The visit to India by Rabi Lamichhane, chairman of Nepal’s largest ruling party, the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), and former deputy prime minister, at the invitation of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is significant on many fronts. Most importantly, it marks the highest-level engagement between New Delhi and Kathmandu since the new RSP-led government under the leadership of 35-year-old Prime Minister Balendra Shah.

The timing of the trip makes it even more crucial. Lamichhane’s hour-long meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was joined by National Security Advisor of India Ajit Doval, Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar, and the Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, reflects the criticality of India’s engagement with the next-door neighbour. Just last month, Misri was to travel to Kathmandu earlier in May. He was to discuss Prime Minister Balendra Shah’s visit to India at the invitation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The visit was reportedly postponed due to Shah’s reported refusal to meet, citing protocol issues.

So far, India has been proactively engaging with the new government in Nepal, primarily because it is led by a new leadership, defeating the traditional old guard, which had maintained closer ties with India. There was also a much-talked-about meeting between Nepal’s new foreign minister, Shishir Khanal, and Jaishankar, in Mauritius at the 9th Indian Ocean Conference. For many Nepal watchers, this was the most promising public-facing engagement between the two countries, since the formation of the new Balendra Shah-led government in Nepal.However, the postponement of the Indian foreign secretary’s visit to Nepal reflected a cooling in bilateral ties. The trigger was Prime Minister Balen Shah’s government taking a serious objection to the resumption of the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra—a Hindu pilgrimage to Mount Kailash in Tibet, China—via Lipulekh, a territory Nepal continues to unilaterally claim as its own. At a time when Balen Shah’s visit remains uncertain, what does Rabi Lamichhane’s high-profile visit to India mean?Kathmandu was to be seen seriously