Nijgadh airport is already underway. But is this future "hub" with a 15 million passenger capacity really needed?

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Can Nepal's rivers become waterways for shipping goods and people south to India? The governments of both countries just started to look into the options.

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It’s just another example of local infrastructure projects that are left half completed for years, sometimes forever. We once witnessed a similar case in Chitwan where the government was said to have funded a dike project along a river to protect villagers from the annual floods. On inspection to the remote river bank, however, all we found was a bit of rock and iron in the water! In this more recent case, it’s a bridge across Kamala river in Sindhuli that’s still incomplete.

The pillars were erected four years ago and the bridge project was off to a good start.

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​While reconstruction after the earthquake has barely started, Pokhara International Airport – 40 years in waiting – now appears close to take-off! In fact, two years ago chances still looked slim. But now the USD 215 million project is just a signature-on-a-loan-document away from driving in the dozers. So, who’s providing the loan? Well, not surprisingly, perhaps, China – as opposed to India. Indeed, the southern neighbor has instead been suspected of putting pressure on the government till now to stall the project!

The leaders in Kathmandu, and specifically the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), recently gave the go-ahead to once and for all start digging.

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The Mid-hill Highway is flanked by a series of roads that lead north and south, known as the North-south Corridors. These “corridor roads” came on the drawing board several decades ago as a major key to economic growth and development in the Mid-hills. Construction work began in the 1990s, and by the mid-2000s several roads were opened. With the recent completion of the Surkhet-Jumla corridor, there now is a whole network of north-south corridors! Do they help the local economy: it appears so!

The topographical context along the corridor roads is unique: in a matter of a hundred kilometres or so, the climate changes from near tropical in the Terai to temperate at the higher altitudes in the Mid-hills.

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