By Anand Gurung

The other day I saw a man almost hit by a bus. If he had been even an inch closer, he would’ve surely been mowed down by the bus. He was walking, keeping to the side edges of one of many streets in the city where pavements and pedestrian crossings are almost non-existent. Maybe it was not as close as I imagined, but the packed public bus coming from behind seemed to have narrowly missed him while speeding past. The irony was that it all happened too quickly for the guy to even notice it.

But it’s no big deal. One always hear stories about some biker or a pedestrian being run over by a bus or large vehicle in road mishaps (And in some cases, if they are still alive and struggling, the vehicle coming back in reverse gear to make sure they are not).

Then again one night, a big supply truck, just fined by the traffic police at a check-point for some minor offence, swerved past a temple built in the middle of the road from the wrong side in great speed. The truck driver was clearly expressing his frustration in a chilly winter’s night, but it could have been a matter of life and death for a car or a motorcycle coming from the opposite direction.

And indeed, deaths from motorcycle accidents have increased sharply in the country over the last ten years. Hardly a day goes without news of someone or other (or sometimes your own) killed or injured in motorcycle accidents. But despite the higher fatality rate, motorcycles are and has always been the most preferred ride for many people in Kathmandu and other towns in the country. And despite taking exorbitant registration taxes for motorbikes, the government does very little to check the rise in motorcycle accidents in the cities and highways.

Likewise, every year, especially during the Dashain and Tihar festivals, we are used to reading or hearing about number of injuries and deaths in highway accidents, the cause often being drunk driving or poorly-maintained, over-loaded buses. Then again there are the recurring domestic airline accidents in which countless individuals, Nepali as well as foreigners, have lost their lives. And they happen without fail every year.

I got the grasp of how many of our countrymen play hide and seek with death while travelling in the hilly terrain when my housemaid narrated her narrow escape from death while coming to Kathmandu from her remote village in Kavre. She said the rickety old bus she was travelling in was so overloaded with passengers, inside as well as on the roof – and, coupled with that, the driver being young and seemingly inexperienced – that while negotiating a difficult turn, it almost veered off the road to plunge hundreds of meters down into the fast-flowing river. She said she had the fright of her life. But despite the perils of the hilly road, she travels to her village every year to celebrate Dashain with her family.

Returning to Kathmandu, I will draw two examples to better illustrate the riding experience in the city.

The Japanese teach us some road sense during a Japan Fair held in the capital recently.
The Japanese teach us some road sense during a Japan Fair held in the capital recently.
The first was when I was heading towards the city from the north side of the valley after a day’s hike in the Shivapuri hills. As it was already late evening and there were no other vehicles on sight, we had no option but to board a packed microbus. The driver was a thin young man, looked still to be in his teens while his assistant (or the “conductor”, as we call them) was a boy of 12 or 13. The vehicle soon took up speed in the tiny strip of road, zooming past vehicles, negotiating pot holes recklessly, even almost hitting an oncoming vehicle. Only when the passengers complained, he slowed down a little. I was sure that he had recently received his driving license, or maybe was not even properly licensed or trained as a driver.

Then as we approached ring road, the microbus stopped in front of a hospital where an elderly couple was waiting. The old man seemed to have just been discharged from the hospital as he looked frail and dazed, while his devoted wife helped him get on the vehicle. The elderly couple was lucky enough to find a seat. Only good thing about travelling in a public transport in Kathmandu (or in fact any city in the world) is that you see life in its full spectrum.

However, the microbus was not going all the way to the final stop because “it was very late”. The driver said he was heading to his garage and we were dropped halfway. Nobody protested because that’s what everybody was told when they boarded the vehicle. It was sad to see the elderly couple already starting to walk in a slow, tender pace. They didn’t hope to find another public vehicle at this time of the night.

We found a cab after walking a while. The driver seemed to be straight out of Martin Scorsese movie Taxi Driver as he started complaining about bad traffic, the filth and dirt in the city, and how the corrupt politicians and officials are ruining the country.

I enjoyed listening to the cabby. But when we reached our destination and I looked at the taxi meter while reaching for my purse, my heart sank: The meter was tampered with to charge higher fares. He was no better than those very corrupt politicians he hated so passionately.

The next time I was coming to the city from the outskirts on a car driven by a friend. It was Saturday and the road was pretty much empty. We discussed how when we were kids there were very few houses on either the side of the road and how the sight of paddy and mustard fields made the drive to the town enjoyable.

But the nostalgia was short-lived when the friend had to slam the brakes hard to prevent a crash with a motorcycle that suddenly cut in front of us.

“Is he a Hindi film hero or something,” my friend stared at the motorcyclist fuming with rage as the latter dropped his girlfriend, and drove on, simply caring less for what had just happened.

And then just as we were about to reach the city, we were stuck in a traffic jam. We could understand this happening on weekdays, but not on a Saturday afternoon. Frustrated waiting for the jam to clear, one friend asked the traffic police what was causing the jam. He said they are stopping the vehicles for a while to let the President’s convoy pass through. There was a kilometer long jam on either side of the road. We just looked at each other out of sheer helplessness.

But we could take heart from the fact that a minister’s car was also stuck in the jam behind us. So, having nothing to do but wait, we came up with some interesting remedies for the growing traffic problem in the city. One friend suggested that the government needs to invest more in upgrading the city’s infrastructures to make it a vibrant metropolis. He said the government must start to build wider roads, flyovers, subways, and better, more efficient means of transportation including fleet of public buses and underground railway system that run till late in the night.

“With the volume of vehicles in the city increasing every year, in ten years time even walking in these narrow, congested roads will be difficult, let alone driving anything,” he said.

While he was saying that I thought about the poorly regulated public transport run by syndicates and “transport mafias” that doesn’t follow scheduled timetable (One reason why Kathmandu comes to a grinding halt after 8 pm). And those of yore that did – government run Sajha bus and China gifted trolley – are already in the scrap yard.

Then another friend said that even if the government finally builds these infrastructures and improve the condition of the roads in the city and highway – of course with the help of some donor or friendly country (we Nepalis hardly seem to be able to do anything on our own) – the problem of long traffic jams and reckless driving will still not be solved.

“This is because in Nepal, people still lack a general civic sense,” she said.

She was right. People blow their cars or motorcycles horns ceaselessly, park their vehicles anywhere they want, drive recklessly (and with the headlights switched to full beam instead of dip while driving in the night, dazzling other road users), and don’t yield the right of way to pedestrians. And despite the risks, the locals are somewhat used to jay walking and thus account for majority of traffic fatalities in Kathmandu.

Then the first one argued that people should not be blamed, it is the government’s responsibility to lay the foundation for a modern, vibrant city and implement the rules and regulations, even forcibly if need be, to ensure that everything functions well.

“The concept of urban planning and development was never really understood by the city planners here,” he said. “Just imagine, what would happen if a big earthquake strikes Kathmandu. Experts say it is imminent. This ancient city would turn into a huge mass of concrete rubble. It would be a calamity.”

Then as we turned left to a side road to avoid the traffic jam, I saw a young couple walking down the street. A public bus was racing at great speed from behind. There was no sidewalk. The man, as if knowing by instinct that a bus was behind, grabbed his partner’s hand and pulled her close to him.

And I thought such love and care could be found only in fairy tales.