Heavy rains on Wednesday night damaged a road section along the Narayangadh-Muglin Highway at Charkilo in Ichhakamana Rural Municipality-6 in Chitwan. Around 50 metres of road caved in, said Puskar Regmi, an engineer involved in the highway expansion. 

Thousands of travellers were stranded on Thursday after the road section caved in. There were serpentine queues of vehicles up to 20 kilometres on both sides of the incident site. Rains also caused landslides at 11 places along the highway. 

It took authorities the whole day to clear the landslide debris at the Kalikhola, Charkilo, Panchkilo, Jalbire and Bhaludhunga areas. Chandra Narayan Yadav, chief of the Narayangadh-Muglin Road Project, said the road has been damaged from Kalikhola to Bhalukhola. 

“We cleared the way for vehicles by cutting the road-side cliff in the evening,” said Yadav.