The border itself is not physically demarcated, except at a limited number of official crossing points that are patrolled and manned by the Nepali and Indian armies. Crossing the border for Nepali and Indian people is unimpeded by formality, and people cross daily in their hundreds and thousands on foot or by bus, car, motorbike, cycle, cycle-rickshaw, auto-rickshaw, horse and cart, donkey and cart, buffalo and cart, large trucks, small trucks, four-wheeled trucks, three-wheeled trucks and by virtually any other of South Asia’s bewildering assortment of surface transport options.
Goods and supplies travel without hindrance in both directions and vehicles piled improbably high with pots, pans, equipment and provisions are as common as young men walking across with only a heavy backpack that might include a small stereo system or school books or clothes or shoes; and local people leading livestock or carrying enormous bundles of straw on their backs — possibly from their field of work in one country to their home or to a local market in the other.
The perception of the border is as informal as its traffic. In most people’s minds, it happens to represent the place where one country’s territory ends and where the other’s begins. Its political openness, and the cultural and economic integration of communities on either side, means that is widely viewed not as a bureaucratic obstacle, but as a location as incidental to daily life as the lines that divide one district from another.
Although the Nepal-India agreement allows this freedom of movement, it can potentially instil complacency. In the past, India has placed severe restrictions on the free movement of goods, albeit temporarily, and there is no guarantee that similar restrictions will not be imposed again in the future.