></figure>  NO CERTIFICATION The main obstacle to GarudX's growth has been the lack of a national certification system. Permits to use drones are convoluted and require applications to various government agencies. “We miss out on so many international projects, for national park footage for example, since there is no way to get our drones registered — even after the army thoroughly checks our craft,” says Adarsha Raj Bhusal. GarudX says it now has the capacity to export its drones overseas at competitive prices, but Nepal does not have a registration system in place. “We can’t legally ship them,” says Avaya Pokharel, Chief Operating Officer who oversees service and repairs. With a new RSP government in place with an ambitious blueprint for digitisation, things could soon change. Relevant bodies are the Home Ministry, the Civil Aviation Authority and the Ministry of Defence because of privacy, aviation safety and national security issues. “There are meetings going on, and there is hope that progress will be made. Of course we want certification to be easy, but it is hard for the government as they have to understand the technology and what is coming in future,” says Bhusal. Legislation could look like a Remote ID system to register every drone. It could also specify pilot verification, placing limitations on what a pilot can do based on their skill level. It could also look at revising drone policies in the capital. Most of Kathmandu Valley is technically a no-fly zone for drones at present because of the concentration of government buildings, army bases and the international airport flight path. To comply with current regulations, GarudX has focused on lightweight FPV drones: small, nimble craft that can be maneuvered at high speed in tight spaces, operated by a pilot wearing immersive goggles. This results in exciting fast-paced footage, particularly useful for clients like Redbull or vehicle companies. “It feels like you are flying,” testifies Bhusal, who has flown FPV for commercials and movies, and ranks way ahead of runner ups in drone races. His work can be seen @adars_fpv on Instagram. The company has built a community of FPV drone racers, and is working with the government to certify it as a sports competition. It holds race events at colleges in Kathmandu and also consults for FPV events in in India.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260417150440_43b27b1b6890e47028c5e780c2ed0147a057f625d9d551221ddbd504dc03a356.png" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20260417150440_43b27b1b6890e47028c5e780c2ed0147a057f625d9d551221ddbd504dc03a356" data-rendition-name="original" width="923" height="619" loading="lazy" alt="garudx"></figure>  MULTIPURPOSE Drones can be versatile tools, but they are particularly helpful in Nepal and the Himalaya. Powerful drones have been used for the last two years to transport ropes and ladders up Mt Everest to reduce the dangers on the Khumbu Icefall, and to bring trash down. If scaled with many pilots and drones, this could be a complete solution to the Everest trash problem while massively reducing risk to human lives. GarudX has also tested its products in the mountains. A recent blog entry on their website is titled, ‘Flying at 6,120m: What We Learned Testing Drones on Lobuche Peak’. They document the process of using different battery tricks and propellers to see what combination allows for more flight time in the thin, cold air. It is refreshing to see a Nepali company making such progress in a unique industry while also documenting advances.