Going to the transport office for your Likhit exam and not sure whether the questions will appear in Nepali, English, or both? Many candidates know how to ride or drive, then lose marks on signs, right-of-way rules, and small mechanical questions. This 2026 practice tool gives section-wise study, traffic signs, timed mock exams, and instant scoring on mobile. Your answers and mock results stay in your browser, with no login, no stored attempts, and no personal license data collected.
Full DoTM Likhit question bank covering traffic rules, signs, right-of-way, and mechanical knowledge in both English and Nepali.
Simulate the real 30-minute, 25-question exam with auto-scoring. See pass or fail instantly after submission.
Dedicated signs study mode with Nepal-specific road signs that frequently appear in the transport office exam.
See your score update question by question. Review wrong answers immediately to learn from mistakes before the real exam.
Questions and answers in both Nepali and English so you are comfortable regardless of which language the actual exam uses.
No account, no signup, no personal data stored. All practice sessions and mock results stay in your browser only.
The pass mark is 60 out of 100, which means you need at least 15 correct answers out of 25 questions (each worth 4 marks). Many candidates lose marks on traffic signs and right-of-way rules, not driving rules. Focus your practice on the Signs section and section-wise category filters before attempting a full mock exam.
Many Nepali license candidates fail the Likhit exam not because they cannot drive, but because they study the wrong format, miss traffic signs, or practise only in one language. This upgraded 2026 practice tool gives bilingual questions, touch-optimized answer buttons, mock exam timing and instant scoring that works well on mobile data. Your practice choices, wrong answers and mock scores are handled in your browser. Merokalam does not store your test attempts or personal driving-license details.
The Likhit (written) exam is the first hurdle in getting a Nepal driving license. It covers 6 sections drawn from a 500-question bank. Our practice tool includes 90+ of those real questions with Nepali translations.
Getting a driving license in Nepal used to be a notoriously opaque process. You turned up at a transport office, found a crowd, paid a fixer, and hoped for the best. That system is mostly gone. Since 2016, the Department of Transport Management (DoTM) moved the entire application online. The process is now transparent, digital, and reasonably predictable if you know exactly what you are walking into. This guide covers everything from the moment you open the application portal to the day you hold the smart card in your hand, including honest advice about the parts that still trip people up. If you want the full process in one place, our Driving License Nepal guide walks through the application, written exam, trial, fees, and renewal steps.
The Likhit Pariksha (written exam) is the first gate in Nepal's driving license process. DoTM introduced it to ensure that licensed drivers understand traffic rules, road signs, and emergency procedures before they get behind the wheel. In a country where road accidents kill more people annually than floods, landslides, and other natural disasters combined, the written test is a genuine public safety measure rather than just bureaucratic paperwork.
The exam draws 25 questions from a published bank of 500 official questions. Each correct answer earns 4 marks. The pass mark is 60 out of 100, which means you need to answer at least 15 questions correctly. You have 30 minutes. The test is computer-based at all major DoTM offices and runs in both Nepali and English. You select your preferred language on the day.
The 25 questions are distributed across six specific sections: 6 questions from driving knowledge, 5 from vehicular act and regulation, 3 from technical and mechanical knowledge, 2 from environmental pollution concepts, 3 from accident awareness, and 6 from traffic signals. This distribution is fixed, so you should not neglect any section. Even if you are confident about traffic rules, two weak questions from the sign section or the mechanical section can push you below 60.
This is the largest single section and covers the practical rules of the road. You need to know which side of the road to drive on (left), which direction to overtake from (right), who has priority at an unmarked intersection (vehicle from the right), what the correct following distance looks like, how to handle emergency vehicles approaching from behind, and when headlights are required. Many of these questions also appear as "all of the above" style questions where multiple answers are correct together. Reading each question carefully before clicking matters more than speed here.
Nepal follows a left-hand traffic rule. This means vehicles drive on the left side of the road and overtake from the right. At an unmarked intersection, the vehicle arriving from the right has priority. On hills, the vehicle going downward must give way to the vehicle going upward. These four rules alone cover a significant portion of the driving knowledge questions and are worth memorising precisely.
This section tests knowledge of the Motor Vehicles and Transport Management Act. Questions focus on minimum age requirements, document requirements, license validity, reporting obligations, and penalties. The minimum age for a motorcycle or scooter license (Category A/K) is 16 years. For a car or jeep (Category B), it is 18 years. For other vehicle categories including trucks and heavy vehicles, it is 21 years.
License validity is 10 years for people under 60 and 5 years for those aged 60 and above. If your license is lost or stolen, you must report it to the nearest transport office within 7 days.
