<figure><img width="960" height="541" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111124/637217f09c7e80680e0baa15jpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Flags of rival parties UML and Nepali Congress as seen from my family home in Syangja. All photos: SHRISTI KARKI</figcaption></figure>Earlier this year, I visited my ward office to inquire about voter registration, and was informed that I would need to register either from the Election Commission or the Kathmandu District Election office.My parents had got their registration from the ward office in 2017 since my family had moved to Kathmandu. I went to the Kathmandu Election Office, and filled the voter registration with details of my current address. But the election official told me that voters would need to cast their ballot from the district their citizenship card has been issued from— which in my case is Syangja, the district where my father was born and raised. I explained to the election officer that both my parents had voted from Kathmandu during the last election. He said that was well and good, but an Act was passed after 2017 that allowed voters to cast their ballots only from where their citizenship cards were issued. If I was to vote here, the election official said, I would need proof of migration. I called my father to discuss developments. He told me it looked like I was going to Syangja to vote. ***** <figure><img width="960" height="720" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111124/637217f39c7e80680e0baa16jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img width="960" height="720" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111124/637217f59c7e80680e0baa17jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>A day before the election, preparations are underway (pictured above) at Shitala Secondary School which will serve as one of the three polling stations in the village.My memories of my village are not the clearest, since we visited Syangja only once or twice a year for weeks at a time. After my grandfather passed, my grandmother came to live with us in the city, and even those occasional visits stopped. In any case, I have not been to my village since 2018. In the months leading up to the election, I saw candidates from across Nepal in the media. My friends and I discussed the election in Kathmandu. I reported about the election in Bharatpur, in Pokhara. But no such news came out of my ward in Syangja. As the election draws near, I do as much homework as I can, check the candidates’ list, try to get some information on them, but I wonder if that will make any difference.***** <figure><img width="960" height="720" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111124/637217f79c7e80680e0baa18jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img width="960" height="720" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111124/637217fa9c7e80680e0baa19jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img width="960" height="720" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111124/637217fd9c7e80680e0baa1ajpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img width="960" height="720" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111124/637217ff9c7e80680e0baa1bjpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img width="960" height="720" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111124/637218019c7e80680e0baa1cjpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>I leave for Syangja two days before the election, arriving in Pokhara in the morning. In the jeep from Pokhara to home, the passengers discuss the election— mostly why the incumbents were incompetent.The previous ward chair had built a water system in the village, they say, but no water actually flowed out of the taps. “Maybe that’s the agenda the party has set for if they win this time, filling the taps,” one of the passengers jokes. The vehicle breaks into laughter.Forty-five minutes later, I arrive home, and bid my fellow passengers goodbye. When I reach the house, I immediately see the party flag my uncle has erected in his vegetable garden. But down the hill in his brother’s house—I can see the rival party’s flag fluttering in the wind.I say hello to my aunt, my cousins. Over lunch, my uncle talks about the rallies that took place until the day before, about how hoards of motorbikes from the two competing parties roared past, screaming slogans. It was now the 'silent period' before the election, and campaigning had stopped. In the evening, I prepare to go down to visit my relatives, many of whom I haven’t seen in years. “Take your sister with you,” my uncle tells me, pointing to his daughter. The grown ups will not visit each other’s place right now. In the twilight, my cousin and I make the rounds of our relatives’ houses. Nobody talks about the election. ***** <figure><img width="960" height="720" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114111124/637218039c7e80680e0baa1djpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>The day before voting, I make my way down to the polling centre, one of three in the village, to get my voter’s ID card. This was the school my father and his siblings attended as children, and workers are busy preparing for the next day.I am hoping to see ward chair candidates of the two main parties to interview them, but I’m informed that both of them have gone into town, and will not be back anytime soon. “People have come all the way from Kathmandu, all for one vote,” someone comments as I pass by their house on my way back. There are 2,715 voters in this ward. I figure every vote will count. *****I walk down to the voting centre after lunch on Election Day. It is crowded, but just as many people are gathered outside in the mid-morning sun, watching the goings-on. Most of those in the polling centre are women.  The men have already voted in the morning. The heat wraps around the back of my neck as I stand in line, my back is soaked in sweat. The voter behind me has her arm wrapped around my shoulder. I have never seen her before. The voters in front of me have already made friends with the temporary police stationed at the front of the line. They complain about having to leave their umbrellas at the gate of the polling centre. The masked policemen, clad in their full-sleeved dark blue uniforms and leather boots, shrug their shoulders. “I don’t make the rules,” one of them says.Just then, a man calls over a young woman he knows to the front of the women’s line, leading to instant uproar. A policeman directs the woman to go to the end of the line to which the man replies with not to tell him what to do. “It’s the heat,” someone in line says. “We all need to calm down.”The line finally moves, and I make my way to the relative cool of the tented area where voting officials check and double-check our IDs, and hand us the ballots. Someone behind me has come to vote with her citizenship certificate, but her name is not on the voter’s list. There is a murmur of sympathy. She gives a rueful smile and leaves.As we wait in line in front of the voting booths, an elderly woman some ways behind me is asking how to correctly vote and fold the ballot. We show her how, and she squats right down and begins smoothing the paper over the uneven ground.