multiple visits (and fees) would improve access to essential financial services in remote areas. Given the low capital base of many remote municipalities placing a bank in each municipality will be financially difficult and alternative delivery channels are a more sustainable mechanism for financial inclusion (Shakya _et al._ 2014). Sakcyham’s Branchless Banking Initative and UNCDF’s Mobile Money for the Poor (MM4P) project are the most prominent existing examples of this approach.

For medical services, the Nepalese government will need to continue expanding its network of health and sub‐ health posts if it is to reach its goal of 90% coverage within 30 minutes travel. More urgently, expanding the public hospital network or incentivizing private hospital construction in less developed areas is justified given the widespread inaccessibility of advanced medical services. Tax breaks or other inducements to private hospital construction in less developed areas could encourage this.

Given the high costs of building and maintaining infrastructure in mountainous areas, raising human development indicators and planning new services will present a stiff governance challenge for new municipal governments in remote municipalities. Provincial and municipal governments can enhance administrative access by enhancing infrastructure connections to municipal headquarters, localizing essential administrative functions and enforcing staff attendance in municipal headquarters. These moves would reduce dependence on far away district headquarters and thus raise overall access. This may require significant investment in staff training and the necessary offices and equipment, in addition to improved bridges, trails and roads.

At a more advanced level, policy mechanisms that streamline collaboration among neighboring municipalities and municipalities and provinces would enable more economical solutions to shared accessibility challenges that are beyond the resources of any one municipality. Hospital siting, for example, may best be addressed at the provincial level. Such expensive services will require strong planning coordination between local and provincial governments, as well as between neighboring local governments facing similar service shortfalls. In this light the new Provincial Planning Commissions are a positive governance step.

Finally, we must note the strongly gendered implications of the above accessibility challenges. Many women will avoid overnight stays outside their or a relative’s home, implying inaccessibility for many services over 4 hours’ travel away (RAP Nepal 2018). In the context of high and predominantly male international migration to India, the Persian Gulf and Malaysia this is a particularly acute problem; the majority of remittance receivers are women, who may be the effective heads of households, yet unable or unwilling to access distant services (Shakya _et al._ 2014, RAP 2018). In any case, they may be unable to forego one or more days of agricultural labor. Seen through this gender lens long travel times to financial, hospital and governmental services are worrisome. Access to banks is necessary to collect remittances from relatives abroad and ANC/PNC medical services important to maternal health and child mortality. Women may therefore pay extra to access remittances from local, informal financial services providers and/or skip essential maternal health services for lack of access.

# Looking forward

The importance of travel times to understanding remoteness in Nepal, and the versatility of the raster‐based data set, suggest a number of follow‐up analyses. Examples include:

## **Planning and administration**

- Establishing relationships between accessibility to services and household development indicators using existing survey data (e.g. DHS, NLSS, HRVS)

- Objectively calculating remoteness bonuses and travel stipends for government and development project staff working in remote areas