A fox arranges the party with a variety of delicious foods and invite a stork for dinner. The stork was very excited and accepted the invitation and flew from far far away to reach the fox’s place. Fox’s place was filled with the aroma of delicious foods but the fox served the soup as starter but in a very shallow dish and all the stork could do was to wet the very tip of his bill, not a drop of soup could he get. The stork returned with an empty tummy and full of bad experience and he never trusted the fox again.

This is one of my favorite childhood stories and today I recall this story due to the slogan we made after earthquake to attract tourists and due to the current situation of our country.

Nepal is still beautiful, our culture is still alive; out of 75 districts of Nepal only 8 are badly affected, out of 10 national parks only one is affected; out of 8 UNESCO world heritage sites only 2 have suffered some damage, 90% of the hotels are safe and operating; and only 2 trekking routes are affected out of more than 35 popular routes. So plan your holiday to help Nepal and invite the travellers and explorers to Nepal.

A few travellers believed us and visited our country too but we serve them the Nepal bandh not the delicacies that we have showed them. And they have to start treks from the gate of Tribhuvan International Airport of Kathmandu by carrying their trekking stuff in their bag. We honour our guests as god in our culture (aatithi devo bhava) but today we are becoming like the fox of my childhood story due to Nepal bandh.

At 9:15 a.m. of 19 aug 2015. I was listening to Image FM radio programme called Shuva Din on my way to office and I got the information which I can’t believe unless I read the same on online news portal -- the information was of strike days in the past five years, which totalled 866 days.

The leaders of other countries are successfully leading their countries and people in education, sports, new inventions, and many more sectors but we have been successful in closing our country for more than 2 years in the last five years. So how can we compete with the rest of world?

“Buddha was born in Nepal” -- this is the most famous slogan among Nepalese in the last few years. We are using the slogan as a pride and to make our country known in international market and to promote tourism also. But what actually we are doing is selling the slogan only. We Nepalese have almost forgotten who the Buddha was and what his precepts are.

As a result we are fighting and killing each other and pushing ourselves towards darkness though Buddha had tried to enlighten us.