KATHMANDU, NEPAL – Passenger-filled buses, microbuses and trucks travel along Prithvi Highway, a 200-kilometer, snakelike road that connects Kathmandu, the capital, with the tourist town of Pokhara. The Trishuli River flows along the road. Over its rapid currents stretches a makeshift cable bridge with a small, rusted, square basket operated by a pulley system, popularly known as a “tuin,” which villagers in the foothills here use to cross the river.
The tuin here in Kumpur, a village in central Nepal’s Dhading district not far from the capital, is a rusted box that hangs from a wire with the help of two small, metal wheels. Passengers pull the worn plastic ropes that further connect the box to the wire to manually transport themselves across the river.
Beneath the midafternoon sun, people who live on the other side of the river make the treacherous journey via the tuin to make it to the highway, which connects to other roads, shops, schools and local trading outlets. The locals say that walking to the closest bridge to cross the river would take hours, but that, still, the tuin is risky.
In the neighboring district, Gorkha, Suraj Thapa, 12, says he survived a tuin accident at the end of June. The Chinese government had built the 120-meter tuin there in 1968 while constructing the Prithvi Highway.
Suraj, a sixth-grader at Pataldevi School, was on his way to sell gourds at the local market during his summer vacation. He says the nine other people in the tuin were also on their way to sell vegetables at the market.
Suraj says the villagers on the other side of the river were pulling the box toward them. After 10 minutes, he says they were halfway across the river when he heard a noise that sounded as if a tire had been punctured. The rope bounced like a spring, throwing all the passengers into the rapid Trishuli River – including Suraj.
“I made my way out by swimming,” he says. “But I’m really sad for the ones missing.”
Five of the passengers drowned. And they’re not the only Nepalis who have died while using the tuin system this year.
Nepalis say that tuins have made daily life more convenient by enabling them to cross rivers that separate them from shops, schools and trading outlets. But they say tuins are dangerous to use, sometimes leading to deaths. International and local nongovernmental organizations, NGOs, have been building tuins to improve transportation for Nepalis. Government officials admit that citizens’ expectations haven’t been met when it comes to building bridges and roads, which are costly, but say the government plans to get involved in building tuins.
Out of nearly 11,000 kilometers of roads in Nepal, 46 percent are paved, 19 percent are gravel and 35 percent are dirt, according to 2009 statistics from the Department of Roads.
In Nepal, people who live along the banks of rivers like the Mahakali, Trishuli, Karnali and Seti use the tuin for their daily affairs. But there isn’t any data on the exact number of tuins in the country, says Nawaraj Poudel, an engineer for the Dhading District Development Committee.
There also isn’t any official data on the number of Nepalis who die in tuin accidents, but some estimate the deaths at more than 100 per year.
Hundreds of people in rural Nepal use the free tuins to reach shops, schools and local trading outlets.
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