An amazing journey Dolpa
2019-07-05
Date: 5th July 2019
By Subarna Sharma
As a field researcher, my journey to Dolpa was an amazing experience. I travel to many rural and urban areas in Nepal. With every trip, I get an opportunity to explore new places, lifestyles, and cultures. Recently I had an adventurous field trip to Dolpa for a sanitation project. This was my first ever trip to Dolpa, and I expected it to be like my previous field trips.
Thus I booked a connecting flight from Kathmandu to Nepalgunj followed by Nepalgunj to Dolpa the next day. I reached Nepalgunj safely and on time. The next day, I went to Nepalgunj Airport at around 4:30 am for my Dolpa flight. The airport of Dolpa is one of the most dangerous airports in Nepal. Thus, after 4 hours of waiting in the airport, the authorities canceled my flight because of bad weather. So, I took this opportunity to explore Nepalgunj and meet my friends. And the next day, my flight took off at 6.00 am for Juphal airport of Dolpa.
Dolpa was freezing there was no electricity for the past three months. I headed towards my destination: Dunai; the district headquarter of Dolpa. It was a two hours’ ride in small pickup jeeps. I had to cross a big river. However, heavy rainfall had unfortunately damaged the bridge.
Thus got off the jeep and walked to my destination: Dunai. I crossed the river through a damaged bridge on foot and reach Dunai after three hours of continuous walk. Fortunately, I didn’t have a heavy backpack.
The enumerator of the project was waiting for me in my hotel. After some rest, we started the training session.
The third day was a demonstration session for the enumerators in the field. So for this session, we all moved to a nearby rural municipality ward and showed the household selection mechanism, interviewing techniques, and so on.
After the training, the enumerators moved to their respective rural municipalities for data collection. The sample rural municipalities were very remote. The enumerators could only reach there after two days of travel by jeep and foot. And the absence of telephone service and internet connection made the quality control task more difficult. Every day, I would try to contact the enumerators but always failed to contact them.
Ten days later, all the enumerators returned to the hotel after completing the survey and connect their tablets to the internet to send the data to the server. I instantly checked the quality of data thanks to the solar-generated electricity in my hotel. Luckily, there were no major errors in the data, and we met the sample size.
The next day, I booked a return flight to Nepalgunj and moved to Juphal airport. And as I reached Juphal, it started raining heavily. I got extremely worried. In the past, sometimes the airline authorities halted all flights from Juphal for 15 days due to bad weather conditions.
However, the weather cleared the next morning and I got my boarding pass. But, after waiting for two hours, the authorities informed me that the flight is canceled for anonymous reasons. The next day, I went to the airport again but that day too the authorities canceled the flight due to bad weather conditions. From that point, the weather condition kept deteriorating. Finally, the authorities informed all the passengers that there will be no flight for a few days.
My fellow passengers suggested that we collectively hire a helicopter and a few suggested that we use the road. We decided to use the road as the weather was too bad for a helicopter ride. We were a total of ten passengers. Two policemen who needed to join duty, five family members whose son and nephew got in an accident, a teacher, a businessman, and me. And I took the lead to bring them back by road.
However, I was insecure as I was not familiar with the track from Dolpa to Nepalgunj. We started our journey and reached Tripurakot by jeep. There was a big river on our way and no bridge to cross the river. Thus we got off the jeep and crossed the river through a suspension bridge. Then we walked to our next destination. After two hours, we hired another vehicle and got off in the next river. We followed the same mechanism again and walked to our next destination where we hired yet another vehicle.
We always booked a jeep as it could accommodate all ten passengers; four in the front and six at the backside. The road was very scary and rough. So, it was uncomfortable and painful to travel in the back seat. All passengers struggled to get the front seat. The scenery on the road was astonishing. However, the uncomfortable roads did not allow me to admire the view.
After traveling for ten hours in Jeep and on foot, we arrived at Radi. Then, we moved to Jagarkot through a very difficult, narrow, and slippery road. From Jajarkot, we booked another vehicle to Nepalgunj with a lot of effort. And finally, I arrived at my hometown Surkhet. I felt relaxed and informed my family and colleagues that I am safe and booked a flight to Kathmandu.
The weather was still not getting better at this time. It was still raining heavily and a flight that took off from Nepalgunj slipped and crashed while landing at Kathmandu airport. Thus, yet again the authorities canceled all the flights. And I booked a deluxe bus from Nepalgunj to Kathmandu.
On my way back on a bus, my immediate boss informed me about landslides on the way to Kathmandu and asked me not to travel at night. Thus, I got off the bus at Kapilvastu and spent the night at my father-in-law’s. Finally, the next day, I took a bus and arrived in Kathmandu safely.
This journey was very exciting. It was an unforgettable experience with a lot of obstacles and hardships. However, looking back, I would say it was a learning experience that gave me a moral “no matter how difficult the situation, we must not lose hope and have the courage to fight it”.
As a social researcher, I will have to take such trips again. My future trips might also be dangerous and uncertain as this one. Despite this fact, I am impatiently waiting for my next field trip to have new adventures and experiences.