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Stepping into a vehicle in Nepal is, I sometimes feel, a bit like playing Russian roulette. On my very first trip here as a tourist, the bus I was on coming from Pokhara to Kathmandu had a minor crash. Now whether it was the driver’s fault or the fault of the bridge rail­ing which was just kind of standing there, right at the edge of the bridge, I may never know. Luckily, the only one who was injured was me. Due to nerve damage, it was more than seven years before feeling came back into my big right toe. But it was ‘only’ a very minor accident. But every day we read about bus and jeep crashes as the complexity of the landscape, combined with some less than perfect driving, takes its toll. So where does that leave us, the passenger, who needs to get from A to B? Even driving our own bike, cycle, or car leaves us open to others’ bad driving or the whims of the universe. Sure, in every country there are accidents, and some pretty major ones, but what I am really getting at is: why, given the hilly and often bad road conditions, are drivers so gung-ho?

Bus drivers are more often than not young guys with an image to keep. And who doesn’t like a young, leather-clad stud, with his own (albeit 48 seater) vehicle? When I lived out in the sticks, the local girls’ eyes lit up at the arrival of certain bus drivers and more often than not there was at least one female sitting up front to keep him company.

Even the older guys drive as though the devil is on their tail. Overtake on a blind corner? Why not! Every driver gets excited when a bit of the road opens up. Here is a chance to demonstrate his ability to be in the next Grand Prix. I’m quite surprised there are not more road accidents in Kathmandu than there are. Despite the lack of official driving lessons and knowledge of road signs, drivers in Nepal are fully present 99 percent of the time.

Avoiding a stray dog, cow or child is part of what driving is all about, and at that they are experts. Wander onto the road in a British town and you are likely to become toast whether you are a distracted human, stray dog (highly unlikely), or a cow (extremely unlikely). Fully trained and well equipped with a deep understanding of correct road procedures, your average British driver is under-prepared for unusual occurrences. So, yes, despite being, on the whole, horrible drivers deal­ing with horrendous roads, Nepali drivers do have their plus side.

And, what is with this extreme, yogi like patience? Being stuck in a traffic jam does not ruffle feathers. Drivers will wait not only patiently but with what appears to be medi­tative mindfulness while the line of cars in front does not move for 10 minutes, or a truck is unloading its goods. Or, my favourite and a reg­ular occurrence on my road, baby chicks are herded up by mother hen.

Indeed, maybe us pedestrians need to adopt the guise of chickens in order to cross the road. (I’m sure there is a joke in their somewhere!) Certainly those of us in the guise of zebras are not doing too well. I have noticed that most pedestrians have taken to using zebra crossings. So, obviously it must be those motor­bike helmets and the metal walls of vehicles stopping the flow of infor­mation on these odd, and often fad­ing, white stripes on the road from entering the heads of drivers.

While road safety is a very serious topic, sometimes you just have to shrug your shoulders and smile. That, or cry…

These days Prime Minister KP Oli is being compared with King Mahendra by two different groups. The first views him as a nationalist just because he stood up to India during the Indian embargo and signed vari­ous agreements with China to end our sole reliance on India. The other group feels he is displaying dictatorial tendencies, and hence the comparison with Mahendra. PM Oli doesn’t like being com­pared with the late king. The iro­ny, though: the prime minister, who finds it insulting being com­pared with “dictator” Mahendra, has no problem marking the birth anniversary of Lenin, whose bru­tality knew no bounds. Lenin had even the children of the House of Romanov killed in a gruesome manner and is reputed as the father of the totalitarian system.

Anyway, both groups compar­ing PM Oli with Mahendra are wrong. He is no Mahendra. At least not yet.

Mahendra, the nationalist

Mahendra’s crowning achieve­ment is not limited to standing up to India’s undue interference, unlike what the first group mis­takenly believes. While he stood up to Indian interference, he was also receptive to its valid con­cerns. He handled India diplomat­ically, not with bellicose rhetoric; and he made China happy, not by flattering it or submitting to its will, but by being a reliable friend. Nonetheless, most of his foreign policy achievements are attributed to BP Koirala, as if the monarch was in deep slumber until his 1960 coup.

