It’s quite incredulous actually. At a media briefing at the PATA Travel Mart in Bangkok, officials from the Nepal Tourism Board said Maoist rebels who have been staging an insurgency for the past eight-and-a-half years in the Hindu kingdom have faxed statements to Nepalese tour operators that they will not harm tourists.
This was supposed to be an assurance that tourists who come to Nepal will not be harmed by them and as the officials pointed out, “no untoward incident has taken place aiming at the tourists”.
Why? Because the insurgents only want political power. “If they’re going to harm tourists, how can they come to power?” came an assuring response.
What was even more incredulous was that tourists can pay a fee to these rebels who then issue a receipt for this! What a souvenir to bring back to the office.
If this is true, then Nepal has an incredible trick up its sleeve. Screw those travel advisories on countries which are experiencing similar trouble – sign a gentleman’s agreement with the tourist-friendly insurgents, terrorists whatever – and say, “you don’t harm the tourists and we’ll settle it our way”.
It’s like the “civilised” wars of bygone days – only soldiers are involved and get killed, not civilians.
It’s no laughing matter. If that’s Nepal’s way of dealing with trouble in their country, then we should applaud them. But all it takes is just one break from that truce and it’s a long way to crawl back.
No country is an utopia. It’s important to acknowledge that every country experiences some from of trouble, even Western countries, which some international media sometimes fail to realise.
Normalcy has returned to Nepal; International flights are back and bookings for September are averaging 60 percent for the month.
“There is trouble everywhere in the world and we have to learn to live with all these,” said the acting Nepalese ambassador to Bangkok Yadav Khanal.
It may come from a diplomat, but that’s been the state of affairs around the world since September 11.
The world doesn’t stop and as the various national tourism boards have been telling us – tourists arrivals are increasing and it only shows that friendly or unfriendly terrorists, travellers know there’s only one world to share.