There was a time when, with great craftsmanship and skill, the village people of Nepal built their own bridges. Temporary spans were built with bamboo ropes, twisted vines and matted fibers, and lasted through the rainy season. Permanent suspension bridges were built by local blacksmiths, kamis, who used local ore to build strong iron chains which were linked together to span gorges more than 250 feet wide. With intuitive knowledge, and without help of surveyors and engineers, the villagers would choose the spot where the river cuts the steepest, where the banks were stable. The indigenous chain link bridges used no mortar or cement, and required no tempered steel cables manufactured abroad.
Ironically, this tradition of indigenous engineering started to disappear when the Government began to take an interest in bridge building. The decline began when Rana Prime Minister Chandra Shumshere, who ruled from 1901 to 1928, first imported bridges from Aberdeen, Scotland. The first "government" bridge was built in 1907 in Khurkot over the Sunkosi River, between Sindhuli and Ramechhap districts, east of Kathmandu. (The flood of 1985, destroyed this bridge.)
When foreign aid began to flow in the 1960s, the Government and foreign donors began to look at bridge building with renewed interest. They were guided by the development reports of Toni Hagen, the well known geologist and United Nations consultant, who trekked all over Nepal from 1953 to 1959. Yet, by his own admission, Hagen was all too ready to apply to Nepal the standards of his native Switzerland.
A sensitive advisor like Hagen, honoured by then Premier B.P. Koirala as "a gifted observer and patient analyst," had failed to comprehend the appropriateness of the centuries old, chain-link suspension bridges that stood so proudly and visibly, in the gorges of the midland mountains. Despite these total neglect in the rush to erect modern suspension structures, several of these old chain bridges are still standing, testimony to their durability and safety, and to the craftsmanship of the villagers who built them. These traditional bridges have served the mountain people longer and better than recent highways, STOL airstrips and modern suspension bridges. And yet, they are denigrated as "inferior" and "primitive." Over the past three decades, as expensive but quickly fabricated western imports replaced locally built bridges, the indigenous craft of centuries was allowed to go rusty – except in Baglung in central Nepal, where the people did not forget.