A month ago I had the rare opportunity to travel to and conduct a survey project in Karnali and Sudurpaschim province of the country. Once the opportunity to witness the topography, people and society of those two areas of the nations arose, my eyes gleamed up.
I was determined to seize it, which I did. Before I jump into the nitty gritty of the travel, the lived experiences and observations, let me first brief you all the prelude behind this voyage.
The prelude
The Young Lawyers Interest Committee under the Nepal Bar Association (the umbrella organisation of practising lawyers) had called for a proposal in regards to surveying the theme of the problems and challenges faced by young lawyers throughout the nation.
Our team of seven; lawyers, sociologists, economic professors and graphic designers submitted a proposal to conduct the survey. From the five proposals received by the Young Lawyers Interest Committee, our proposal was approved. The survey had to be carried out all over the country which seemed a herculean task at first glance. But like they say challenges bring opportunities.
The major deadlock in terms of the survey was to define the term youth/young lawyer. Various interesting views came on board. One was to define the term ‘youth’ by the age of 40 or below. Another was to define the term as an individual practising law for 15 years after obtaining the advocate license.
Another interesting suggestion was lawyers having experience of less than 25 years in the legal field should be deemed as young lawyers. However, it was ultimately accepted that an individual aged 40 or below should be termed as a youth and hence a young lawyer.
This was decided unanimously as per the standard set by the International Bar Association as well as per the IBA Young Lawyer’s Report, 2022 (page 9) and the National Youth Council Act, 2015. The Act in Section 2. g) defines youth as a person aged 16 years to 40 years. In this way, the survey questionnaire was prepared to cater for the quantitative method of data collection. Simultaneously focus group discussions were carried out to collect qualitative data from the survey.
In this opinion piece, I will focus solely on the journey and lived experience in the Karnali region. Before entering the subject matter of this piece I would like to clarify that my perspective or observations may not be well balanced and a bit biased to some extent as this was my first time in Karnali and I spent only a couple of days in this region. So here it goes.
Seeing and living Karnali: Jumla first
The journey to Karnali began through Surkhet. On the 16th of August Advocate Prajwal Raj Gyawali (Prajwal dai from hereon) and I headed to Jumla. The first night we stayed at a hotel in Rakam, Dailekh. The Karnali River was growling and flowing behind our backs the whole night. It was a surreal experience.
The Karnali highway from Rakam to Manma, the headquarters of the Kalikor district, is considered the most dangerous roadway in Nepal. To our amazement, this indeed was the truth. On the one side, you see the vast Karnali river flowing and on the other side you can witness the dried-out landslides full of rocks and soil.
Meanwhile, some rocks eroded by the landslides were huge enough to reach the elevation of two-storied and three-storied houses. The avalanche road from Rakam to Kalikot was too narrow at some point and the huge landslides have swept away the road to a significant extent.
In some parts of the road, the bridges have been swept away by the floods due to which the vehicle has to be driven through the river itself. The effect of the landslide resulted in a few waterfalls falling into the roadway. At times when we looked across the hills we could see gigantic dried-out landslides commencing from the summit of the hills down to the ground like a once active waterfall that has now dried out.
For such a thrilling and dangerous drive we require an experienced, skilled driver. We have one in the name of Mohammad Momin aka Guruji in Surkhet. He was acclimatised to driving on this precarious roadway. While we were driving in the avalanche roads full of enormous landslides dying to dive into Karnali, guruji was fully concentrated on divulging the horror stories endured by other people and vehicles on this highway.
He started his narration by stating that a huge landslide came down this road from high above the hill, causing a tractor driving on this roadway to be covered by the mass waste which flowed down. The local authorities tried their best to rescue the buried tractor but to no avail. So the blocked road was cleared out and the road was now on top of the buried tractor.
A journalist who went to cover this incident was later killed by a boulder which apparently ‘ chased down the journalist and killed him’. Aftermath of this event the other local journalists in this area erected a statute in his remembrance which was later wiped away by the following year’s landslide. And while he shared these stories with us he was calmly driving us through the same pathway, the same area where these events had unfolded. While we were a bit nervous and sceptical mentally at that moment, he was driving in a ‘chill’ state of mind. This reminded me of the Nepali proverb ‘Ki parera janinchha ki padhera janinchha‘ (Either you know through experience or studying).
The next day we reached Jumla around 4 in the afternoon. The Jumla district of Karnali felt quite chilly for us compared to the scorching heat of Surkhet which we had just escaped. The Sinja River flowing in the middle of the paddy fields in vivid colours was quite mesmerising.
The forest in the nearby hills had coniferous trees suggesting the cold climate in this region. We were so casual in our travel that we had not even carried a single jacket. The cold was a bit stinging once the sun set, so Prajwal Dai and I quickly walked to buy a jacket in the nearby local shops. For a while, it felt like we were late to act as dusk had already approached and almost all shop doors were slammed shut for the day.
Just as a lady pulled down the shutter of her shop for the day, we swiftly stopped her and inquired about the possibility of buying jackets. As we were too tired and without any other option left we did not bargain and picked up the jackets at the price she quoted. The early morning in Jumla was greeted by the mist and by the famous Jumli Syau, local walnut, honey and fapar ko roti. Jumla’s headquarters Khalanga seemed to be a small town but the life there seemed to be fine except for the extreme winters each year as stated by the local Jumlis.
The Mugu side of Karnali
Now the next leg of our journey was the most anticipated one of them all. As the GK books state, we were now heading to the ‘most underdeveloped and rural district of the country’ Mugu. Mugu was not part of the young lawyers’ survey. This was a rare day off in our 11-day journey in the western side of Nepal with the vested interest of visiting the Rara Lake situated in Mugu. From Jumla we had to return the same route until we reached Nagma of Kalikot district from where we proceeded to Mugu.
