More than 576,000 people left the Kathmandu Valley to celebrate Bada Dashain, according to figures released by the Kathmandu Valley Traffic Police Office. The office recorded 576,578 travellers departing the Valley in 79,676 vehicles between Ghatasthapana, the first day of the festival, and Navami, its ninth day, capturing one of the largest temporary population movements in Nepal. The exodus saw residents of the capital travel to their home districts across the country to receive tika from elders and celebrate the festival with their families. Police said the heaviest outbound traffic passed through Nagdhunga, Bhaktapur and Pharping, among other major checkpoints, while transport entrepreneurs had earlier estimated that around 1.1 million people would leave the Valley for the festival.
Counting the exodus from Ghatasthapana to Navami
The Kathmandu Valley Traffic Police Office maintains a daily tally of vehicles and passengers passing through the Valley's main entry and exit checkpoints throughout the Dashain travel period. According to the final count, 576,578 people left the Valley in 79,676 vehicles between Ghatasthapana and Navami, figures reported by Gorkhapatra and other outlets.
The headline figures released by the office are as follows:
- Total departures between Ghatasthapana and Navami: 576,578 travellers
- Vehicles involved in the exodus: 79,676
- Departures recorded by Kartik 1: 496,323 travellers
An earlier set of figures showed that 496,323 travellers had already left the Valley by Kartik 1, the first day of the month in which the main festival days fall. The updated tally means that more than 80,000 additional travellers joined the exodus in the days between Kartik 1 and Navami, reflecting the final rush to reach home before Dashami, the day of tika.
Reporting on the festival travel noted that the outflow was particularly intense in the run-up to the main days of Dashain, with more than 56,000 people leaving the Valley in a single 24-hour span at the height of the rush, according to RatoPati.
Nagdhunga, Bhaktapur and Pharping among the busiest exit points
Police said the highest numbers of departing travellers were recorded at Nagdhunga, the Valley's principal western gateway, along with the checkpoint at Bhaktapur in the east and the Pharping route to the south, together with other major exit points around the Valley.
Nagdhunga, which carries traffic from the capital toward the western hills and the Terai, traditionally handles a large share of outbound Dashain travellers, while the Bhaktapur checkpoint serves passengers heading east and the Pharping route channels traffic toward southern districts. The concentration of departures through a handful of routes is a recurring feature of the festival travel season, and the traffic police office records passenger and vehicle numbers at these points as part of its festival-period monitoring.
The scale of the movement is underlined by the vehicle count: 79,676 vehicles carried the 576,578 departing travellers between Ghatasthapana and Navami, an average of roughly seven people per vehicle.
Entrepreneurs had projected a far larger exodus
Before the festival began, transport entrepreneurs had estimated that around 1.1 million people would leave the Kathmandu Valley for Dashain. The final police count of 576,578 travellers between Ghatasthapana and Navami falls well short of that projection, amounting to roughly half of the estimated figure.
The police tally covers departures recorded at the Valley's main checkpoints during the counting window from Ghatasthapana to Navami, as reported by Khabarhub. The entrepreneurs' estimate, by contrast, was put forward in advance of the festival as a projection of expected demand across the travel season.
Even so, more than half a million people leaving the capital in vehicles over a span of days represents a substantial annual undertaking for the transport sector, which mobilises fleets of buses and other vehicles to carry passengers to districts throughout the country.
The annual Dashain homecoming
Bada Dashain, the longest and most widely celebrated festival in the Nepali calendar, draws hundreds of thousands of people away from the capital each year. Kathmandu's population swells during the year as people migrate for work, study and business, and the festival week is when many of them travel back to their villages and district headquarters to reunite with extended families, receive tika and jamara from elders, and take part in celebrations that run from Ghatasthapana through to Kojagrat Purnima.
The departure figures compiled by the traffic police each year serve as a measure of this annual migration. This year's count of more than 576,000 travellers in nearly 80,000 vehicles between Ghatasthapana and Navami illustrates the scale of the homecoming, even as it lands below the 1.1 million figure that transport entrepreneurs had anticipated.
With the festival past its peak at Navami, attention now turns to the return leg of the journey, as the same travellers who streamed out of the Valley in the days before tika gradually make their way back to the capital once the festivities conclude.