This section surprises many candidates because it feels less like a driving test and more like a mechanics quiz. But the questions stay practical. You should know what the red temperature warning light means (engine overheating, stop immediately), what low oil pressure warning looks like (stop and check oil), what to do if brakes fail while driving (downshift gears progressively, then apply handbrake gradually), which gear to use on a steep uphill (low gear, first or second), and why you should check the gear is in neutral before starting a four-wheeled vehicle.
Electric vehicle questions have also entered the question bank as Nepal's EV adoption has grown rapidly since 2020. You should know that electric vehicles do not have a silencer pipe because they produce no combustion exhaust, and that they produce significantly less air pollution than petrol or diesel equivalents.
Only two questions come from this section, but they are easy marks if you understand the basics. Diesel produces more pollution than petrol or gas. Horns produce sound pollution. Black smoke from a vehicle means incomplete combustion and requires engine repair, not more fuel. Electric vehicles produce zero tailpipe emissions. Regular servicing, timely oil changes, and emission checks all reduce a vehicle's environmental impact. Any of these facts could appear as exam questions.
This section tests what to do before, during, and after an accident situation. If you witness a road accident, the first priority is calling emergency services (Nepal Police at 100, ambulance at 102) and providing first aid only if it is safe to do so. If you are involved in an accident, you must stop your vehicle, assist the injured, inform the police, and not move your vehicle or the other party's vehicle until police arrive and complete documentation. Leaving the scene of an accident is a serious offense.
You should also know the common causes of accidents in Nepal: over-speeding, drunk driving, reckless overtaking, and driving in poor visibility conditions such as heavy rain, fog, or dense snow. Questions in this section sometimes present scenarios and ask which action is correct, so understanding the reasoning behind the rules matters more than rote memorization.
This section has the most visual content. Questions include both text descriptions of signs and image-based questions where you identify what a sign means. You need to know all four categories of Nepal's traffic signs: mandatory (blue circles, indicating what you must do), prohibition (red circles or octagonal STOP, indicating what is forbidden), warning (red-border triangles pointing upward, alerting you to hazards), and informatory (blue rectangles, providing useful information).
Key signs to study include the STOP sign (octagonal red), No Entry (red circle with white horizontal bar), No Overtaking (red circle with two vehicle silhouettes), No Parking, Give Way (inverted triangle), speed limit signs (red circle with number), and warning signs for schools, pedestrian crossings, slippery roads, and railway crossings. The Signs section of this practice tool shows all of these with correct visual representations.
The entire process begins online and involves one or two office visits. Here is the complete sequence for a new application in 2026.
Step 1: Online registration. Visit applydlnew.dotm.gov.np. Create a new account with your mobile number, which must be registered in your name. Set a username and password. Fill in your personal details exactly as they appear on your citizenship certificate, including your full name in Devanagari script, date of birth in Bikram Sambat, permanent and temporary address, and your parents' names. Upload a passport-size photo (white background, maximum 200KB) and a scanned signature. Accept the terms and conditions, select your vehicle category, choose your province and nearest DoTM office, and pick an available appointment date. Application slots open every 16 days at 7 AM and fill up quickly, especially in Kathmandu. An OTP is sent to your mobile number to confirm the application.
Step 2: Office visit for biometrics. On your appointment day, bring your original citizenship certificate, a printed copy of your application slip with your passport photo physically attached, and a Rs. 10 stamp ticket. At the office, your documents are verified against your citizenship, all ten fingerprints are scanned, a digital photograph is taken, and a digital signature is recorded. A basic medical test is conducted covering long-distance vision (covering each eye separately, identifying the direction of the letter "E" at 20 metres) and a colour blindness test using a booklet of colour-coded numbers. If you wear prescription glasses, bring them. The office also takes payment for the written exam fee.
Step 3: The Likhit exam. The written exam is typically scheduled 1 to 2 weeks after your biometric appointment. You receive an admit card with the date and time. Arrive at least 30 minutes early with your original citizenship, admit card, and payment receipt. The exam runs on a computer terminal. Select your language (Nepali or English), complete 25 questions, and submit before the 30-minute timer runs out. Results are known immediately. If you pass, you proceed to the trial test booking. If you fail, you can reapply through the portal and try again after approximately 16 days.
Step 4: The trial (practical) exam. After passing the written exam, book your trial test date through the DoTM portal. For Category K (motorcycle), the trial involves navigating a narrow designated track without placing your foot on the ground. For Category B (car/jeep), it involves completing a figure-of-eight shaped track without touching any boundary markers, plus a hill-start exercise where you must start moving uphill without rolling backward. You need 70 points out of 100 to pass. You get three attempts within 90 days of your first trial date. Each attempt costs Rs. 500.
Step 5: License issuance. After passing both the written and trial exams, pay the license issuance fee: Rs. 1,500 for motorcycles and Rs. 2,000 for cars and jeeps. Your details are submitted for smart card printing. You receive a temporary driving slip that is legally valid for driving within Nepal until your physical card is ready. You receive an SMS notification when your card is ready to collect at the same DoTM office.
