Narayangadh-Mugling Road Partially Closed: Traffic Windows

Travel advisory, Monday 7 September 2026 (NPT): The Narayangadh-Mugling road, the 36 km stretch that every overland traveller between Kathmandu, Chitwan and Pokhara must ride, is partially closed from Monday morning for emergency landslide-prevention works at Tuin Khola, according to a public notice issued by the District Administration Office, Chitwan. Vehicles will only be allowed through in five short daily windows; outside those windows the road stays shut while crews cut loose soil from the slope above the highway. The arrangement will continue until repair work at Krishnabhir on the Prithvi Highway is finished and two-way traffic resumes.

The closure lands directly on top of Nepal’s busiest tourist transit corridor in the middle of the September travel crunch, and it comes barely a week after the Prithvi Highway itself was severed at Krishnabhir in Dhading. If you are heading to Chitwan National Park, Sauraha, Pokhara or the Annapurna trailheads in the coming days, here is what is confirmed, what is still uncertain, and how to plan around it.

Table of Contents

• What Is Happening on the Narayangadh-Mugling Road?
• The Five Daily Opening Windows
• Why the Closure: Tuin Khola Landslide Prevention
• Why This 36 km Road Matters So Much
• The Bigger Picture: A Corridor Already Under Strain
• What It Means for Travellers: Chitwan, Pokhara and Annapurna Plans
• Practical Advice If You Are on the Road This Week
• FAQ
• Sources

What Is Happening on the Narayangadh-Mugling Road?

The District Administration Office, Chitwan issued a public notice announcing that the Narayangadh-Mugling road section would be partially closed from Monday morning (7 September, 22 Bhadra). The decision, according to the notice, is to carry out the Tuin Khola project’s soil-cutting work: removing loose, landslide-prone earth from the upper part of the slope above the road, while taking advantage of the time window created by the ongoing road repair at Krishnabhir in neighbouring Dhading district.

In plain terms, the slope above Tuin Khola, a spot along the highway between Narayangadh and Mugling, keeps shedding material toward the road during this monsoon. Rather than wait for a slide, the authorities are stopping traffic at intervals so crews can strip the unstable upper slope safely. The notice states that vehicles will be operated, meaning allowed through, only at fixed times, and that outside the designated windows vehicles will be held stopped while the work proceeds.

The notice adds that the arrangement will remain in force until the road repair at Krishnabhir in Dhading is completed and two-way vehicle movement resumes, tying the two closures together into a single, coordinated squeeze on central Nepal’s road network.

The Five Daily Opening Windows

According to the administration’s notice as reported by Online Khabar, vehicles on the Narayangadh-Mugling section will be allowed to move only during these fixed windows (Nepal Time):

Window	Open (NPT)	Duration
Early morning	08:00 to 08:30	30 minutes
Late morning	10:30 to 11:00	30 minutes
Midday	13:00 to 13:30	30 minutes
Afternoon	15:50 to 16:00	10 minutes
Evening	After 18:00	Open-ended

Two things stand out for travellers. First, the windows are short: four of the five are 30 minutes or less, which means long queues build up on either side of each opening and a vehicle at the back of the line may wait several cycles before getting through. Second, the evening window after 18:00 is effectively the main release valve for accumulated traffic, but travelling this corridor at night, in monsoon conditions, on a road with active slope works above it, is exactly what safety authorities advise against. The guidance issued by police elsewhere in Nepal during this same monsoon, to move only after checking conditions and to avoid night travel entirely, applies doubly here.

Why the Closure: Tuin Khola Landslide Prevention

The stated reason is prevention, not response. The notice explains that by partially stopping vehicles, crews can clear the soil from the upper part of the slope above Tuin Khola that keeps threatening to come down in periodic landslides. The work is timed deliberately: with the Krishnabhir section of the Prithvi Highway already closed for repair, traffic volumes through this stretch are lower than normal, giving engineers a rare quiet window to do geotechnical work on a road that normally never stops moving.

The choice to act at Tuin Khola is consistent with the corridor’s recent history. The Prithvi Highway’s adjacent stretch has been hit repeatedly this monsoon: the Krishnabhir section collapsed into the Trishuli river on 30 August, a full-day closure followed at Parewabhir on 5 September for repair works, and the same road has a documented record of chronic landslide points such as Krishna Bhir and Jogimara stretching back decades. Slopes along the Trishuli corridor, which the Narayangadh-Mugling road follows from Mugling down to the Terai plain, are cut steeply into fragile hillsides, and monsoon saturation keeps them active. Preventive soil-cutting now, before the post-monsoon tourist rush, is the cheaper option compared to cleaning up after a slide closes the road for days.

Why This 36 km Road Matters So Much

To understand why a “partial” closure on a 36 km road matters, look at what it connects. The Narayangadh-Mugling road, officially the Madan Ashrit Highway (NH44), is one of Nepal’s busiest roadway links, carrying an estimated 20,000 vehicles a day and roughly 90 percent of the country’s international road traffic, according to the highway’s documented profile. A 33.2 km section was widened from 5 metres to 9-11 metres in a project completed in June 2018, which is why today’s closure is about time windows rather than a physical washout.

