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Road expansion on the Sanga-Dhulikhel road section along the Araniko Highway has been halted due to the monsoon.

The road widening drive would resume once the monsoon exits from the country, the Suryabinayak-Dhulikhel, Dhulikhel-Sindhuli-Bardibas Road Project informed

However, road expansion has been obstructed at Poolbazaar area on the road section for the past four months due to protest from locals.

The road expansion drive has not progressed in the area around 200 meters with some reservation of locals.

Project engineer Bishnu Prasad Khanal said though discussions were frequently held with stakeholders, including people's representatives of the municipality and local residents, concrete results have not been yielded yet.  

With the obstruction of the locals, various activities such as removing houses and huts along with high-tension electric poles, and erecting other electricity poles have come to a standstill.

Meanwhile, expansion of a six-lane road from Suryabinayak, Bhaktapur to Dhulikhel, Kavrepalanchowk along the Araniko Highway is not going to be completed on time. Roughly around six months is left for the termination of the deadline.

A target was set to complete the 16-kilometer road within 36 months. The road expansion task started on January 8, 2023.

The bidding was solicited by dividing the 16-kilometer road – from Suryabinayak to Sanga and Sanga to Dhulikhel as part of the expansion drive.

According to the project sources, only around 50 percent construction works have been completed so far.

Project's senior divisional engineer and Information Officer, Sajana Adhikari informed that around 65 percent physical progress would be attained till the stipulated deadline.

The widening drive has been delayed due to several reasons, including local aggression.

At least 73 Palestinians, including 33 aid seekers, were killed in Gaza on Wednesday, with witnesses reporting unprovoked gunfire at Israeli and US-backed aid sites. Over 300 people have been killed in the last 48 hours, with Gaza’s media office accusing Israel of 26 mass killings during that time, according to Al Jazeera.

Hamas says it is reviewing a new proposal for a 60-day ceasefire, after US President Donald Trump announced Israel’s agreement. The ongoing war has killed over 57,000 in Gaza and 1,139 in Israel since the October 7 attacks.

A fast-moving wildfire whipped by gale-force winds burned through the night and into Thursday on Greece’s southern island of Crete, prompting the evacuation of more than 1,500 people from hotels and homes, Associated Press reported.

The fire department said 230 firefighters backed up by 10 water-dropping aircraft were battling the flames, which have burned through forest and farmland in Crete’s Ierapetra area on the island’s southern coast. Two people were evacuated by boat overnight, while six private boats were on standby in case further evacuations by sea became necessary, the coast guard said.

Homes were reported damaged as flames swept through hillside forests, fanned by strong winds, according to Associated Press.

The Himalayan village of Samjung did not die in a day.

Perched in a wind-carved valley in Nepal’s Upper Mustang, more than 3,962 meters above sea level, the Buddhist village lived by slow, deliberate rhythms—herding yaks and sheep and harvesting barley under sheer ochre cliffs honeycombed with “sky caves”—2,000-year-old chambers used for ancestral burials, meditation and shelter.

Then the water dried up. Snow-capped mountains turned brown and barren as, year after year, snowfall declined. Springs and canals vanished and when it did rain, the water came all at once, flooding fields and melting away the mud homes. Families left one by one, leaving the skeletal remains of a community transformed by climate change: crumbling mud homes, cracked terraces and unkempt shrines.

A changing climate

The Hindu Kush and Himalayan mountain regions—stretching from Afghanistan to Myanmar—hold more ice than anywhere else outside the Arctic and Antarctic. Their glaciers feed major rivers that support 240m people in the mountains—and 1.65bn more downstream.

Such high-altitude areas are warming faster than lowlands. Glaciers are retreating and permafrost areas are thawing as snowfall becomes scarcer and more erratic, according to the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development or ICMOD.

Kunga Gurung is among many in the high Himalayas already living through the irreversible effects of climate change. “We moved because there was no water. We need water to drink and to farm. But there is none there. Three streams, and all three dried up,” said Gurung, 54.

Climate change is quietly reshaping where people can live and work by disrupting farming, water access, and weather patterns, said Neil Adger, a professor of human geography at the University of Exeter. In places like Mustang, that’s making life harder, even if people don’t always say climate change is why they moved. “On an everyday basis, the changing weather patterns ... it’s actually affecting the ability of people to live in particular places,” Adger said.

Communities forced to move

Around the globe, extreme weather due to climate change is forcing communities to move, whether it’s powerful tropical storms in The Philippines and Honduras, drought in Somalia or forest fires in California. In the world’s highest mountains, Samjung isn’t the only community to have to start over, said Amina Maharjan, a migration specialist at ICMOD. Some villages move only short distances, but inevitably the key driver is lack of water. “The water scarcity is getting chronic,” she said.

Retreating glaciers—rivers of ice shrinking back as the world warms—are the most tangible and direct evidence of climate change. Up to 80 percent of the glacier volume in the Hindu Kush and Himalayas could vanish in this century if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t drastically cut, a 2023 report warned.

It hasn’t snowed in Upper Mustang for nearly three years, a dire blow for those living and farming in high-altitude villages. Snowfall traditionally sets the seasonal calendar, determining when crops of barley, buckwheat, and potatoes are planted and affecting the health of grazing livestock. “It is critically important,” Maharjan said.

For Samjung, the drought and mounting losses began around the turn of the century. Traditional mud homes built for a dry, cold mountain climate fell apart as monsoon rains grew more intense—a shift scientists link to climate change. The region’s steep slopes and narrow valleys funnel water into flash floods that destroy homes and farmland, triggering a wave of migration that began a decade ago.

Finding a place for a new village

Moving a village—even one with fewer than 100 residents like Samjung—was no simple endeavor. They needed reliable access to water and nearby communities for support during disasters. Relocating closer to winding mountain roads would allow villagers to market their crops and benefit from growing tourism. Eventually, the king of Mustang, who still owns large tracts of land in the area nearly two decades after Nepal abolished its monarchy, provided suitable land for a new village.

Pemba Gurung, 18, and her sister Toshi Lama Gurung, 22, don’t remember much about the move from their old village. But they remember how hard it was to start over. Families spent years gathering materials to build new mud homes with bright tin roofs on the banks of the glacial Kali Gandaki river, nearly 15 kilometers away. They constructed shelters for livestock and canals to bring water to their homes. Only then could they move.

Some villagers still herd sheep and yak, but life is a bit different in New Samjung, which is close to Lo Manthang, a medieval walled city cut off from the world until 1992, when foreigners were first allowed to visit. It’s a hub for pilgrims and tourists who want to trek in the high mountains and explore its ancient Buddhist culture, so some villagers work in tourism.

The sisters Pemba and Toshi are grateful not to have to spend hours fetching water every day. But they miss their old home. “It is the place of our origin. We wish to go back. But I don’t think it will ever be possible,” said Toshi.

AP