Birendranagar, Jan. 4 -- Sabita Pariyar from Humla, a mountain district of Karnali Province, reached Birendranagar in Surkhet on Friday with a sense of relief she had never experienced before while travelling out of her district. She was headed to Kathmandu, but for the first time, she boarded a bus to the national capital directly from near her home in Simkot.

With the launch of a direct Humla-Kathmandu bus service a few days ago, residents of the north-westernmost district are now travelling to Kathmandu without the exhausting and expensive transfers that once defined long-distance journeys.

"I finally felt relaxed travelling in a single bus. Earlier, we had to change vehicles several times and pay very high fares. Now that hassle has...