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VOL 13 ,NO 17 Sunday, January 16, 2005

Headline : Barpak gets a Ropeway

Intro:Sustainable transport, Nepal style

Watching the iridescent roller bird flash in the sun and take off, one might wonder where it is going. What would it
encounter on its leisurely journey as it sweeps across ridges of rugged mountains, dips down into fields of paddy, past
village ponds and thatched huts, resuming through inaccessible forests?

The distance between two places in Nepal could be measured in many ways. Going around the hairpin bends by
road to the nearest town from a village could be 30 kilometres (km), which could take two to three hours. The same
could be done by a Cessna in ten minutes. But ask a villager the distance and he will say: 8 hours. That’s because
this is walking country. People here don’t think in terms of km, they think of the sheer hours it will take them to walk
the distance. And these hours or days would be spent in traversing through the most spectacular, rugged terrain.
Wading through streams, swinging across a gorge in a basket ropeway, finding footholds on craggy rocks, often
carrying dokos (woven baskets) and taking well-worn walking paths through fields and woods. No wonder, one of the
first phrases you pick up here might be — “ Y ahaabata ke taadhaa chha? Is it far from here?”

Of course, the whole world jets ten thousand km to Nepal to do just that — walk! With the sheer topographical variety
and the challenge it offers, Nepal is the number one trekking destination of the globe. But while trekking might be a
sport or a relaxing activity for the western visitor, the average Nepali has always wished for a mode of getting across
that could be a little faster and perhaps less strenuous.

Actually, for a tiny mountain country, Nepal’s transport system might seem adequate, even extensive at first glance.
Like many nations making a transition to being ‘developed’ (see Box: Counterpoint: a ropeway to Alto?) Nepal has its
network of roads; 15,000 km of it connect the capital city of Kathmandu to the major district headquarters and the
districts to each other and to external markets. Probably the worst roads you may say, but what else can one do in
these hills? The principal highways are the Mahendra (east to west) and the Prithvi (Pokhara to Kathmandu) along
with minor ones like the Tribhuvan and the Sidharta. Nepal has also developed an indigenous road system, called the
green road (made with a minimum of cutting or dynamiting, it is widened slowly over three years, to allow for natural
stabilisation of slopes and also given a tree cover).

But in the countryside, the official transport system is virtually non-existent. Only fifty-eight of the seventy-five districts
are linked and even in these districts, most hamlets are several days’ walk from the nearest road head. On the whole,
the people depend on their own feet and avoid the rickety buses, which in any case have a high accident rate. Given
the terrain, and the landslides that occur every now and then, driving here is an adventure sport!

For the thousands of little communities that have no access to state or private transport, and no hope of being linked
in the future, what’s needed is a low-cost, sustainable option that the people can build and operate without outside
help or much recourse to complex technology.

Ropeways The answer could be ropeways. In their remarkable new book, Ropeways in Nepal: Context, Constraints
and Co-evolution , Dipak Gyawali, Ajaya Dixit and Madhukar Upadhya argue for a system of ropeways that provides
Nepal with a low-cost, safe, and above all mountain-friendly mode of transport that can link its remote hinterlands to
the markets, health centres and towns without causing the vast amount of disruption and high costs that are inevitable
with even the smallest road. Ropeways are clean, easier and cheaper to put in place and maintain, and certainly
more appropriate to hills than expensive and vulnerable motorable roads. Yet, ropeways are no longer a part of the
transport paradigm of Nepal’s planners.

It was in 1996, in a paper published on ropeways in Nepal, that Gyawali and Dixit first mooted the idea that an
organised system of ropeways could complement the limited road system in Nepal. In the course of their research,
they realised that the only real way to prove that ropeways would be a workable alternative would be to go and

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actually build one, and along the way, collate the needs, problems, solutions and processes that went into it. And so
the Barpak Ropeway came into being.

