Rikhiya

Janakpur has one of the best stories in Nepal. It was the capital of King Janak and of ancient Mithila, and in the Ramayana it is where Sita grew up and married Ram. Every year around Vivah Panchami, in November or December, the whole city turns into a wedding. Today it is also the capital of Madhesh Province.

And yet most people in Nepal never put Janakpur on their list of places to go. Most foreign tourists head for the mountains. The visitors who do come are almost all Indian pilgrims, who spend a few hours at the temple and leave.

The reasons are not about the temple. They are about everything around it: waste, streets, drains, signs, hotels, a city hall that struggles to deliver, and a capital in Kathmandu that has long treated the Terai as somebody else's problem. This post goes through nine of them. It is written as criticism from people who care about the place, not as an attack on the people of Janakpur, who live with these problems every day.

Visitors come for a day and leave

A Nepal Railways train standing at Janakpur Dham railway station A train at Janakpur Dham station, October 2023. The rebuilt line from Jaynagar in Bihar has made a day trip easier than ever. Photo: Suyash.dwivedi / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Start with the numbers. Janakpur's tourism office counted 68,137 visitors in 2018/19, and 67,171 of them were Indian, more than 98 percent. The count only covers people who registered at hotels and lodges, so it is probably too low, and it does not say which Indian states they came from. Still, the picture is clear. Janakpur is a pilgrimage stop for India and, for now, little else.

The second problem is how long they stay. The Kathmandu Post reported in 2020 that tourists who come to Janakpur, mostly after visiting Kathmandu and Pokhara, do not spend more than a day. A column from 2019 said some wealthy pilgrims fly back to Kathmandu or drive down to Patna without spending a single night. A 2018 report quoted a hotel owner saying the city's more than a dozen hotels and its dharmashalas could take about 1,000 people a day.

A town that sees visitors for a few hours earns little from them, so it has little reason to invest. A town with rough streets and few good places to stay gives visitors no reason to stay longer. Each problem feeds the other, and that loop runs through the rest of this list. Nepal's own tourism planning has not helped. One Himalayan Times opinion piece argued that the national strategy chases Western visitors while the Indian middle-class pilgrim market next door goes underserved.

Waste has no system, and habits follow

Sunset at Ganga Sagar, one of Janakpur's holy ponds Ganga Sagar at sunset. The holy ponds are among Janakpur's best assets; reports say ponds in the city suffer from dumping and encroachment. Photo: Bijay Chaurasia / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Garbage is the reason most often given, and officials have said so themselves. Around 2019, as Nepal prepared for Visit Nepal Year 2020, then Deputy Prime Minister Upendra Yadav told the authorities to clean up the city and called garbage the biggest hurdle to promoting Janakpur as a destination.

Years later the picture has barely moved. The Rising Nepal reported that the city still has no long-term waste plan, with uncontrolled dumping in open spaces, along pond edges, beside roads and near homes. New collection vehicles and hired cleaners, it said, do not reach beyond the main market, the squares and the main streets. One report put the city's output at 17 tonnes a day. Ratopati reported that the historic Barahbigha ground, on the main route to the Janaki temple, has become a dumping site, and that this is putting visitors off.

The city has never had a firm plan. A government report from 2003 said the municipality had no plans to build a landfill, citing a lack of money and technical resources. Mayor Manoj Kumar Sah promised to put waste first in the 2022 election. In his third year in office the Rising Nepal said the situation was unchanged, and ward chairs have padlocked the city office in protest over how waste is handled. The mayor blames the Central Guthi Corporation for obstructing the work.

This is where the argument about civic sense comes in, and it is partly right. People do throw rubbish where it should not go. But habits follow systems. Where there is no bin on the street and no collection beyond the main roads, the empty plot or the edge of the pond becomes the bin. Where nobody is ever fined, nobody changes. The usual order is collection first, then rules, then fines. Janakpur has not finished the first step.

Streets that belong to nobody

Bhanu Chowk, the central market street of Janakpur Bhanu Chowk, the central market street, in 2009. Photo: Steffen Gauger / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Cycle rickshaws in Janakpur Cycle rickshaws in Janakpur, 2009. Photo: Ralf Lotys (Sicherlich) / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0

Walk the streets near the temple and the first thing you notice is that the footpath is not for walking. Ratopati reported that after a clearing drive led by Madhesh Province's home minister around the Janaki temple, Hospital Road and several chowks, the footpaths and roadsides went back to how they were within about three months. Pedestrians were pushed onto the main road, and e-rickshaws were hard to manage with the footpaths blocked. In a separate report, vendors were back on the pavements of Ramananda Chowk, Ram Chowk and Janaki Chowk soon after a municipal campaign.