Mugu district seemed to be a marvellous force of nature lacking the human touch. Throughout our journey we passed through enormous mountain-like hills with mostly coniferous trees showing up to us, signifying the cool climate of the region. Apart from these tall mountainous florae, we only witness a few shrubs, wildflowers and weed plants on our way.
The road to Mugu from Jumla was only blacktopped on the way to the Sinja valley of Jumla. However, it was not much of a nuisance to us. Even if Mugu is the second last district to be connected to the national road network the roadway seemed to be comfortable enough in the context of an unpaved road. The houses in Mugu were quite peculiar, with two to three-storied houses in existence.
The storied houses seemed to have verandah-like structures seemingly utilized for drying the crops such as maze, millet and stockpiling the dried hay. The villages and the houses seemed to be either cramped up together or just a few existed aloofly. It was a pleasure to witness a unique style of Nepali architecture which perhaps is not well known even outside the outskirts of Karnali.
During the journey, we got to witness very few locals around the age of 20 to 40. Most of the locals were either women, children or senior citizens and very few youths seemed to be around. The major occupations there seemed to be herding goats and traditional agriculture. It reminded me of studying the subject matter of nomadic lifestyle in Sociology and where Nepal is still stuck at.
The thought swirling around my head was that when the rest of the world is busy immersing itself in Artificial Intelligence and technological innovations, we are still stuck in the vicious cycle of trying to arrange two meals a day and maintaining a roof above the head for our families. Apart from the houses and schools I did not even witness any other governmental institutions or ‘Kathmandu’s presence’ on the way. The lack of presence of any federal or provincial government agency in this part of Karnali was poignant.
We decided to rest for the night in Salleri, near Rara Lake. The ‘lodge’ in Salleri seemed to be just a makeshift one with minimal resources of food, electricity and water. The Rara lake was just an hour-long walk from Salleri. We trusted our legs to do the walking rather than ride a mule (literally called a horse in Nepali terms in the locality).
We decided to visit the magnificent Rara Lake that same evening, to save time for the following day. The road towards Rara Lake was through the dense forest of the Rara National Park which was completely muddy. Throughout our descent, there was pin-drop silence all around the national park.
The descending stone-topped road towards the lake was completely muddy as well, perhaps caused and carried by the hooves of the mules. Mind you there was no infrastructure of any kind within the national park apart from the couple of Nepal Army’s buildings.
The lake was majestic despite it being cloudy and rain drizzling during our short half-hour awestruck stint in the lake. Such was the massive area of the lake that even our 360-degree immersion towards the lake failed to view the lake in its entirety.
With a little ray of hope, we climbed up the view tower on the shores of the lake expecting a wholesome view of the lake. The view from the top of the tower was not convincing as well. If we had abundant time we would have reached the Murma Top, from where the complete 360-degree panoramic view of the lake can be enjoyed. Even the shores of the lake had just brief information about the lake, one view tower, the green plain fields, the surrounding forest of the national park, a small village and a hotel on the other side of the lake. Apart from these nothing else.
There is no doubt that Rara Lake has set the stage for the potential development of this region. One online news media has reported that more than ten thousand tourists visited Rara in the year 2080 in just ten months of the year. This opportunity for tourism and development of the region has to be tapped promptly in the coming days. It is wonderful to hear that a luxury hotel is being built in Murma top which will no doubt do wonders for the development of this region.
Adieu Karnali!
Early morning at 6 AM we began our journey towards the Sudurpaschim province. There was no cellphone tower connection of the telephone companies that morning in Mugu. It took us about two hours of downhill drive before we retrieved the connection of Nepal Telecom.
On our way, we stopped at a roadside house (not a teashop) for a tea break. To our amazement, there was no milk in that area (perhaps no animal husbandry apart from the goats) so no milk teak for us. This was quite surprising to experience. We were served with the jadibuti chiya (herbal tea) prepared from the local herbs found abundantly in the Mugu district. My eyes went out to the Laliguranas juice kept outside the house for sale which I bought straight away. The taste of the juice was unique when I shared it with my family during the Dashain festival.
At the end of the third day of the trip, we reached Mangalsen, the headquarters of the Accham district in the Sudurpaschim province for the overnight stay. Sudurpaschim felt heaven when remembering the harsh climate and the terrains of Mugu. If Mugu, Karnali was harsh then Sudurpaschim was absolutely serene.
Realisation
All in all, Karnali seemed to be just a wee bit of what Kathmandu is in terms of infrastructures, human resources, livelihood, dreams and hopes. If a person says that they will reside in Mugu or start a business there in Mugu, for now, you have to say they are either joking or mad. We did not travel to Gamgadhi, the headquarters of the district where everything seems to be situated in terms of the government’s presence and the major infrastructures of the district. But for the rest of Mugu, you only get the difficult terrains, perhaps the continuous dreams and hopes from and towards Kathmandu and the expectations of the ones employed abroad.
If Kathmandu has huge schools, hospitals, roads, hotels, and a hustle and bustle of people and vehicles, Mugu for now only has the calmness and peace missing out in Kathmandu. Perhaps now Mugu can also have the infrastructure and the life Kathmandu offers.
Since time immemorial Mugu has been waiting for Kathmandu to let go of its centralized power and resources to let it expand to its world which Kathmandu is hesitating to do so by carrying them with a total clenched fist. We can just hope and expect that Kathmandu is kind and wise enough to realize and let go of the leash tied to centralization and the comfort it has been giving for more than seven decades mostly towards itself. For now, let us hope the value of decentralisation eventually and promptly gets sunk into the mindset of Kathmandu enabling Mugu to finally breathe towards its prosperity.