Geographically, the highway is the hinge between Nepal’s two most important road corridors:

• At its southern end, Narayangadh (the commercial core of Bharatpur, Nepal’s third-largest city with about 369,000 people) sits on the East-West Mahendra Highway. Every vehicle coming from the Indian border crossings, Lumbini, Chitwan National Park or the western Terai toward Kathmandu or Pokhara passes through here.
• At its northern end, Mugling is the interchange with the Prithvi Highway (NH17), the 174 km road from Kathmandu over to Pokhara. Mugling itself is a legendary “town that never slept” transport stop at the confluence of the Marsyangdi and Trishuli rivers, born as a fishing village and transformed by the two highways meeting there.

For tourists, this single 36 km link sits on the route of nearly every overland itinerary in central Nepal:

• Kathmandu to Chitwan National Park (Sauraha): the classic jungle-safari route, normally about 5-6 hours door to door.
• Kathmandu to Pokhara and the Annapurna trailheads: via Mugling onto the Prithvi Highway, already disrupted by the Krishnabhir collapse, and now squeezed again at the southern end.
• Pokhara or Annapurna to Chitwan, Lumbini or India: every southbound and northbound movement funnels through this same stretch.
• Kathmandu supplies: the route is also the capital’s supply artery. Fuel tankers, LPG trucks and vegetable lorries from the Terai all use it, which is why Kathmandu’s logistics were re-routed within hours when the corridor’s upper section went down.

Chitwan National Park itself, Nepal’s first national park, established in 1973 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1984, spanning 952 sq km of Terai grassland and riverine forest, is entering its peak season. September’s fading rains give way to the cooler, clearer post-monsoon months when wildlife viewing is at its best, and the park’s lodges in Sauraha and Kasara fill with precisely the travellers this road serves.

The Bigger Picture: A Corridor Already Under Strain

Today’s closure cannot be separated from the disaster upstream. On 10 Bhadra (late August), the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli river system in central Nepal experienced a catastrophic flood following a glacial event on the Tibet border. The flood killed and displaced hundreds, damaged hydroelectric projects along the river, and eroded the rock beneath the Prithvi Highway at Krishnabhir in Dhading, swallowing a key section of the Kathmandu-Pokhara road on 30 August. You can follow the full rescue and damage picture in our earlier coverage: Rasuwa-Bhotekoshi flood rescue update and the Prithvi Highway Krishnabhir collapse report.

Seven days after the washout, authorities opened a 252-metre temporary track at Krishnabhir, cutting into the hillside rather than along the river to reduce flood risk. Bijaya Jaisi, director general of the Department of Roads, said substantial work remained before normal traffic could resume in about a week (Kathmandu Post, 6 September). Under temporary arrangements, large passenger buses and freight vehicles enter Kathmandu via the Tribhuvan Highway, while vehicles under 14 passengers can use routes through Bhimphedi, Kulekhani, Sisneri and Dakshinkali.

The consequences for the tourism economy were immediate. Pokhara’s tourist bus fleet sat idle while air traffic between Kathmandu and Pokhara surged, a shift we documented in Pokhara tourist buses idle as flights surge. Kathmandu’s supply lines were re-routed with remarkable speed, but at the cost of longer distances and one-way arrangements on the alternatives.

It is against this backdrop that the Tuin Khola work is happening at all. With the Prithvi Highway’s traffic load artificially reduced by the Krishnabhir closure, engineers have a window to make the southern half of the corridor safer before the full flow returns. The Chitwan administration’s notice explicitly frames the soil-cutting as making use of the Krishnabhir repair window: the two works are deliberately sequenced.

What It Means for Travellers: Chitwan, Pokhara and Annapurna Plans

Here is the practical picture by itinerary, as of Monday 7 September:

If you are going to Chitwan National Park

The Kathmandu-Narayangadh-Sauraha route is affected at its final approach. Tourist buses from Kathmandu descend to the Terai and pass along the affected section before reaching Sauraha. With windows of 30 minutes or less, expect significant delays of 2-4 hours on the day you travel, and plan to arrive in Sauraha before dark. If your safari schedule is tight, consider taking the first morning departure from Kathmandu (before 07:00) so you reach the closure ahead of the queue, or shifting your park stay by a day.

If you are going to Pokhara or the Annapurna region

You face a double squeeze: the Krishnabhir repair (with its own controlled traffic windows on the Prithvi Highway) plus the new Tuin Khola windows at the corridor’s southern end. The fastest realistic options right now are:

1. Fly Kathmandu to Pokhara (about 25 minutes). Demand has surged since the Krishnabhir collapse and seats sell out early, so book ahead and expect premium pricing on remaining seats. From Pokhara, road connections to Besisahar (Annapurna Circuit) and Nayapul (Annapurna Base Camp, Ghorepani) have been running normally.
2. Take a tourist bus via the Hetauda corridor (Kathmandu, then Hetauda, then Narayangadh, then Mugling), accepting a longer journey and the window delays on the final stretch.
3. Postpone road travel until the Department of Roads’ estimated completion of the Krishnabhir works (about a week from 6 September), when the corridor should return to its normal, though still busy, state.

