Kathmandu, April 11

A Qatar Airways flight has departed Kathmandu carrying Australian and Canadian tourists today. The flight arranged by Canadian government took off at 2:25pm with 204 passengers, including seven children.

As per the Australian Embassy in Kathmandu, there were 141 Canadians and 63 Australians on board the flight. This was the second flight for Australian tourists stranded in Nepal while it was the first repatriation flight for Canadian nationals.

As Nepal has imposed a nationwide lockdown to fight against the coronavirus, a large number of tourists have been stranded across the country. As per Nepal Tourism Board, till date more than 3,000 tourists have been repatriated. The government has also halted all international flights till April 30 except for repatriation flights. The Tribhuvan International Airport has stated that more chartered flights have been scheduled for next week to repatriate foreign tourists.

A version of this article appears in e-paper on April 12, 2020 of The Himalayan Times.