Nepal recently to disburse funds collected from enthusiastic friends in Norway, I encountered the harsh realities of a partly-ruined country with an ambivalent mixture of amazement and disappointment.What was amazing was the irrepressible optimism and indestructible survival instincts of Nepalis rebuilding homes and homestays with their bare hands in a race against a second monsoon out in the open. They were working on their potato and rice terraces surrounded by scarred mountain slopes and dangerous rockfalls, or selling fresh produce and juice from bicycle trolleys to tourists slowly returning to Thamel.But I was also saddened and disappointed by the slow pace of the state bureaucracy, making life in devastated towns and villages much harder than it needed to be in the year since the earthquake.The donations were from a fund-raising campaign in Norway called ’Reis Nepal’ with its double meaning in Norwegian: ’raise Nepal’s economy’, as well as ’travel to Nepal’. The campaign motto was: ’From one mountain people to another’.
Organising the effort were people with backgrounds in international sustainable tourism and development assistance. We know well how the multipliers and ripple effects of tourism can quickly reach out into poor communities and generate a long value chain in many other sectors: transportation, agriculture, forestry, fishing, food distribution.Nepal’s tourism, once an efficient, enlightened model for the entire world via its pioneering sustainable mountain trekking and lowland safaris, has now been aptly described as ‘a race to the bottom’.
On the first day of my trek north of Pokhara, when presented with a bill for a night in a perfectly comfortable, clean, friendly homestay with solar heated showers and a knockout view of the Annapurna range, the problem stared me in the face: the bill amuounted to Rs 500 for my trekking guide and myself. Five dollars. It simply does not add up.
While there have been great strides in conservation like the Annapurna Conservation Area, the crux of the matter is that tens of thousands of hard-working Nepalis receive only a pittance of the true value they provide affluent visitors. This is not sustainable. Tourism in Nepal, like some other countries, suffers from a dramatically undervalued nature capital. Adding to Nepal’s woes is that its own government underappreciates the importance of tourism.