September 6th–10th, 2025
Kathmandu: A Week That Shook Nepal
I’ve been living in Kathmandu for about three months now, and last week I knew there was going to be a student protest planned for Monday, September 8th. It was meant to be peaceful, something organized and intentional, and I thought nothing more of it. I had no plans of attending—I just thought, “that’s cool, they’re allowed to do that here.”
But then Saturday, the 6th, the government suddenly shut down 26 social media sites: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube—all the ones that weave into my daily life. I remember sitting there, refreshing my phone, wondering what was going on.
And then Monday came, and the students filled the streets. All across Nepal, I think, but especially here in Kathmandu, there was this energy of protest, of voices raised against corruption and a bleak economic future. It was peaceful—until it wasn’t. Tear gas. Then rubber bullets. Then live ammunition. By nightfall, 19 people were dead, hundreds injured. If the day had stayed peaceful as intended, that would have been the end of it. Instead, it ignited something larger. By the end of the 8th, social media had been restored, but that hardly mattered. By that point, the police had killed and injured Nepali citizens.
Tuesday morning, I was in a bakery at 8 a.m. when someone rushed in and told us to leave—go back to our hotels, go home. A citywide curfew was in effect. Shops shuttered, streets emptied. I obeyed at first, went back to my hostel. But later I wandered over to Lekhnath Marg. There, the protests raged on—fires in the street, chants rolling through the smoke. It was raw, it was loud, it was impossible to ignore. Helicopters skimmed low over Kathmandu as the day wore on. By evening, word spread that the government had conceded. The prime minister resigned. The army had taken over.
The social media shutdown had tipped things off, but this unrest was never about Facebook or Instagram. It was about corruption, hopelessness, and a future the students could no longer see for themselves.
Tuesday night was long and suffocating. Power cut at the hostel, no fan, no sleep. The city held its breath in darkness.
By Wednesday morning, I gave up on sleep and stepped outside at first light. What I saw was the aftermath. Bonfires still smoldering in intersections. Police traffic boxes turned over and blackened by fire. The police headquarters on Durbar Marg gutted, burned from the inside out. The city was scarred in ways I hadn’t expected to see with my own eyes.
Kathmandu remained closed, curfew stretching on until 5 p.m. And in this limbo, Nepal has no leader. The army is in charge. The students’ voices are still in the air, echoing through the empty streets.
This was supposed to be a peaceful protest. And in its beginning, it was.
But now, September in Kathmandu carries with it the smoke of burned-out police boxes, the weight of lives lost, and the uneasy silence of a country suddenly without its government.
September 2025