Prepare all documents before starting the online application. The core requirements are your Nepali citizenship certificate (original and photocopy), a blood group certificate from a recognized medical centre or hospital, an eye test or vision certificate from a registered eye specialist (required for Category B and above), two recent passport-size photographs with a white background, and your application printout with photo attached. For applicants under 18, a parent or guardian signature on certain forms may also be required.
One common failure point at the biometric verification stage is a mismatch between what you entered in the online form and what appears on your citizenship. Spelling differences, date format errors, and address discrepancies cause rejections that waste your appointment slot. Triple-check every field before submitting your online form. If your citizenship certificate has errors that need correction, fix them through the Department of National Identity and Civil Registration before applying for a license.
Nepal's road safety statistics should make every driver take the Likhit exam seriously. Road traffic accidents kill more Nepalis every year than any natural disaster category the government tracks. According to Nepal Police reports from 2025, an average of 75 road accidents occur daily across the country, claiming around seven lives every single day. In one month alone (Poush 2081, covering mid-December to mid-January), 197 people died in 2,276 accidents, with 3,417 more injured.
Motorcycles account for by far the largest share of accidents. Of 3,374 vehicles involved in accidents in a single month of 2025 reporting, approximately 70 percent were motorcycles. Cars accounted for 13 percent and buses around 6 percent. This motorcycle dominance in accident statistics reflects both the sheer volume of two-wheelers on Nepal's roads (they are the most registered vehicle category in the country) and the higher vulnerability of riders compared to occupants of enclosed vehicles.
Over-speeding is consistently recorded as the leading cause. In the same monthly Nepal Police report, 1,160 of 3,374 accidents were attributed directly to over-speeding. Drunk driving was the second most significant contributing factor despite 15 years of anti-drunk driving campaigns by the traffic police. Academic research published in 2025 in the Journal of Nepal Medical Association found that vehicle crashes rose from 33,135 in fiscal year 2020/21 to 43,165 in 2024/25, a consistent upward trend across six of Nepal's seven provinces.
The WHO estimated Nepal's road traffic fatality rate at 28.2 per 100,000 population, significantly higher than the Asia-Pacific average of 15.2. Road crashes cost the Nepali economy an estimated 3 billion USD in 2021, equivalent to roughly 7 percent of GDP. That figure actually exceeds Nepal's total healthcare expenditure as a percentage of GDP, which is a striking way to understand the scale of the problem.
Understanding these statistics is not meant to frighten anyone away from driving. It is context for why the written test matters. A driver who genuinely understands right-of-way rules, following distance, the meaning of every warning sign, and what to do when their brakes fail on a downhill road is a fundamentally safer presence on Nepal's roads than one who memorised answers without understanding the reasoning.
Most failures in the Likhit exam fall into a few predictable patterns. The first is insufficient study of the official question bank. Many candidates spend time on generic traffic rule reading and miss the specific phrasing that the DoTM questions use. The 500-question bank is publicly available, and studying it directly is the most targeted preparation you can do. This practice tool covers a large representative sample, and the mock exam mode simulates the actual test format faithfully.
The second pattern is overconfidence about the sign section. Candidates who can name signs verbally sometimes struggle with image-based questions where you are shown a sign and must identify it without the name label. The Signs tab in this tool shows all major Nepal traffic signs as accurate SVG graphics, not emoji or approximations. Spending 15 minutes with that section before your exam day makes a real difference.
The third pattern is poor time management. Thirty minutes for 25 questions is comfortable if you do not get stuck, but some questions involve careful reading of "all of the above" or "none of the above" type options that look similar at first glance. Going through practice questions with the same bilingual format (Nepali and English) that appears in the actual exam reduces the cognitive load on test day.
The fourth pattern involves the mechanical section. Candidates who focus entirely on traffic rules and signs sometimes lose avoidable marks on the three mechanical questions. Basic facts about warning lights, brake failure procedures, and gear use on hills take under an hour to learn and are asked directly without ambiguity.
Nepal uses a lettered category system for driving licenses. The most commonly applied-for categories are A (mopeds, scooters, and motorcycles up to a certain engine size), K (motorcycles above that threshold), and B (cars, jeeps, and small vans). Many applicants apply for both A/K and B simultaneously to reduce the number of office visits, since the written test and biometric process are done together.
Category C covers light trucks and larger commercial vehicles. Category D covers buses and heavy passenger vehicles. Category E covers heavy trucks and articulated vehicles. Each higher category typically requires holding the category below it first, and the age minimums step up from 16 to 18 to 21 as the vehicle size increases. Professional categories (C, D, E) also have additional requirements around commercial driver training.
