KATHMANDU, MAY 04

As we were chatting over a few glasses of Nepali red wine at a reception, he brought up the subject of unlimited potential in tourism. He had heard that tourism has rebounded in leaps and bounds. I told him that's what I hear too, but not sure if it has.

He seemed to know as he insisted that it has. He then switched the subject to homestays. I told him it was the fad now, not my cup of tea. He said you could make a lot of money from homestays. I told him, 'Despite claims, even star hotels are reportedly not making money from tourism.'

I invited him to please himself and make money from OYOwith both hands. He said there was an explosion of Nepali and Indian travellers. I told him I didn't know much about Nepali and Indian travellers and informed him that I come from a past when hotels in Nepal would not accept Nepali and Indian travellers with ear to ear smiles. I recounted an anecdote about a tall, handsome man in an all-white ensemble fleeting around his coffee shop at Durbar Marg with a cane in hand, intimidating the few Nepali tea lovers that dared enter his establishment.

He came to his main point.

He was a government servant tasked with keeping the city orderly and clean. Like all government servants, he was a pathological reticent and an introvert.

He said some traders of foreign descendants have been evincing interest in a long-term lease of his inherited house for a homestay hotel.

So I told him to go ahead. But he said, 'I am not very comfortable with one of their terms in the contract.' He said they want to mortgage the land - 22 annas of prime land - to apply for a bank loan to build the house. I asked him what happens if they get fed up with the business in no time and leave. That's what I want to discuss with you, he said. I said you discuss that with your family and your lawyer, not me.

'Take my input but don't trust me to offer you a piece of foolproof advice that will protect you from the traders or the volatility of the tourism business.'

I reminded him tourism is not as lucrative as land and gold business or even government jobs. And if tourism were lucrative, the country would not be staring at this foreign exchange crisis. There was a time when tourism was the only foreign exchange earner and employment generator. I said remittance is number one and asked him to explore the land and labour business while he was still in the government service.

I shot down the conversation, telling him I could have earned a fee talking about business. I also reminded the man about Greenlines Agrawala, telling him to choose his partners carefully.

A version of this article appears in the print on May 04, 2022, of The Himalayan Times