The same pattern covers traffic. We found no noise survey or traffic study for Janakpur, so this part rests on what residents and visitors say, and they say it often: constant horns, vehicles ignoring lanes, rickshaws stopping wherever they like, and little enforcement. It follows the pattern of the clearing drives. A campaign, a few photos, then back to normal. A rule that is enforced for a week is not a rule.

A pilgrim town needs the opposite. Visitors spend nearly all their time in the streets around the Janaki Mandir. If those streets are loud, crowded and impossible to walk, nothing else on this list will matter.

Dirty water, lost ponds and flooded lanes

Janakpur is known as a city of ponds, and the ponds are part of the pilgrimage. Ratopati reported that five ponds in Janakpurdham have disappeared from the map as buildings went up on them, and that other ponds are used as dumping grounds.

Drainage is the other half. Onlinekhabar has reported that rainwater mixed with wastewater forms pools on roads because the city has no well-working drainage system. Residents say the drains built by the local government made things worse, because the rain has nowhere to go. A pilgrim who wades through that on the way to a holy pond does not forget it.

Air pollution is harder to pin down. Readings for Janakpur differ widely between monitoring sources, from "good" to "unhealthy for sensitive groups", so we will not quote a number. What visitors notice first is the water and the waste.

Little to do after the temple

Dhanushadham, a pilgrimage site north-east of Janakpur Dhanushadham, about 14 km north-east of Janakpur, linked by legend to the breaking of the bow at Sita's swayamvar. Photo: Rajesh Dhungana / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Even a visitor who wants to stay finds little to do. The Kathmandu Post reported a lack of signage, public toilets and street signs, and a 2018 report noted too few guides and inadequate lodging. The same report said that although the central, provincial and local governments had all announced plans to make Janakpur a main destination for religious tourism, none had produced proper policies or programmes to attract visitors and keep them longer.

The sights exist: the temple, the holy ponds, and Dhanushadham a short drive away. What is missing is everything that turns sights into a trip. Most of it is unmarked and not packaged for visitors, with no obvious walking route, no evening programme and no easy way to learn about Mithila art. There is no reason to book a second night.

Getting there has become easier. There are daily flights from Kathmandu, and since 2022 a train from Jaynagar in Bihar. The way in is open. The reasons to stay are not there yet.

An open border that points the city south

Janakpur sits close to the Indian border, and the border is open. The 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship lets citizens of both countries cross without passports or visas. For people in the border belt, those crossings are part of ordinary life: family, trade, schooling and marriage run across the line. The Jaynagar to Janakpur railway is the newest link.

The border is the reason Janakpur has visitors at all, and it also shapes who they are. The pilgrims are mostly Indian, they come on short trips by train or road, and the town has grown to serve quick visits.

Some residents also say the habits of the border belt, the honking, the dumping, the ignoring of lanes, cross freely, as people do. We found no research that measures this, and Kathmandu has the same complaints, so we would call the border part of the setting, not the cause. The open border did not make Janakpur dirty. A city that does not collect its garbage did.

The border also shapes how Kathmandu looks at Janakpur. Madheshi writers and activists have long said that because Madheshis share a language, marriage ties and markets with Bihar, they are treated as not quite Nepali enough. That suspicion has nothing to do with tourism, but it affects where roads, budgets and attention go, which is the next reason on this list.

A city hall that cannot deliver

Look at what the local government has to work with. For the new fiscal year, Janakpurdham presented a budget of Rs 2.65 billion, headlined as a plan for a clean city and for tourism. Rs 1.42 billion of it, more than half, goes on recurrent costs. Rs 912 million is set aside for infrastructure, and just Rs 59 million, about 2 percent, for economic development.

Then look at how it is run. The mayor, the ward chairs and the Central Guthi Corporation point at each other over waste. Clearing drives for the pavements fade within months. A ward-level protest ends with the city office padlocked. Waste, drains, pavements and signs are all local jobs, and the city has not done them.

A capital that looks the other way

An abandoned train at the old Janakpur railway station in 2016 The old Janakpur railway station in 2016. Services stopped in 2014, and the rebuilt line opened in 2022. Photo: Bijay Chaurasia / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Many people in Madhesh feel Kathmandu has never treated the Terai as fully its own, and the history gives the feeling a basis. The Maoists described Madhesh's position as "internal colonisation" in 2005 and 2006. The Madhesh uprising of 2007 began after the interim constitution left out federalism, the community's main demand. In 2015 people were on the streets again after a new constitution was written without broad Madhesi support, and the state used heavy force. Critics said the constitution split the Terai into several provinces and kept the hills in control.