“I’m going to fold this beforehand, just in case I do it wrong in there,” she says. Our laughter carries in the air.   At my turn, I cast my vote and make my way out of the polling centre.On the way back, the women behind me are asking each other in hushed tones,  ‘के मा छाप हानेउ त?’ (Whom did you vote for?). It reminds me of when I was a student, sharing answers with my friends on the way back from the exam hall. It starts raining in the afternoon, and the downpour continues throughout the day. Later, the lights wink out. No one knows when the power will come back. At the dinner table, my two young cousins who do not yet vote discuss the election. My brother is especially keen to know whom I have voted for. “The candidates must be so stressed right now,” my sister says. “They probably won’t sleep until the results are announced.”*****By the next morning, the rain has stopped and the power restored.  Another one of my uncles comes by to visit his brother, along with a neighbour. Devi Karki, a candidate who ran for ward member, is there as well. The four get into a conversation about the other wards in the municipality, the vote counts of which are underway.They talk about who should have ran instead of who, and who is likely to win. They support different parties, but the discussion is objective.There is word that the ballots of this ward will begin to be counted at 3PM. In this village, where 1,990 out of all eligible voters cast their ballots, every vote will count when counting starts."I slept really well last night,” Karki says, “I sleep best when I am worried.”The foursome finish their tea, and Devi Karki calls out to my aunt to get her sickle and get a move on. The time for discussion is over— there is work to be done, livestock to be fed.The two women head down to the fields. From the courtyard I look down the hill, wondering when enough time will have passed that my family can drop by each other’s houses.Read Also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/nepalis-vote-enthusiastically-in-local-elections/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nepalis vote enthusiastically in local elections</a>

Shristi Karki

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Every vote counts, as counting begins in Nepal

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108101136/636a230c9c7e80680e0417c5jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1498" height="1000"/><figcaption>Photos: JUKSON</figcaption></figure>On 1 February <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/wonderful-waling/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Waling in Syangja District</a> will be the venue of the first annual world class mountain biking championship. The 100km International Open Mountain Biking Marathon to be held every year 60km south of Pokhara, and will be one of the toughest one day MTB events in the world.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/wonderful-waling/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wonderful Waling</a>, Shashwat  AcharyaThe mountain biking adventure has a total ascent of 4,000m which has to be covered within just 10 hours. Located in the mid-mountains of Nepal with a stunning backdrop of the Himalaya in the Andhi Khola valley, the trail offers a run through a culturally diverse area.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/riding-above-the-haze/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Riding above the haze</a>, Tyler McMahon<a style="background-color: #ffffff; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/no-city-for-cyclists/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">No city for cyclists</a>, Sewa Bhattarai<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108101136/636a230f9c7e80680e0417c6jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1498" height="1000">The first Waling 100 offers one of the highest prize money in the MTB racing world with the title prize of Rs500,000 and a historic opportunity for the Title Winner to name the trail. The female biker who comes first will get Rs300,000.The race is being organised by the Wonder Waling initiative with Waling Municipality and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and and will have 25 foreign and 150 Nepali start in Waling Bazar, and will travel through Mirdi, Jagat Bhanjyang, Dumre Bhanjyang and back to Waling.“Waling and Syangja are rich in natural and cultural diversity, we want to combine the two and promote the district as a prime tourism destination,” says <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/Connecting-dots/radical-decentralisation-nepal,921" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dinkar Nepal</a> of Wonderful Waling.Read also: <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/Connecting-dots/breath-of-fresh-air-syangja-local-elections,955" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Breath of fresh air in Syangja</a>, Dinkar Nepal

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Bicycling in Waling

