1 24 Nobody Stops and Stays Anymore: Motor Roads, Uneven Mobilities, and Conceptualizing Borderland Modernity in Highland Nepal Galen Murton Abstract: This chapter examines the expansion of motor roads in Nepal’s northern borderland district of Mustang in order to understand how access and exclusion to new mobilities reinscribe social hierarchies in borderland spaces. Focusing the study on the shifting cultural practices of trans-Himalayan nyetsang social systems and an expanding tourism sector in Mustang, this case represents a broader dynamic of social change reflected in wider experiences with infrastructure development, state formation, and penetrations of capital relations across the Asian borderlands. Employing a conceptual framework of mobility and containment, the chapter argues that local experiences with new mobilities at once transform social and economic relations across trans-Himalayan spaces and undergird material practices that produce space for both markets and the Nepali state to take shape through new mechanisms of containment. Pointing towards congruent dynamics across other Asian borderlands, I introduce borderland modernity as a rapidly expanding and internationalized experience with globalization in highland Asia, accelerated by road infrastructure and characterized by new consumer practices, capital circulations, and state bureaucracy in non- urban places. One summer morning, sitting in the private family quarters of the oldest guesthouse in Kagbeni, Nepal, I asked how new road systems affect everyday life in Mustang District today. Drolma, 1 sipping her morning tea, told me matter of factly: “nobody stops and stays anymore”! Wanting to know more, I asked how could this be, as Kagbeni is strategically located at the intersection of two major rivers, a sacred pitha place for Hindu pilgrims, a key junction of the region’s most popular trekking route, and the base for government checkposts and a conservation area office that supervise tourism into Nepal’s northern restricted zone of Upper Mustang. Kagbeni has long been a point of rest for regional travelers, and kag means “stop” in Tibetan. While visitors to Kagbeni travel according to various agendas, Drolma’s point transcends demographic differences. Unlike historical tradition, when locals and foreigners alike would routinely stay overnight in Kagbeni, new road networks to the north, south, and east of Kagbeni have all but eliminated the need to break one’s journey in town. Nearby Drolma’s guesthouse, the owner of a small shop, Jigme, echoed his neighbor, emphasizing that few Mustangis stop in Kagbeni anymore, and international visitors tend to do so only to complete bureaucratic formalities. Exaggeration aside – as the town remains home to no less than two dozen guesthouses, restaurants, and supply stores, and foreigners traveling to Upper Mustang are required to stop at the government checkpost – Jigme’s comments signal a disruption of traditional cultural practices in this borderland region as a result of new transport networks.