Janakpur has had big plans announced for it. In 2016 the Kathmandu Post reported that Pashupati, Lumbini and Janakpur were slated for major development. By 2018 the same paper was reporting that the proper policies and programmes still had not come. The old railway stopped running in March 2014 for rebuilding, and the new line opened in April 2022, with Indian funding. That is eight years.

It would be unfair to put it all on Kathmandu. Madhesh-centric parties have held power in the province, and one Himalayan Times commentary says the region has also suffered from the power-seeking of some of its own leaders. Federalism gave Janakpur a provincial capital and a city government with its own budget. Most of the failures on this list are local.

Money that does not arrive, or does not get spent

Madhesh's leaders say the money does not follow need. Chief Minister Singh has said that Kathmandu's different view of Madhesh means the budget is not given according to need, and work stalls. In May 2025 a Madhesh-centric party asked that allocations follow population and human development figures. Whether Madhesh receives less than its fair share is still argued, and each side quotes its own figures.

What is documented is a province short of money and slow to spend it. Madhesh's finance minister has said the province had collected Rs 4.25 billion of a projected Rs 10.38 billion in revenue, and did not expect to receive more than Rs 30 billion of a Rs 46.98 billion budget. Projects under Rs 1 million were suspended, with some exceptions. A report on 2022/23 found the province had spent only about 8 percent of its budget in the first six months, which the government partly blamed on elections. A 2026 commentary asked why, with Rs 40 to 50 billion allocated each year, so many residents still lack basic services.

For a city like Janakpur, the effect is simple. Roads, drains, signs and a proper landfill are always the project that comes next year.

Janakpur is not hopeless. It has a temple that draws pilgrims every year, a festival the Kathmandu Post once called a city turning into a stage, daily flights from Kathmandu and a rail link to Bihar. A Ramayana circuit train from India now calls at Janakpur, and local leaders expect more pilgrims since the Ram temple opened at Ayodhya in 2024, though we found no figures yet. The pull is there. The basics are not.

What would change it.

  • Collect waste everywhere, not just on the main streets. Pick a landfill site and end the blame between the municipality and the Guthi Corporation.
  • Make the temple area walkable. Clear the footpaths and keep them clear, regulate e-rickshaws, and make it a low-horn zone.
  • Stop building on the ponds and stop dumping in them. Clean them, and light them in the evening.
  • Give visitors a reason to stay a night: an evening programme at Ganga Sagar, Mithila art workshops, guided trips to Dhanushadham, clear signs, clean public toilets and trained guides.
  • Count visitors properly, not only through hotel registers, so that budgets follow real numbers.
  • Ask the centre for a real tourism budget for Janakpur, and make the province spend what it gets.

Frequently asked questions

Is Janakpur worth visiting? Yes, for the Janaki Mandir and for the culture of Mithila, especially during Vivah Panchami. Go with realistic expectations about the streets and the facilities, and try to stay at least two nights.

When is the best time to go? Vivah Panchami, in November or December, is the most vivid time, and also the busiest, so book a room early. Reports of waterlogging after heavy rain suggest avoiding the peak monsoon.

How do I get there? There are daily flights from Kathmandu, and since 2022 a train from Jaynagar in Bihar. Check current schedules before you travel.

Why is Janakpur important? Hindu tradition places the capital of King Janak, and the marriage of Sita and Ram, here. It is also the cultural centre of Mithila and the capital of Madhesh Province.

Have you been to Janakpur recently? Tell us what you saw through the Contact page.

Photo credits. All photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under Creative Commons licences. Click each to see its page and licence. Janaki Temple (Bijay Chaurasia, CC BY-SA 4.0) · Janakpur Dham station (Suyash.dwivedi, CC BY-SA 4.0) · Ganga Sagar (Bijay Chaurasia, CC BY-SA 4.0) · Bhanu Chowk (Steffen Gauger, CC BY-SA 3.0) · Cycle rickshaws (Ralf Lotys, CC BY 3.0) · Dhanushadham (Rajesh Dhungana, CC BY-SA 4.0) · Old Janakpur station (Bijay Chaurasia, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources. Figures and reports are as published by these outlets; dates vary, and some are several years old.