The road winds at a steady incline on a path gouged out in a slow spiral around the hills; the sides of the hills from which the road has been carved without the use of heavy machinery still show the dents and concave dings left behind by the gouging. Sloping away from the road are terraced paddy plots, where farmers are bundling haystalks into haystacks. At regular intervals, we pass riders on horses bedecked in colourful saddles and jangling bells dangling from their necks: on horseback was how most locals here used to travel long distance in the region. Now, with this dirt highway linking Gamgadhi to Talchha airport, many of the locals turn to tractors and Swaraj Mazda trucks.

Before I got to Gamgadhi, I had met twenty-year-old Hira Devi Rawal at Shreenagar VDC. I had been struck by the ornaments she wore: she had a huge star-shaped gold stud and a gold ring on her nose and gold rings on her ears; and I had been pleasantly surprised by her optimistic outlook for the region. “The first time I saw motor vehicles was when this road was being built. I bought this gold from the money I made as a construction worker for this very road. We believe that better times are ahead for us.”

Along the route to Talchha, I saw that her optimism was grounded in a lived, changing reality. The Swaraj trucks I spotted on the route were ferrying both people and produce—mostly cauliflower, rice, cooking oil and other household commodities. Although most houses along the bends of the road were small, one-storeyed traditional stone huts, every once in a while we would come across three-storeyed buildings, some with cantilevered porches, and many topped with corrugated tin roofs on which perched dish antennae.

The money for these amenities came from the commerce the road has made possible and also on account of the work the locals did in building the road. Today, farmers from the region ferry their produce to Gamgadhi, which has become a bustling trading hub and a growing marketplace, and carry back to their villages clothes and other household items brought to Mugu from Surkhet, which is linked by the Karnali Highway; that major highway was constructed two years ago.

The 9 km Gamgadhi to Talchha road is part of the greater Nagma-Gamgadhi route, and part of the network of feeder roads that link to the Karnali Highway. Before the Karnali Highway came along, it used to take at least seven or eight days for locals to get to Surkhet. “Now, that travel-time has been reduced to three days,” I had been told by 68-year-old Shri Chandra Rawal, whom I had met earlier at Shreenagar.

“In the past, those who had enough money would fly to Nepalgunj to get treated at hospitals there, and for local businessmen the cargo fare for their goods used to be more than Rs 100 per kg,” he said. “But for the rest of us, walking for eight days was the only way we could get to Nepalgunj.” And that old air-freight rate—because of the competition from cargo trucks plying the highway—has now plummeted to Rs 60 per kg.

The progress I am witness to as I ride the tractor is a product of the Decentralised Rural Infrastructure and Livelihood project, which the government kicked off in 2006, with support from the Asian Development Bank. The cornerstone of the project is the 16 km Gamgadi-Talchha-Rara road, which connects the hinterlands with Talchha airport. The road was constructed at a cost of Rs 140 million. The project has benefited three VDCs—Pina, Shreenagar and Kakridanda. And similar projects are picking up pace. A 15.5 km Kalakandalek-Khamel-Kawa route, another road project that started last month, will eventually link Mugu to Gothi Jewala, in Jumla. These two projects have linked 12 VDCs, benefiting around 55,000 people of Mugu.

After one hour of standing on the hard metal floor of the tractor-trailer, and with my palms starting to develop callouses from gripping the iron hand-rail, we finally reach Talchha, from where I’ll be flying back to Kathmandu. At Talchha, I come across 60-year-old Amar Bahadur Malla of Topla VDC. He says he earned Rs 200,000 a year when he worked as a construction worker on the road. Another local, Prem Bahadur Shahi, of the same VDC, says he built himself a house with the Rs 250,000 he earned from similar work. As many as 2,000 workers were engaged in the construction of the road each day because no bulldozers and excavators were used to carve a path through the terrain.

And if the locals can capitalise on the opportunities brought by the new roads in the region and get going with their nascent tourism industry, say locals, the desperately poor Karnali region might finally see better days as a whole. Today, there is a 7 km dirt road linking Talchha to Mathillo Mili Chaur, which lies an hour’s walk away from the famous Rara Lake. The locale around the lake is blessed with stunning scenery and could prove to be a huge draw for tourists, both local and foreign. The road access has reduced the travel-time to Rara, and a few enterprising locals have now set up lodges and tea shops alongside the road.

Bir Bahadur Rawal, chief of the District Technical Office in Mugu, is more than happy with how things have picked up pace here. “The area will gradually see increased numbers of tourist footfalls,” he says. “We got these roads a long time after the regions in the rest of the nation already had theirs. We got them late. But at least we have them now. It’s at least a beginning.”