Is the Kathmandu to Pokhara road open right now, and what to do while it is not

Most trekking-season conversations are about the weather on the trail. From June to September the bigger travel risk in Nepal is often the road to the trail. The monsoon regularly triggers landslides and flooding on the mountain highways linking Kathmandu to Pokhara, Chitwan and the eastern hills — and a blocked road can cost you a day. Here is the honest picture, and how to plan around it.

There is no easy second road

The usual relief route is itself out of service. The BP Highway, which would normally absorb traffic when the Prithvi closes, has been shut since September 2024, so there is no straightforward alternative corridor.

Krishnabhir is also not the only break. The same floods took out sections at Parewabhir in Makwanpur and Patleban near Nagdhunga. When people say "the road to Pokhara is closed", the accurate version is that several of the routes you would fall back on are damaged at the same time.

How to reach Pokhara instead

Fly. Kathmandu–Pokhara is a 25-minute flight and several carriers run it daily. Around 150 tourist buses on the route are idle and air traffic has surged.

If you must drive, the official diversions are Hetauda–Naubise and Fisling–Benighat — not the Gorkha route, which gets recommended in forwarded messages and is not the sanctioned diversion. Full detail and named officials are in our report on the Krishnabhir closure, and conditions elsewhere in the flood-affected corridor are tracked on our live updates page.

What the permanent fix looks like

Undecided, and a tunnel is currently the favoured option. Three approaches are being weighed: reinforcing the cliffside track with soil-nailing, upgrading the bypass road across the river, or driving a tunnel past the landslide-prone zone entirely.

That matters for anyone planning beyond this season. A bypass track cut in ten days is a temporary carriageway on a slope that has already failed once, and it will be carrying the full Kathmandu–Pokhara load through the next monsoon unless something more permanent is built first.

The roads that matter in any monsoon

A handful of arteries carry almost all trekker road travel, and each has its own weak point. Knowing which is which is most of the planning.

The Narayanghat–Mugling section — the spine connecting Kathmandu, Pokhara and Chitwan — is the busiest and most landslide-prone, with the Tuin Khola area a perennial concern. The Araniko Highway toward the northern border, which also serves the route to Langtang’s Rasuwa district, frequently closes at points in the Bhotekoshi valley. The flood-battered BP Highway to the eastern Terai is under major reconstruction.

How to travel smart in the rains

None of this means you cannot travel in the monsoon. Millions do, and the rain-shadow treks are at their best now. It means you plan with margin.

Where a flight exists and the budget allows, fly rather than drive on the tightest days. Build a buffer day into your itinerary so a one-day closure does not sink your trek start. Travel the highways in the morning, before the afternoon rain peaks. And lean on local, day-by-day knowledge of which sections are open, because the official picture changes faster than it is published.

When to re-check this page

The bypass track was expected to take seven to ten days from 4 September, so the earliest realistic reopening is mid-September 2026. If you are reading this after about 20 September and this block still says the road is closed, treat it as out of date and confirm on the day.

Conditions in a Nepali monsoon change hourly, and no page updated daily can be trusted as a live feed. Use this for the shape of the problem and your own phone call for the state of it this morning.

Sources: The Kathmandu Post (2–6 September 2026); Radio Nepal; The Himalayan Times; OnlineKhabar; Peoples’ Review; Department of Roads.

Cover photo: Prince Nature via Pexels (Pexels License).