Commissioned on 8th February, 1998, the Barpak ropeway project was established in the village of Barpak in Gorkha
district and cost NPR Rs 6.4 million ( US$ 0.08 million) to complete. The project had the full participation of the villagers,
among them the colourful Bir Bahadur Ghale, who has also contributed a chapter to the book. Swiss friends, including
Toni Hagen (well-known author of one of the most complete studies of Nepal’s geography, geology and people) who
has raised awareness about the problems of mountain people, also pitched in, and helped to bring in the 300-
kilogramme (kg)cargo ropeway from Switzerland, which took four months to set up. Barpak made 28 trips a day and
served the needs of 8,000 people while it was operational.

Ropeways are not new to Nepal. For centuries, people in the villages have been using basic rattan or targhat ropes
to get across in this landscape of deep river valleys and high mountain ridges, especially during the monsoons when
the villages get even more isolated from each other. An indigenous form of access that uses local material, traditional
ropeways or ghirlings vary from the single person pull-across khite khite to a canoe-like arrangement that can be
pushed. The most common way is to just suspend a rope or cable across a fast-flowing river and cross over. Though
risky and uncomfortable, the ghirlings have continued to be used in the absence of suspension bridges. Ropeways
are also used extensively to transport both material and crews involved in construction, and following the completion
of the project, easily dismantled.

In terms of technology, a modern ropeway is a mode of transport in which special types of carriers are suspended
from, or simply attached to, an overhead rope to facilitate the transfer of materials, goods or passengers from one
point to another. The rope runs the entire length over which the ropeway operates, which typically ranges from a few
hundred metres to several kilometres. The rope is stretched between, and supported at, the end-point stations using
anchors. When the distance between two stations is large, intermediate towers are used to support the rope. Longer
ropeways have small sections that are joined together by divide stations, which again have the means to transfer
carriers from one section to the next. In terms of safety, the minimum safety factor for a cargo ropeway is between
three and four, and for passengers seven.

Ropeways have been used in many countries from Malaysia to Australia to Switzerland, to connect inaccessible
areas. Switzerland, in particular, has a history of managing access efficiently (with several kinds of ropeways) in a
similar topography and their methods have many lessons for Nepal. In fact, the teams behind Nepal’s best-known
ropeways in recent times, the Barpak project and the Bhattedanda Milkway, have studied the operation of ropeways
in the Swiss and Austrian Alps. And it was a Swiss firm that set up sixty basic ropeways connecting fifty remote
villages in Bangladesh’s Chittagong hills in 1997.

Facilitating rural access

Nepal’s first modern experiment was a 22 km cargo ropeway from Dorshing into the Kathmandu Valley, passing over
the Chisapanigarhi and the Chandragiri hills. Commissioned by the Nepal government in 1924, it became operational
in 1927. In 1964, under a United States Agency for International Development project, this was extended as a higher-
capacity, 42 km system from Hetauda.

In contrast, the Bhattedanda Milkway ropeway project of the mid-1990s grew out of the need of the villagers in the
area to transport milk to urban collection centres. A pilot project by the Bhagmati Watershed Project team was
established to build a single carrier, bi-cable, three kilometre-long ropeway system. On completion, it served 143
households and transported 900 litres of fresh milk each morning by 9 AM. The milkway also helped farmers to reach
markets with farm produce like pumpkins, cucumbers, herbs and brooms. Although the project could not handle the
pressures of running a co-operative and collapsed when a road was built nearby, Bhattedanda, both for its mistakes
and achievements, has served as a model for the Barpak project and for future ropeway initiatives.

L Barnaby Smith, British Ambassador to Nepal, whose country supported the Barpak initiative, recommends thinking
of ropeways “in terms of rural access rather than road construction”. For Gyawali, Upadhya and Dixit, the ropeway
debate here is not just about transport, it’s about development. Once the inaccessible hinterlands are opened up, the
village people there can reach markets with their crops, vegetables or forest produce. Employment opportunities will
grow. Outside advantages like education or medical help in emergencies becomes possible. Ropeways can also
transport tourists into remote places that have great tourism potential but cannot be reached now. Connectivity can
finally happen.