https://youtu.be/vVG1_uqWXFoIn 1974, <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=11933#.XBM9ddszaUk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Broughton Coburn</a> hiked up to a Gurung village on a ridge at the eastern edge of Syangja District, and introduced himself to the headman. He had been assigned by the Peace Corps to teach at a high school. The headman found lodgings for Coburn with a 70-year-old widow who lived alone with a cat, some chicken, and a water buffalo. ’Aama’ was even more surprised by the sudden appearance of such an unusual lodger, and Coburn eased the transition by helping Aama with her daily chores. <img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171148/636937259c7e80680e03fe1cjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="170" height="224"/><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171148/636937269c7e80680e03fe1djpeg.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="269">Aama did not have children, and Coburn’s own mother had died three years earlier. A mother-son bond grew between them, and culminated in two books: a photo-portrait of Aama’s life, Nepali Aama: Life Lessons of a Himalayan Woman, and Aama in America: A Pilgrimage of the Heart, the tale of their odyssey in search of the soul of the United States.Coburn recently revisited Aama’s village of Kolma after 31 years. Aama died in 1991, at age 87. When her only daughter, Sun Maya also died two years ago, he vowed to return to the village and visit descendants four generations on. If Aama were still alive, she would have a new great-great-grandson.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171148/636937279c7e80680e03fe1ejpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1400" height="925"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>I connected first with Resham, one of my students from 44 years ago, in a coffee shop in Katmandu. He is now working at an NGO and had not been back in his village for eight years.“It’s not the same there,” he said. “There is something missing.”Most villagers and Aama’s descendants were no longer there. Thagu, Aama’s only grandson, had found work with the police in India and his son is in the Indian Army. Maita, Aama’s eldest granddaughter, married along ago and moved to <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Pokhara-looks-to-2016,2773" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pokhara</a>.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171148/6369372b9c7e80680e03fe1fjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1400" height="933"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>In a quiet alley behind the shambling grittiness of Pokhara’s Pardi Bazaar, was a two-storey cement house with an ornate metal gate. Maita, who I had known as a young girl, graciously served tea and juice and sel roti. For her husband, daughter, sister and sister-in-law, she launched into selective recollections of how afraid the village children were of me initially, and my hilariously awkward manner of eating, sitting and speaking.“Things have changed a lot, Gora Mama,” Maita said, as if searching for some news from the village to share. The relatives lined up and we solemnly clicked away with our smartphones. “Remember that clunky camera you were always putting plastic film strips into,” asked Maita. “And Aama said that her lifespan might shorten if you took too many photos of her? Well, nowadays we’re the ones taking all the photos.”<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171148/6369372e9c7e80680e03fe20jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="419">“If you make it to <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/Connecting-dots/breath-of-fresh-air-syangja-local-elections,955" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Syangja </a>Bazar in time, Gora Mama, you can catch the morning jeep that will take you up the hill to Kolma village,” Maita added.“I’m thinking I’ll just walk from the bazar,” I said.“You can’t,” she said flatly.“What do you mean, can't?” I said.“There is no trail anymore. Everyone travels on the road.”<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171148/636937319c7e80680e03fe21jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1400" height="673"><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171148/636937349c7e80680e03fe22jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1400" height="943"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171148/636937369c7e80680e03fe23jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1200" height="900"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><h2>Aama's house</h2>Sainli and Kanchi stepped from the dirt roadbed onto the leaf-strewn trail that meandered to Aama’s house. I could hear Aama saying, as she did when I showed up after months of work in Kathmandu, that she had premonitions of my arrival. Perhaps, somehow, she could perceive that I was again coming to see her.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171148/6369373a9c7e80680e03fe24jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1200" height="1152"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171148/6369373d9c7e80680e03fe25jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1400" height="707"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Pushing through a thicket of weeds, we pulled up to a crude goth that filled the space where her house had stood. I set down my rucksack and, avoiding nettles, walked about quietly, mumbling to myself like an explorer deciphering an overgrown Mayan ruin. A low wall, the crumbled foundation of Aama’s house, appeared in the shadows. I took some photos while puzzling my way through a reverse sort of future shock, resurrecting the colours and bustle and the sounds and smells of decades earlier.Kanchi and Sainli stood silently, their heads tracking my movement. They clearly sensed my confusion and sadness. “If you had stayed in the village, Gora Mama, it would not be like this,” said Kanchi softly.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171148/636937419c7e80680e03fe26jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="1142"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171148/636937439c7e80680e03fe27jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="1200"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>A tear formed in my eye, and I mentally fast-forwarded wild scenarios of local marriage, village projects, healthful living, and <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/History-of-the-Kings-of-Nepal-A-Buddhist-Chronicle-launch,2605" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Buddhist </a>practice. But I was not the only one who had left. Kanchi and Sainli’s brother and sister and most of their relatives had also left. We were all participants in something much larger than all of us.What had not diminished during the past 45 years in Aama’s village was the boundless hospitality. My inability to graciously decline had not changed, either, nor could I any better explain why I had to leave. Sainli and Kanchi begged me to stay.“My family awaits me,” I told them tearfully, <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/flower-power,3336" target="_blank" rel="noopener">garland</a>ed with mala.They replied: “Then, next time bring your wife and daughter and son.”I promised. And I will.