If you plan to drive abroad, you can apply for an International Driving Permit (IDP) through DoTM after holding a valid Nepal license. The IDP is recognized in approximately 179 to 190 countries, valid for 1 to 3 years depending on the option you choose, and must always be carried alongside your original Nepal license. It is recognized for tourism and short-term driving purposes in most countries but not automatically valid for employment-based driving abroad.
Renewal does not require repeating the written or trial exams under normal circumstances. You log into the same DoTM portal (applydlnew.dotm.gov.np), initiate a renewal application, book a biometric update appointment, attend the office with your old license and citizenship certificate, complete the basic medical test again (vision and colour blindness), pay the renewal fee, and receive your renewed smart card. The new validity begins from the renewal date, not from the expiry date of your old license, so renewing early does not waste time.
If your license has been expired for more than 90 days, you may face additional requirements and potentially need to retake the written exam. If it has been expired for a significant period (over a year in some interpretations), starting fresh may be required. Always check the current DoTM policy on the official website before starting a late renewal, since rules in this area have been updated periodically.
Driving with an expired license in Nepal is treated the same as driving without a license and is subject to fines and potential vehicle impoundment. Given that cards often take months to print, keeping track of your expiry date and renewing at least 30 to 60 days before expiry is strongly recommended.
The Merokalam Driving License Test Prep was built specifically around the DoTM Nepal question bank and exam format. It is not a generic traffic rules quiz translated into Nepali. Every question reflects the actual phrasing and option structure of DoTM questions, including the characteristic style where one option is "all of the above" when multiple answers are simultaneously correct.
The Practice Mode lets you work through all questions by section with live score tracking at the top of every question. The score strip shows your running correct count, wrong count, and remaining questions at all times, so you always know exactly where you stand. This is more useful than waiting until the end to see results, because you can identify which sections are costing you marks and go back to study those areas before taking a mock exam.
The Mock Exam mode draws 25 questions randomly across all sections with a 30-minute countdown timer, matching the actual exam format. Each completed round is stored in the Round History panel, so you can see your improvement over multiple attempts. Pass rate on your first mock attempt is a reliable predictor of your actual exam performance, but most people improve substantially on the second and third attempt once they have reviewed wrong answers.
The Signs section shows all major Nepal traffic signs as clean SVG graphics, each with its English name, Nepali name, and a short description of what action is required. Filtering by sign type (Mandatory, Warning, Prohibition, Informatory) lets you study one category at a time if you find a particular type less familiar.
Both Nepali and English are available throughout. Switching to Nepali-only mode is useful for candidates who will take the actual exam in Nepali, since the DoTM computer interface presents questions in Devanagari and getting comfortable with the Nepali phrasing before exam day removes a layer of cognitive friction.
The trial exam is the step where the most candidates stumble, not the written test. The pass rate for the practical trial has historically been low enough that DoTM introduced the 70-point scoring system specifically to reduce unnecessary failures for otherwise capable drivers who made one small error.
For Category K (motorcycle) candidates, the narrow track exercise requires riding the full length of a 10-centimetre-wide plank without putting your foot on the ground. This is a balance exercise more than a riding skill test, and most candidates who fail do so because they have not practiced this specific manoeuvre on a similar-width surface before arriving. Practice on a marked line on the ground at home if possible.
For Category B (car/jeep) candidates, the figure-of-eight track is the primary challenge. Touching a boundary marker or cone deducts 5 points each time. Entering from the wrong side or crossing a marked yellow line causes immediate disqualification. The hill-start exercise requires stopping on a slope, then moving forward without rolling backward at all. Practicing hill-starts before your test day is essential if you are not already comfortable with this.
Arrive at the trial ground at least 30 minutes early. Bring all your original documents including the written exam pass certificate. Watch other candidates go through the course if you arrive before your turn, noting the exact entry points and boundary markers. Many candidates lose points simply because they were unsure of the correct entry point, which is avoidable with observation.
Passing the Likhit exam and the trial is a threshold, not a destination. The examination system tests whether you know the rules. What matters on Nepal's roads is whether you apply them consistently, including when no traffic police are watching, when you are running late, and when the road is empty at night.
Nepal's roads are genuinely challenging. Mountain highways involve sudden blind corners, narrow stretches, landslide-prone sections that change condition between dry season and monsoon, and mixed traffic that includes pedestrians, cattle, bicycles, motorcycles, minibuses, and heavy trucks all using the same space. The skills tested in the Likhit exam are directly relevant to navigating this environment safely.
Use this practice tool as many times as you need. Study the signs section until every shape and colour is immediately recognizable. Take mock exams until you are consistently above 80 percent. Then, on the day of your actual Likhit exam, trust the preparation and read each question carefully before selecting an answer.
Safe driving on Nepal's roads is not just about passing a test. It is one of the most impactful individual contributions you can make to reducing the 7 deaths per day that Nepal's roads currently claim.