After a brief taste of blistering summer heat, the late monsoon came as a blessing. While the farming community welcomed the rains, many in the southern plains also felt its wrath in the form of floods and landslides.

While the rest of the country is having a love-hate relationship with the rains, Kathmandu valley, each year—and for a long, long time—has a whole different experience when it comes to monsoon.

The dusty roads of the Capital, as soon as the rain arrives, turn into a muddy mess. Scenes of people trying to avoid the puddles, vehicles stuck in waist-deep mud, and school children navigating through waterlogged road sections with their overweight backpacks have become common at this time of year.

Why is it so bad? The reasons haven’t changed over the years either: unplanned and delayed road constructions, haphazard urbanization, and apathy from the local authorities in repairing damaged road sections.

These photos show the deplorable condition of our nation’s capital.