"Lift Pathao Na"

Since my school days to the present day, I’ve used public transport as a means of traveling and moving around the valley. At the time when my friends started getting bikes and scooters, my family seeing the trend, did the next best thing - consult the community astrologer (before purchasing an automobile). Being “chained” by the planetic energy of bad luck till age of 23, I got used to traveling following the city rush. I used to love traveling in the morning through the hidden routes of my university and “strongly disliked” the move during the dual rush hours of our city scape. Although, my heart, awed in gratitude, whenever being blessed with a seat in the sometimes “claustrophobic” terrain of a public micro, my astrological luck is coming to an end. This is when I found Pathao, a service that seems too good to be true (having its shortcomings, of course!).

Pathao is a ride sharing service like any other designed to help you get to your destination. It seems that, from the inaccessible icons in their app, the developers seem to plan adding a car lift and food delivery system, but I’m not sure of this as of yet.

At first, I was a bit skeptical because Tootle did not take off as fast as Pathao did. One day, I did give it a chance and boy, oh boy, was I surprised. My first travel was from Durbarmarg (the place where I work) to Narayan Gopal Chowk (the area where my gym is located) and the fare was Rs.88. On a normal taxi drive to the location, it would cost around Rs.190 to 200.

After that I started using the service on a daily basis. The service is 24 hours, however, I wouldn’t bet on the availability of riders after 12am to the early mornings, because it depends on how many of them are near your area. The application has a very friendly user interface and as soon as you register for the service, you can use it. There are a few things that would make the app better in my humble opinion. Riders should be given navigation to the pickup location because often times I’m asked where the pickup location is, making pickup inefficient. Being able to accurately track the rider’s location would also be very helpful. Certain smaller locations are not be available, and has to be pinned on the pickup map manually, although, I do believe it will be fixed with further updates. Pathao caters vastly to its customers, especially, those in the 9 to 5 grind. Number one being its generous offers through promotional codes or promo codes. They message you the promo code (valid until certain hours) and also educate you on different facts of our beautiful country.

This is an example of one of the expired codes and honestly, I find these very creative:

“Did you know, Nepal has more 360 species of Orchid which constitute over 2% of the world’s orchids. Get flat Rs **% OFF using the promo code ‘ORCHID’ on your next Pathao ride until 11:59 PM today. Have an enjoyable ride! T&C applied - Pathao.”

I would recommend this app if you have to frequently move from one place to another within the valley. To the present day, it only has bike sharing service but personally, I can’t wait to see how they plan to add other features to the application.

---

Words: Ritesh Raj Gurung