Trekkers heading to the Annapurna Circuit should also note the separate heavy-vehicle ban on the Besisahar-Chame road, which we covered in Besisahar-Chame road: heavy vehicles banned. Jeep transport beyond Besisahar is operating under restrictions, so build extra hours into trailhead transfers.

If you are travelling overland to or from India

The Mahendra Highway connection at Narayangadh remains the funnel for border traffic. Cross-border buses and private transfers from Sunauli, Raxaul (Birgunj) and other crossings will feel the same window delays between Narayangadh and Mugling. Nothing suggests the border posts themselves are affected: this is purely a transit-time issue.

Practical Advice If You Are on the Road This Week

1. Check the windows before you set out (08:00-08:30, 10:30-11:00, 13:00-13:30, 15:50-16:00, after 18:00 NPT) and aim to be at the closure point just before an opening, not an hour into a closed period.
2. Start early or travel late-morning. The 08:00 and 10:30 windows are your best chances of getting through before the queue compounds through the day.
3. Keep food, water and a power bank in your daypack. A 3-4 hour hold on a highway with few services is a common outcome under window closures.
4. Do not drive this corridor at night while slope work is active above the road: falling debris does not respect opening windows.
5. Build buffer time into trek registrations. If your Annapurna TIMS and ACAP permits are keyed to a start date, leave a full spare day between your road arrival and the trek start. See our guide to trekking permits in Nepal (TIMS, ACAP, MCAP) for how registration dates work.
6. Watch for updates. This article reflects the notice effective Monday 7 September. The arrangement is explicitly tied to the Krishnabhir repair timeline, so expect changes within roughly a week. We will update this page as new notices appear.

For a wider view of how to move around Nepal, including flights, airports and overland routes, see our How to Get to Nepal in 2026 guide, and for the monsoon-season risk background, our complete trekking safety and health guide.

FAQ

Is the Narayangadh-Mugling road fully closed?

No. It is partially closed: vehicles can pass only during five fixed windows each day (08:00-08:30, 10:30-11:00, 13:00-13:30, 15:50-16:00, and after 18:00 NPT). Outside those windows the road is held closed while landslide-prevention soil-cutting proceeds on the slope above Tuin Khola. This is confirmed by the District Administration Office, Chitwan’s notice as reported on 7 September.

How long will the partial closure last?

The notice ties the arrangement to the completion of the Krishnabhir repair on the Prithvi Highway and the resumption of two-way traffic. The Department of Roads’ estimate reported on 6 September was about one more week for normal traffic. Treat that as EXPECTED rather than confirmed: monsoon conditions can extend repair timelines.

I am going to Chitwan National Park this week. Should I cancel?

No cancellation is warranted. The park itself, Sauraha lodges and safari operations are unaffected; the impact is travel time between Kathmandu and the park. Expect 2-4 extra hours on the road and avoid night arrivals. If your itinerary allows, fly or take an early bus.

What is the fastest way from Kathmandu to Pokhara right now?

Flying (about 25 minutes) is the fastest and most reliable option, though seats are scarce and pricier since the Krishnabhir collapse diverted demand to air. Road alternatives via Hetauda work but are long and now face the Tuin Khola windows as well.

Is the road to the Annapurna trailheads affected?

The trailhead roads from Pokhara (Nayapul, Ghandruk side) and Besisahar have been operating, but the Besisahar-Chame section has its own heavy-vehicle restrictions. The Narayangadh-Mugling closure mainly affects reaching Pokhara or Besisahar from Kathmandu or the Terai in the first place.

Why do the authorities close a road to prevent a landslide that has not happened?

Because the alternative is worse. The slope above Tuin Khola is actively shedding soil during this monsoon. Clearing the unstable upper slope now, while traffic is lighter because of the Krishnabhir closure, reduces the risk of an uncontrolled slide closing the corridor for days during the approaching peak tourist season.

Sources

• District Administration Office, Chitwan public notice, as reported by Online Khabar (Nepali), 7 September 2026: partial closure of Narayangadh-Mugling section, Tuin Khola soil-cutting, opening windows, duration tied to Krishnabhir repair.
• Kathmandu Post, 6 September 2026: Krishnabhir timeline (30 August washout, 252 m track, one-week estimate for normal traffic), re-routed supply arrangements.
• Madan Ashrit Highway profile (Wikipedia): 36 km route, ~20,000 vehicles/day, 90% of international traffic, 2018 widening.
• Chitwan National Park (Wikipedia): first national park (1973), World Heritage Site (1984), 952.63 km².
• Background: TravellingNepal, Prithvi Highway collapse at Krishnabhir (5 September 2026).

Published: 7 September 2026 (06:45 NPT). Status labels, CONFIRMED and EXPECTED, reflect sourcing as of the publication date. This article will be updated as the Department of Roads and the Chitwan administration issue further notices.