Nepal open for business, but few tourists (audio)

Alina Simone (PRI's The World, Dec. 11, 2015); Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly

Future Buddha in the Himalayas northern India's Ladakh near Nepal (Tamvir Singh Multani).

Trekking the Annapurna route near Jomsom. Trekkers are critical to Nepal's tourism industry, but travel warnings can boost cost of optional travel insurance (Alina Simone/PRI).

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In April, Nepal was struck by a massive earthquake followed by a devastating series of aftershocks. We all saw the news coverage: millions of people displaced, ancient [Buddhist and Hindu] temples reduced to rubble, avalanches, Himalayan landslides.

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Aid poured into Nepal, more than U.S. $4 billion of it. But that news coverage proved to be a double-edged sword. All those images of destruction left the impression the entire country had been leveled, and led to a different kind of aftershock: the collapse of the tourist industry, which accounts for and estimated 4% of Nepal’s GDP.

 

UPDATE: Dream of developing Nepal hit by border blockade

The Economic Times (economictimes.indiatimes.com/news, Dec. 13, 2015)

Hundreds line up to buy gov't firewood, 11-16.

KATHMANDU: Nepalese PM K.P. Sharma Oli today said his "great dream" of developing the landlocked nation [of Nepal] has been obstructed by the blockade at the border trade points with India and the devastating April 29 temblor. "Though I had a great dream of developing the nation, [the] massive earthquake and border blockade have laid obstructions to the same," the 63-year-old premier said while receiving an annual progress report from academicians at his official residence in Baluwatar. More

• SLIDESHOW: More visuals and exclusive photos

Himalayan Buddhist temple.

Three months ago, [Alina Simone] was invited on a trip to Nepal, sponsored by the Nepalese government, a private tourism industry group, and Samarth, an NGO funded by the British government.

The goal was to show tourists that despite the earthquake and political protests, which erupted after the passage of a new constitution, Nepal was “open for business.”
 
[She] had never paid much attention to government travel advisories, but [she] decided to check what the U.S. State Department had to say. In October, it issued a “warning” for Nepal. Also on the warning list -- Iraq and Somalia.
 
“We want you to know the risks of traveling to these places and to strongly consider not going to them at all,” the State Department site said. Yikes. I began to wonder whether this trip was really such a great idea.
 
At the airport in Abu Dhabi, [she] wasn’t exactly reassured to learn [she] had been bumped from [her] flight because the plane was carrying extra fuel to Kathmandu [starved of fuel deliveries by neighboring India]. The protests at Nepal’s border with India, related to the new constitution [which Nepal says is none of India's business, but India has long meddled in and dominated the country's internal affairs], had led to a severe shortage.
 
But once [she] finally got to Kathmandu, life seemed remarkably normal. The earthquake damage was largely cleared away and fenced off. There were, of course, lots of empty spaces where centuries-old temples once stood.

And in historic Patan Durban Square, the sound of reconstruction was everywhere.
 

Earthquake-damaged buildings in historic city of Bhaktapur, Nepal (Alina Simone/PRI.org)

But [she] was also surprised to find plenty of temples left standing. Like everyone else, [she] had seen the footage of post-earthquake Kathmandu and assumed most of Nepal’s heritage sites were gone.
 
That’s exactly the impression tourism officials in Nepal were trying to change.
 
“It is not Nepal that has been affected; it is only 14 districts that have been hit hard,” said Sunil Sharma, of the Nepal Tourism Board. Nepal's 61 other districts suffered minimal or no damage.                                                                                                                                              
Samarth, the NGO that helped sponsor my trip, also commissioned an independent assessment of two of Nepal’s most popular trekking routes, Everest and Annapurna. They were pronounced safe, with some important caveats.

The thing is, trekkers are key to reviving Nepal’s tourism industry, but travel warnings boost the cost of travel insurance. And backpackers need that insurance if they’re trekking in remote areas, like our next stop, the town of Jomsom on the Annapurna circuit.
 
The landscape is spectacular at the foot of the Himalayas -- our trekking route threaded over wild mountain streams to Dhumba, a sacred Buddhist lake.
 
It’s far from the epicenter of the earthquake and the political struggles at the Indian border, but still, you won’t see many tourists here. Tripple Gurung, who owns a hotel called “Om’s Home,” told [her] bookings are down 50 percent. He’s not the only one here who depends on tourism.
 
“I’m running a hotel, but there are people who grow vegetables. They come here in the morning, so we buy the vegetables for our guests.”
 
The story was the same in Nepal’s second largest city, Pokhara: minimal earthquake damage, major tourism declines. And long lines of cars and mopeds were queuing up for rationed gas.
 
It’s easy for a tourists to insulate themselves from the day-to-day realities of life here... More + AUDIO