Monday, May 07, 2007

Kathmandu jams

If you ever been stuck in Kathmandu jams, you will know how suffocating it can be with smokes, dust, horns, ever-increasing vehicles and mindless people. Vehicles are increasing in a daily basis and it is said that if all the vehicle are being lined up, then the entire Kathmandu road will be found shorter. I don't know how much facts support that said statement. But whenever you get stuck in jams which don't seem to move for almost half-an-hour, you feel that all the Kathmandu dwellers are on the street in their vehicles at the same time - atleast I feel that way. If people are little calm, then we don't ever need to get stuck in jams. Everyone is in a hurry and as a result everyone gets stuck. We should abide by the rule - first-in-first-out but here people try to follow last-in-first-out rule. Usually people take up the wrong lane in order to leave the jam behind and in a matter of seconds, two-way lane gets filled with unidirectional vehicles. You don't want to be there.

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Yesterday I got stuck in a not-would-be-but-people-caused jam. A taxi tried to change the lane to move in other direction. It's quite common in Kathmandu. You back the vehicle and change the lane and direction. You may see the traffic policeman approaching a taxi (see image above), which hit the micro-bus during backing process. The other side is blocked up by the micro-bus, driving in the wrong lane (see below), trying to overtake, God knows who. This is called bottle-neck and it happens almost everyday. If only people have mind, they would never hurry to drive, change lane and would never get stuck in jams.

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3 comments:

Sugam said...

so true....nice work with the camera....Nepali people (including me at times but not to that extent) are in a hurry most of the time to get to places and that often leads to such incidents.
i dont see these kind of jams getting better any sooner... unless kathmandu gets bigger by some chance and the road gets wider and longer, you will have more chances of getting on the road with another hard hitting exposé.

anjesh said...

wider, longer and bigger kathmandu roads is impossible (unless kathmandu is moved out of kathmandu) but if people are little calm, then we may avoid tedious, long jams.

prawesh said...

I have never been in long time jams yet, but sometimes in short ones, which too I can't bear. So what I do is get out of the vehicle and start to walk-no option.