Kathmandu valley bandh - 25 January 2012

Different student unions today imposed a bandh in Kathmandu valley, that spans cities in three districts - Bhaktapur to the East, Kathmandu in the center and Lalitpur to the South (looking from Kathmandu point of view).

Now I do not want to give an all encompassing overview of the bandh, I am just going to write about how I perceived the bandh in my short 8km walk today (Yeah! Short it was!!! Legs aching)

Uploaded below is a map of the route I took, I have tried to make it as nice as I can but I'm quite challenged when it comes to matters of drawing or art.

I started at the bottom right corner of the Map, and took the green route ending up at the top left corner. :-) Here is what I saw along the route:

• 3 Ambulances and 1 Hospital staff bus.
• 2 Police Jeeps and two trucks
• 3 Motorcycles, one was kind enough to give me a short lift of about 500 meters when the kind man got a call on his cellphone that come home or something.
• 2 cars of diplomatic missions.
• About 10 cycles.
• 5 rubbish collection rickshaws.

I will continue to tweet (@bullet350) about the bandh and also maybe follow up with a blog post later about my walk back.

Additional news of the bandh can be found at:

• बन्दले उपत्यका सहित विभन्न जिल्लाको जनजीवन प्रभावित (Kantipur (in Nepali), http://www.ekantipur.com/np/2068/10/11/full-story/341731.html)
• Students union enforce valley banda against fuel price hike (Kantipur, http://www.ekantipur.com/2012/01/25/top-story/students-union-enforce-valley-banda-against-fuel-price-hike/347789.html)
• Valley banda cripples normal life (Republica, http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=41218)
• Students refuse to budge; bandh cripples country's capital (The Himalayan Times, http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Students+refuse+to+budge%3B+bandh+cripples+country%27s+capital+&NewsID=317986)
  

Easier getting into Kathmandu

On numerous occasions, I have waited for a fairly long length of time to get into Kathmandu city when driving into the capital (both from eastern - Bhaktapur route and western Thankot route), once I remember spending as much as 8 hours in a traffic jam at Kalanki.

More recently however, there is a welcome difference to this, better traffic management, i.e. more traffic police at the site and concrete road dividers (that I've seen stopping a LandCruiser driving at 120 kmph+ in its tracks, ofcourse the LC collided with it!) and road widening...

Now the drive from Thankot inside and crossing Kalanki is, dare I say it, quite easy...

Today, it was picked up by a news paper (Republica), here's a link to the story: http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=40974

YouTube video - World's Most Dangerous Roads - Nepal (2011) [BBC]

Welcome!

Welcome to Riding Bullets, my attempt at rationalizing in expressions and wording in thoughts about some journeys I undertook along some of the most beautiful places on this earth, these include road, off-road and trail journeys, some of which can be classified as adventures...

I will try to include maps, contact details and other useful resources that could be of use to other travelers who undertake the same journeys.

All for now, I will kick of this blog with a video I recently saw on YouTube.