The Dashain homecoming is in full swing across Karnali, with a growing rush of travellers heading back to their villages and towns from across Nepal and from abroad ahead of Bada Dashain. Reports published by Nepali news outlets describe a province on the move: people crowding air and land routes alike, paying expensive fares and struggling to find tickets, yet determined to make it home in time to celebrate the festival with family and relatives. According to reports in Pradeskhabar and Ajakoartha, the rush is growing by the day, with crowds increasing on both air and land routes as travellers hurry to reach their destinations before the festival.
Every Route Under Pressure
What makes this year's rush particularly demanding is its breadth. The pressure is not confined to a single mode of transport: air routes and the road network are both reporting growing crowds, a sign that families spread across Nepal and overseas are converging on their home districts at the same time.
For travellers returning from abroad, the journey home does not stop at the airport or the border point. They too must join the scramble for seats on domestic flights and vehicles to complete the final leg into the hills, adding their numbers to an already swelling stream of people travelling from within the country. The result, the reports indicate, is a two-front crunch, with skies and highways filling up simultaneously as the countdown to Dashain shortens and travellers race the festival calendar to reach their destinations in time.
Expensive Fares and Elusive Tickets
For most travellers, the ordeal begins with money. Alongside the sheer volume of people on the move, the reports highlight a set of difficulties that shape nearly every journey home this season:
- Expensive fares: The price of reaching home, whether by air or by land, is a heavy burden, and travellers are paying it at a time of year when the trip is hardest to avoid.
- Difficulty finding tickets: Seats are scarce, and travellers are having to hunt for tickets and arrange their plans around whatever availability they can secure.
- Inconvenient routes: The routes themselves are described as inconvenient, stretching journeys well beyond what the distance alone would suggest.
For many travellers, particularly those whose earnings are modest, the combined weight of expensive fares and scarce tickets turns the journey home into a serious financial undertaking. Yet the reports make clear that few are choosing to stay behind. The difficulty of travel is being absorbed as a necessary price for the reunion that awaits at the end of it, and the growing crowds suggest that more people, not fewer, are choosing to make the trip.
The Long Way Home
The third complaint repeated by travellers concerns the routes. Described as inconvenient, they add time and fatigue to a journey that is already costly and difficult to book. For people racing the festival calendar, every extra hour on the road or spent waiting for a connection matters, and the inconvenience of the routes compounds the pressure created by high fares and ticket shortages.
With both air and land routes crowded at once, travellers also have little room to switch between options. If one mode of travel is full or unaffordable, the alternatives come with their own difficulties, leaving many with no choice but to accept a harder, slower or more expensive journey than they would otherwise have taken. The reports suggest that this lack of good alternatives is a central part of the Dashain travel experience in Karnali this year.
Hardship Forgotten in the Festive Rush
The consistent thread running through the reports, however, is not the hardship but the enthusiasm. Bada Dashain is the festival Nepali families most closely associate with home, and the travellers filling Karnali's routes are driven by the eagerness to celebrate it with family and relatives. The reports note that the enthusiasm of the festival is making travellers forget the hardship of the journey, reframing expensive fares, scarce tickets and inconvenient routes as obstacles to be endured rather than reasons to stay away.
That emotional calculation explains why the rush keeps growing despite the costs. People are hurrying to reach their destinations, accepting the difficulties of travel as the price of being home in time for the festival, and their numbers are rising on every route into the province.
With Bada Dashain approaching, the crowds on Karnali's air and land routes look set to grow further in the days ahead as the last wave of travellers makes the journey home. For the province's dispersed families, the message of this year's Dashain rush is a familiar one: however expensive the fare, however scarce the ticket and however inconvenient the route, the celebration with family and relatives is worth the journey.