Mahendra could get Chinese help to build a highway con­necting the two countries at the height of political turmoil in China, whereas our new leaders including PM Oli have not been able to persuade the Chinese to reopen the highway which the Chinese side closed after the dev­astating 2015 earthquake. And Nepal’s conspicuous absence from this year’s Boao forum in China, despite it being one of the founding members, and China’s indifference to it, is telling.

PM Oli may have all the good intentions but he is yet to dis­play finesse and learn the delicate tight rope walk in dealing with the neighbors. Therefore the first group is wrong to compare PM Oli with Mahendra. It is way too early to bestow him with the honor.

Mahendra, the dictator

If Mahendra is to be judged sole­ly on the basis of the party-less Panchayat system he introduced, then all of today’s political forces need to be judged on their past.

PM Oli and his comrades should be judged on the senseless vio­lent acts against the alleged class enemies. The Nepali Congress should be judged based on the crimes it committed in the name of democracy, which included hurling a bomb at the monarch and hijacking a plane. Let’s not even talk about the Maoists and their brutality.

While we are made to remem­ber Mahendra’s “sins” against democracy, the fact that he was working on a democratic consti­tution just before his death is rare­ly mentioned. Nor do we credit him for his revolutionary land reform. Mahendra made careful and calculated moves and did what he had to in order to uphold Nepal’s interests. And he is hated for this reason by the leaders and scholars who would rather Nepal compromised its sovereignty and surrendered itself to foreigners. He is hated to weaken Nepali nationalism.

Moreover, Mahendra is made a villain to make BP Koirala a hero. Mahendra needs to be portrayed as a dictator to strengthen and perpetuate the maha manab (‘Great Man’) BP cult, to glorify the violence and crimes against the country and people by the Congress and the Communists in the past and justify their present misdeeds in the name of democ­racy. And he needs to be demon­ized so that current leaders can continue with their politics sans principles.

Mahendra is feared, hence rid­iculed, to hide their own infe­riority, because today’s rulers have been unable to achieve what he did in his brief direct reign of 11 years. Also, it is profitable to loathe him because we are a country full of sellouts and turn­coat intellectuals who have long sacrificed their ability to reason for lucrative positions, junkets, money and whiskey.

Needless to say, the second group is wrong too. PM Oli, despite good decisions here and there, and so far seemingly bet­ter than his predecessors, is no Mahendra. Mahendra was far more democratic, patriotic, pro­gressive and visionary than what KP Oli was or is at the moment.

A few days ago, Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali returned from a visit to China. It is widely believed that his trip was planned to ready the grounds for Oli’s impending visit to China. Gyawali also reaffirmed Nepal’s commitment to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) where he highlighted five priority areas for Nepal to work with China. The BRI, as we well know, has been a bane for our southern neighbor as the ambitious project actively promotes strong Chinese ties with regions tra­ditionally considered to be within India’s ‘sphere of influence’.

Gyawali made one statement during his visit to China that did the rounds on social media here in Nepal: he shared with Chi­nese officials a dream of his to ride to China on a train from Nepal, soaking up the scenic beauty of the Himalayas as he crosses the bor­der. As such, the five priority areas under BRI for Nepal, Gyawali explained, would be expanding transport networks, building inter-country electricity networks, modernizing agriculture, promot­ing tourism and fostering peo­ple-to-people ties. Such plans have been in the hearts of many Nepalis for a long time and, if implemented, would indeed propel Nepal’s socio-economic transformation.

But truth is that such conversa­tions have been going on between officials of Nepal, and India and China for many years. The narrative has somewhat changed since the 2015 India-backed blockade, but the effort to transform these con­versations into reality is what really matters. And as we know, conversa­tions with the Chinese are still slow and dull compared with those with the Indians.

