KATHMANDU, OCTOBER 17
The official holidays for Nepal's greatest festival of Dashain ended today. However, life inside Kathmandu valley is unlikely to normalise for the next few days.
People's movement inside major cities of Kathmandu valley appeared reduced, quite similar to the time of the prime days of the festival.
Hundreds of thousands of people had left the valley for their villages to celebrate Dashain festival. The inflow of the majority of people, however, will fully resume only after completion of Dashain festival on the full moon day on Wednesday.
Around 7,000 vehicles and an estimated 40,000 people had entered inside the valley till 5:00pm today from the four major entry points at Nagdhunga, Bhaktapur, Mudku and Pharping, as per Metropolitan Traffic Police Division. Likewise, 4,500 vehicles and an estimated 25,000 people left the valley today. "The traffic inside the major city junctures has not noticeably increased as of today and will likely remain the same for the next two days," said Sanjib Sharma Das, Superintendent of Police at MTPD.
"Life will return to normalcy completely in the valley after Kojagrat Purnima (the full moon day)," he said.
Traffic police have said that above 1.2 million people had left Kathmandu to celebrate Dashain with their families.
More people, especially school and college students, however, were already in the villages following the closure of schools and colleges due to the COV- ID-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic began, more than 2.5 million people used to leave the valley.
Authorities have said that more people are likely to return to Kathmandu valley after Tihar, which is regarded as another big festival of Nepalis.
The inflow of people is likely to increase in the days to come as the COVID-19 pandemic has started to slow down lately with the availability of vaccines for the greater portion of the population.
A version of this article appears in the print on October 18, 2021, of The Himalayan Times.
