Social and economic development in Nepal involves a complex web of technological and social change, particularly in the areas of transport and communications. New ideas, technology, goods and services have traditionally flowed outward to the rural hinterlands from such central places as Kathmandu and Pokhara in the hills and northward from such lowland Terai entrepots as Biratnagar, Narayanghat, Bhairahawa and Nepalgunj. With the recent opening of motorable roads in rural west-central Nepal, significant changes have occurred in the process of communication, in the dispersion of ideas and new technologies, and in the transport routes by which these aspects of modernisation penetrate the rural hinterlands. One result of these changes has been the growth of new towns and the decline or change of others. Some impacts from these changes have been reported in recent socio-economic studies of new roads in Nepal.
In this paper, the author continues the current interest in the study of roads, new towns and socio-economic changes in a discussion of a conceptual type of entrepot community called a 'gateway' and its relationship to a rural hinterland. The hinterland on which the author focuses attention is the Marshyandi River valley, which channels trade through the hill districts of Lamjung and Manang and parts of Gorkha and Tanahu. The primary gateway community for this hinterland has changed several times in recent years, and is presently located at Dumre bazaar on the Kathmandu-Pokhara highway (Prithvi Rajmarg). Historic and contemporary factors and the probably future of gateways to the Marshyandi hinterland are the primary subjects of this paper; other adjacent regions and gateways are not included.