In line with protocol and geopolit­ical niceties, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is visiting Nepal next week. Modi’s visit is expected to create some turbulence and it will be closely watched by the Nepali leadership and the public alike. It is likely that some section of the population will protest Modi’s visit and the tensions from the 2015 blockade will resurface to a certain extent. However, Modi knows well that Nepalis have a short public memory and will easily forget the past if a fresh and positive envi­ronment for Nepal-India relations can be built through this trip. Such an environment can easily be cre­ated if substantive agreements and concrete implementation timelines for major development projects can be highlighted. That would go a long way in softening the stance of a large section of the Nepali public toward India.

In recent years, the popular sentiment in Nepal has been inclined toward China and Modi now has a chance to push back, if only by a few inches. However, it’s worth remembering that PM Oli him­self has been a major catalyst in promoting closer ties with China and in distancing common Nepalis from the Indian state and leader­ship. And no sooner does Modi leave Nepal than Oli will begin to plan his trip to China.

With such high level visits taking place one after another, the develop­ment discourse has really gathered momentum. For the first time, there is a general consensus among top Nepali leaders that major political goals have been achieved and that the country’s priority must shift to development. As such, the question for Modi is whether he will choose to dwell on politics or help Nepal’s government lay the ground for ful­filling the development promises it has made to the Nepali people.

I was told about some people who trekked up to Poon Hill, visited Chit­wan, went paragliding, kayaking etc while missing limbs, being sight impaired or suffering from other debilitating afflictions. But on closer inspection, these amazing people are veterans and ex-policemen with disabilities gotten in the line of duty. These are not your average ‘mobility challenged’ people. To my mind, people who are mobility challenged are not only those severely affected, but also those from among a grow­ing number of retiring baby boom­ers (those born between 1946 to 1964) who have reduced mobility due to age and are not necessarily officially termed ‘disabled’. Many of these people now have the time and financial means to travel. But they are not, on the whole, mountain­eers, trekkers or adventure tourists.

So let’s not focus too much on the big adventures, let’s focus on acces­sibility on a more mundane level. Is it too much to ask for ramps in hotels, handrails in cafes and bars, larger bathrooms, disabled-friendly toilets in public places such as the TIA, and in government offices? It has been, I believe, the aging baby boomers in developed countries who have been pushing for better accessibility on transport, in public buildings, schools, housing, hotels etc. But who is pushing for better accessibility for the elderly and the disabled here in Nepal?

There are two strands to this issue of accessible tourism: the rights of the mobility challenged person, and the possibility of a new, prosperous source of revenue for the country. The size of the potential tourist market cannot be denied, but with less than one million tourists currently visiting Nepal, can the Nepali infrastructure cope? And can Nepal develop its infra­structure to such an extent as to entice this new tourist to come in the first place? Perhaps more impor­tantly, should Nepal develop infra­structure to meet this demand at the expense of infrastructure for its own citizens?

In a country where it’s often a struggle and a bit of a trek for able-bodied people to walk along the sidewalk (if there is one) of the capital city, is it possible to meet the challenges associated with providing disabled-friendly accessibility for its own citizens as well as visitors?

There are people working very hard for the rights of dis­abled Nepalis, both in local and international organizations, and I wonder what they think of the idea of accessible tourism. True, at the ICAA, it was mentioned that highlighting disability in any way is a positive thing, and that accessible tourism will open up employment oppor­tunities for disabled Nepalis. The conference also included a Mayors’ Panel, where city mayors came together to learn and share what is happening in their city with regard to accessibility. This, I thought, was an invaluable addition to the conference. Unfortunately, only three mayors from the whole country found the time to attend.

Accessible tourism could be the start of something really innova­tive and progressive, benefiting everyone. Or it could just end up benefiting those already in the tourism sector while the rest of us continue to show signs of age related reduced mobility, and continue to climb over rubble, struggle to get onto public transport ad nauseam…