<h2>Kolma</h2>From the roof of the bus, the airy perch I had always preferred, fresh landslides appeared like ink splotches cast upon the Syangja hills. Everywhere, mad scribbles of ad hoc dirt roads linked even the smallest hamlets.I walked along the road that paralleled the small khola, then searched for the trail at the base of a 700m vertical climb to Kolma danda. The hillside was crisscrossed with crude switchbacks. Maita was right. The old trail could be seen only as broken fragments: shards of a civilisation that walked.By cell phone I connected with Aama’s granddaughters, Sainli and Kanchi, and they converged on the dirt road to guide me to their homes. After food and tea we walked on the road to Aama’s village, their maiti, as I struggled to get my bearings. The old stone stairway that I trekked each day to school was mostly overgrown, superseded by the road on the hillside above.“Walking on the road takes longer than on the old trail,” I objected to no one in particular. “Yes,” Kanchi admitted, “but the trail is not the way people go, anymore.”The acting headman, warmly gracious and purposefully upbeat, greeted us above Aama’s village. “We have <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/Analysis/Generating-more-power-by-saving-energy-loadshedding-Nepal,931" target="_blank" rel="noopener">electricity</a>,” he pointed to the wires, “and now water flows in pipes to cisterns here. No need to get water from the spring below the village as you used to do for Aama with a naamlo and doko.”<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171148/636937469c7e80680e03fe28jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1400" height="949"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107171148/636937499c7e80680e03fe29jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1400" height="649"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>From the school on the ridge, a half hour walk from Aama’s village, a jeep departed each morning for the district centre, where villagers could cash remittance checks and purchase food and supplies, mostly imported from India. As the headman said, no one really needed to work very much, anymore.I privately sensed that village development was a consolation prize for those who had stayed behind, a rationalisation for the uncomfortable absence of so many of the village youth. The village looked like a village, but there was something missing, as my student Resham had haltingly suggested.Corn and millet are still cultivated in the fields, and those we met (mostly women, middle-aged, and elderly) appeared well adjusted to a daily routine, and content. With fewer youth to herd them, the diminished need for draft power and manure fertiliser, and fewer mouths to feed, there are not as many livestock. No vehicle came or left the village while I was there. Water overflowed the cisterns.One villager confirmed what social scientist Ganesh Gurung has noted about Nepali villages today: women carry corpses of their parents to the cremation site on the ridges, and even light the funeral pyres in the absence of sons who, tradition dictates, must perform this task.Maita told me that many of the weddings, rituals, and festivals have reconvened at the Kolma-Bahakot Samaj in Pokhara. Gurungs prefer to marry Gurungs, and some meet each other through Facebook. In 1974, the high school on the ridge had 500 students, today it is half that number. The students now are largely Dalits, because most Gurungs study in Pokhara, or further afield.As early as the 1980s, Aama had noted that young people were losing interest in subsistence farming, and home-grown skills such as roof thatching, or hand-hewing a wooden plough, were no longer being taught. How, I wondered, will the youth recraft a subsistence when the demand for foreign labour ends?My resistance to the future, and the present, was beginning to seem idealistic and futile. The ancient bari terraces were being reclaimed by weeds and shrubs. In places, tall trees had emerged where corn used to grow. Trees are not a bad thing, Nepalko dhan. The countryside was a semi-natural landscape, courtesy of limited markets and opportunities.Some spoke of the potential for cash crops such as coffee or walnuts in the fallow fields. If hillside farming were someday mechanised, might the land be converted to commercial agro-enterprises?“Nepal imports approximately a billion rupees worth of food products every day,” Ganesh Gurung had told me. “Now, even China is looking to export grains and other food products to Nepal.”I recalled what Resham, my student from the 1970s, had told me, that in the old days, hill people were embarrassed to be seen buying rice in the district centre. It was an admission of defeat, signaling that they were unable to support themselves. Nowadays, that sentiment has flipped: if people are tilling the field and growing their own food, it means they do not have relatives working overseas to send money to buy provisions. They are regarded as failures.Resham said: “One day, just maybe, as people retire or become weary of towns and cities, they will return to the peacefulness of the countryside.”The reverse <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/editorial/the-lottery-of-migration/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">migration </a>trend may not have quite begun, but the abiding sentiment will make it forever possible. Perhaps out of my own nostalgia, or hope, I sensed that Resham, Maita, Kanchi and Sainli shared a vision of village revival too — the return of family, and the re-engagement of the cycles of rituals, festivals and seasons.The present moment might be something of a holding pattern, a bardo or transition following death, prior to rebirth in a very different incarnation, one humming with commerce and commodities. And hopefully community.Read also:<a style="background-color: #ffffff; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/preaching-on-high,3904" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Preaching on high</a>, Broughton Coburn<a style="background-color: #ffffff; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=11933#.XBM9ddszaUk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A true tale</a>, Broughton Coburn

Aama's village

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

Home Minister Sudan Gurung resigned on Wednesday following increasing coverage of and criticism over his investment in companies linked to controversial Nepali business figures Sulav Agrawal and Deepak Bhatta, who are currently under investigation for money laundering.