Article by Lina Krishnan, based on Ropeways in Nepal: Context, Constraints and Co-evolution , edited by
Dipak Gyawali, Ajaya Dixit and Madhukar Upadhya, KEVA, August 2004

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---------- BOX:Counterpoint: Ropeway to Alto? ----------

How access could change Nepali villages forever

The World Bank has actively pushed roadmaking in Nepal, calling roads the “backbone of
development”. Mechanised transport provides access to markets, so that farmers shift to cash crops;
and in turn, roads are necessary for those trying to reach the farmers with external farm inputs like
fertilisers and seeds. Robin Jenkins’ classic Road to Alto documents this process of “the development of
underdevelopment”. Alto in Portugal was a self-sufficient economy, with a stable, sustainable
agricultural pattern practiced for centuries. There were no major disparities, and people helped each
other during the occasional drought. The community didn’t need many external inputs. This utopia
could have gone on forever, but for the coming of a six-kilometre tarred road. The farmers moved to
cash crops and the cash economy; soon, the village was not producing enough food for itself and
became dependent on external seeds, fertilisers, finance. The middlemen gained the most from this
conversion. “The old socio-economic structure, where everyone had their place and nothing much ever
changed, no longer exists. In its place there is a system in which any land becomes increasingly seen
as a potential source of profit. The old stability and predictability has gone forever, to be replaced by
the competitiveness and the mentality of a gold rush. All because of six kilometres of tarred road.”

These dilemmas could apply to ropeways as well, as they, too, seem to bring in “development” to
areas that are “backward” and inaccessible. What will this new access do to communities that have
kept their cultural and socio-economic systems going? Already, in Barpak, some villagers have taken
to growing sugarcane for outside markets. What will happen to subsistence cropping? As for the
anticipated rise in tourism, Nepal is already feeling the footprint. Trekkers have littered Nepal with
50,000 kg of garbage and each trekker uses up as much fuelwood daily as a Nepali household does in
a week.

Thus, questions must be answered by advocates of new forms of development. These communities,
writes Jenkins, are “not just a backward pocket of resistance to progress. They and their increasingly
subordinated culture are far more relevant to the future of mankind than any of them would ever
believe”.

---------- BOX:“Malai ropeway dinuhos, malai road chaahina” ----------

“Please give me a ropeway, I don’t need a road”

In July 1993, when a cloudburst washed away several bridges and parts of the Prithvi highway,
Kathmandu was virtually cut off from essential supplies as trucks carrying everything from vegetables
to salt to petrol were stranded. The only link that continued to supply goods was the ropeway from
Hetauda. Given the terrain and weather conditions in Nepal, ropeways provide an appropriate,
sustainable option to roads. In economic terms too, a ropeway costs very little, about NPR Rs 1.5 to
NPR Rs 2.0 million (US $0.02 million to US $0.027 million) per km. The cheapest green hill road costs
twice as much per km while a single-lane gravel road costs four times more. A ropeway also manages
distance more naturally, such as across two hills, whereas a road would need to go round several times
to bridge the same distance. Though modern ropeways or cable cars do need specialised maintenance
crews, and repairs are not always easy in remote areas, they require less intensive maintenance than
roads and can be managed locally by the people who use them. They are also reusable; in fact the
norm with construction ropeways is to simply dismantle in one place and put up in another, a practice
not possible with roads. Nepal’s principal industry is tourism, and busloads of tourists go to the few
places that are connected by road. But the experience is anything but exhilarating, despite the drive
through the breathtaking scenery of Phulchoki, Sarangkot or Hattiban. Ropeways would bring in the
necessary tourists unobtrusively without the construction activity, the diesel fumes and the noise of
the road.

Cost of constructing and

maintaining hill roads in Nepal

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Type of
road Construction cost (US $ Full cost of maintenance (approx
million per metre) US $ million per year)

Single-lane 0.174-0.208 0.028-0.042

metalled
Single-lane 0.097-0.111 0.020-0.022
gravell
Green 0.042-0.056 0.008-0.011
Source: Ropeways in Nepal, p 231

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