Wired Kathmandu

I still remember an ICIMOD colleague, a finnish lady, once mentioned to me, "I wonder why do people need to hang all those wires around the city". I looked around and wondered "Wow! she's right!". I have never realized that. After 25 years of staying here at Kathmandu, I saw that there's not a street, alley that don't have wires hanging in air. We are so much used to hanging wires, our eyes filter them unconsciously. We have to be reminded that it's there. Among those wires are electricity wires, telephone, channels cables, and now internet cables. I bet people would also hang wireless cables, if only they could.

From the visible perspective, Kathmandu should be one of the most wired city. What do you say, folks?

If you look down from my home veranda, there's a bunch of wires running across the alley towards my home and few of them are actually for my home - telephone, channel cable, internet cable and electricity. The white box in the dirty looking pole is actually the world link internet cable box. You can imagine how easy it was to get internet for me. Don't ever think of stealing internet from there.

Hail wired Kathmandu!! Now I see wires everyday ;)

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.


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.

Artifact to be preserved or replaced?

Can you see what exactly it is? Looks like some sort of artifact.



Take a close look.



More close. Maybe you want to take a sit now.



I hope you can see that it's a bus stand (5 minutes walk from Narayan Gopal Chowk). It has been there for more than a year in such condition. It's obvious that some reckless driver had hit on it and I still wonder from which side. Isn't that something to be preserved for future generation to see? Maybe it is otherwise it doesn't make sense to have it lying there for more than a year. I propose that it be fenced to protect it from amendments.

Kathmandu: A death zone?

I was amazed to find out that Canada, the second largest country in terms of area (9,984,670 Km2), has an estimated population of 32 million; whereas Nepal, with an area of 141,181Km2, has an estimated population of 27 million (as of July 2005). Our population almost matches to that of Canada. These days, it is heard that there are almost 2 million or more people in the Kathmandu city (area 50.67km2) alone. Can you imagine that? Which means that there are almost 20,000,000/56.67 people per km2 that is around 394,710/km2 density. You can clearly notice that in the evening, with lots of traffic jams, crowds, smoke, dust. (I was stuck in a jam today for almost 15-20 minutes, which otherwise would take me 2 minutes) I wonder how long will it take Kathmandu to top the most polluted and crowded city. The only alternative to reduce crowd in the capital is to move capital out of Kathmandu, which does sound ridiculous. But there's no any other solution. It won't take time for us to get lung problems and so many different types of diseases. There are already such cases. I heard that almost 50 traffic policemen or more got bed-ridden at the same time a month or two back, cause smoke, dust, pollution. I don't know the exact source. It's very likely for such news. I ain't and won't be surprised at all.
Certainly it won't take long for Kathmandu to be called "a death zone".