Yes, we run through the festivals. But those are the nights when everything takes longer, and the ones where ordering an hour earlier makes the most difference.
Kathmandu during Dashain and Tihar is a different city to operate in, and pretending otherwise just produces a quoted time we cannot hit.
What changes
Demand concentrates. The whole valley wants the same thing on the same three or four evenings. Our busiest nights of the year are all festival nights, by a wide margin.
Supply tightens. Wholesalers close or run short. Popular items go out of stock and stay out of stock for days rather than hours — we will tell you what is actually available rather than taking an order we cannot fill.
Roads change. Processions, closures and diversions. A run that is fifteen minutes in an ordinary week can be forty during Tihar, and the route the rider takes is not the one the map suggests.
People are not where they usually are. Half the city is at family homes in other neighbourhoods, which reshuffles where the orders come from entirely.
What to do about it
Order earlier in the evening. 10 to 11 PM rather than midnight. The difference on a festival night is much larger than on an ordinary one.
Order in one go. A second run at 1 AM during Tihar is not a quick top-up.
Ask what is in stock before you plan around something. A WhatsApp message takes ten seconds and saves rearranging the night.
Send a location pin, always. Diversions make typed addresses considerably less useful, and half of the delay on a festival night is the last three hundred metres.
Which nights
Dashain’s main days and the Tihar nights are the peak, with the weekend either side close behind. New Year and the bigger public holidays behave the same way.
Exact dates move every year with the lunar calendar, so rather than listing them here and going stale: if it is a night the neighbourhood is loud, it is a night to order early.
We do run
Every night of the year, 10 PM to 4 AM. The window does not change for festivals. What changes is how long the middle of it takes, and how much of the stock list is still available by the third night.
Coverage by area is on the delivery pages.