Nepal, 1901 to 1934

In 1901 no road reached the Kathmandu Valley. Under the Rana prime ministers, white palaces rose beside the old brick city, and the modern world arrived on people’s backs. These are the stories behind The Valley Without a Road.

A paper outlives its founder

The Gorkhapatra press, May 1901

In May 1901 Prime Minister Dev Shumsher authorised a weekly newspaper, the Gorkhapatra. Pandit Naradev Pandey is named as its first editor. Dev also backed new schools and spoke against slavery. Within weeks his brothers removed him and sent him to the far east of the country, and Chandra Shumsher took his place in June 1901. The paper stayed. It became a daily in 1961 and is still published today.

Two courts, one crown

Durbar Square, 1846 to 1911

Malla kings raised these temples in brick and carved wood. Their city was taken by the Shah kings in 1768. From 1846 the Rana family held the office of prime minister as a hereditary right, and Shah kings reigned with little say in government. When King Prithvi Bir Bikram Shah died in 1911, his son Tribhuvan took the throne at the age of five. He would be the king who finally broke Rana rule, in 1951.

A Versailles beyond the hills

Singha Durbar, early 1900s

Chandra Shumsher’s palace was designed by Kumar and Kishor Narsingh Rana in a European style and is often compared to Versailles. Sources date it anywhere from 1903 to 1908. Its main block alone held more than a thousand rooms. Mirrors, chandeliers and furniture came from Europe and travelled the last miles on people’s backs. Most of it burned in 1973. What survived and was rebuilt still houses Nepal’s government.

The speech under the tree

The Kharibot, Tundikhel, 28 November 1924

From the platform beneath this tree, Rana prime ministers read their proclamations. Here, with King Tribhuvan present, Chandra Shumsher announced the end of slavery in Nepal. The state paid owners to free the people they held, and by August 1926 close to 58,000 had been emancipated. The law did not end every chain. Bonded farm labour went on for generations: the kamaiya system was outlawed only in 2000, and the haliya system in 2008.

The first college

Tri-Chandra College, 1918

Chandra Shumsher founded Tri-Chandra in 1918, the first institution of higher learning in Nepal. It was affiliated with Patna University in India, and its first classes met beside Durbar High School. That school dated from 1854 and began for Rana children. Ordinary families had little access to any of it.

The road to Lhasa

Asan Bazaar, 1900s

Kathmandu’s old bazaars stood on the trade route between India and Tibet. Newar merchants kept business houses in Lhasa, and some stayed away from home for years at a time. Their world shifted in 1903 and 1904, when a British force under Younghusband marched into Tibet.

People carried cars

Over Chandragiri, 1922 to 1956

Cars for the Kathmandu elite were shipped to Calcutta, then driven as far as Bhimphedi, where the road ended. Stripped to the chassis, each was lashed to poles and carried over the hills to Thankot by as many as a hundred men, a walk of about eight days. Petrol came the same way. In 1927 a narrow-gauge railway opened from Raxaul to Amlekhganj, and a cargo ropeway opened over the hills to Matatirtha. The first highway into the valley was finished in 1956.

Water into light

The Pharping power house, 22 May 1911

Work began in 1907. Two 250-kilowatt turbines, fed by mountain springs, made Chandrajyoti the first hydroelectric plant in Nepal and the second in South Asia. On 22 May 1911 King Prithvi Bir Bikram Shah switched on electric lights at Tundikhel. The date is now marked as National Energy Day. The power served the palaces first, and for most homes in the valley the oil lamp stayed on for many years to come.

The tower and the earthquake

Dharahara, 1832 to 1934

Bhimsen Thapa raised the Dharahara in 1832. It stood eleven storeys high. On 15 January 1934 a great earthquake struck Nepal and Bihar, and most of the tower fell along with much of the city. Juddha Shumsher rebuilt it with nine storeys. It fell again in the earthquake of 2015, and a new tower has since been raised on the site.