‘I am resigning from the position of Home Minister effective today to ensure impartial investigation into matters associated with me, and to make sure that there is no conflict of interest,’ Gurung wrote, saying that morality and public trust mattered more to him than office.
Gurung ended his message to the nation in English as he invoked the security forces, writing: &nbsp;‘For my country and For the respect of our security forces and For the youths of Nepal.’
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Gurung has become the second member to depart the Cabinet, serving for less than a month, despite the Nepali electorate’s hopes that Nepal would finally get a stable government after the RSP’s sweeping victory in the March elections.&nbsp;
Prime Minister Balendra Shah had sought clarification from Gurung on Wednesday after new details emerged about his shares in two micro-insurance companies, Star Micro Insurance and Liberty Micro Life, which are said to have been issued their licence by the Nepal Insurance Authority at the behest of Bhatta and Agrawal.
Gurung denied financial misconduct, saying that his investment in the two companies was included in his asset disclosure and insisting the misunderstanding is because of how the shares have been categorised.&nbsp;
Leaders within the RSP had called for an internal investigation into Gurung as they sought to maintain the party’s platform of clean governance and transparency. As such, Gurung’s position had become increasingly untenable, especially since former Labour Minister was sacked without being given an opportunity for clarification over a disciplinary breach involving his wife’s appointment to the Health Insurance Board.&nbsp;
On social media, Sah on Tuesday seemed to express dissatisfaction over the PM’s request for Gurung’s clarification.&nbsp;
Judging by the comments under Gurung’s resignation post, a significant part of the Nepali public seems to be firmly on Gurung’s side, blaming the mass media and what they call mouthpieces of old parties for driving him out of the Cabinet.&nbsp;
This is a reflection of his meteoric rise and the continued support he has maintained since he stepped into the spotlight as the leader of Nepal’s youth movement in the aftermath of the September protest.&nbsp;
Gurung has made headlines constantly ever since he burst onto the national stage, which includes questions over the degree of his and his organisation Hami Nepal’s involvement in the September 9 unrest, calls to divulge details behind Hami Nepal’s finances, and not paying five years of rent for an illegal lakefront property in Pokhara.&nbsp;
There have also been unsubstantiated claims, despite Gurung’s denial, about his ‘ties’ to the Free Tibet movement, which has made the Chinese— as well as Nepalis— wary.&nbsp;
As Home Minister, Gurung cultivated an image of a tough but approachabe leader, overseeing a series of high-profile arrests of previous political leadership and business figures even as he posted photos of sleeping in a sofa in his office, and engaged with the public on the streets and on social media.&nbsp;
As it stands, the Home Ministry was a bone of contention between Shah and RSP Chair Rabi Lamichhane before it was awarded to Gurung, who is a close ally of PM Shah. Analysts had noted that with Gurung in charge, the Home Ministry would be a hook for Shah if Lamichhane, with his share of controversies, stepped out of line.&nbsp;
Following Gurung’s resignation, the Prime Minister’s secretariat has said that the PM would take charge of the portfolio for the time being. But it will be interesting to see if and how fresh negotiations for the Ministry unfold within RSP.&nbsp;
And with his supporter base largely intact, it remains to be seen how much of an impact this setback will have on Sudan Gurung’s political aspirations.&nbsp;