Agence France Presse

Lalitpur, April 2:

The snows are melting on the Himalayan ridges above the Kathmandu Valley, but the arrival of spring has brought only a trickle of tourists into emergency-rule Nepal.

The ancient city of Patan, boasting a World Heritage Site at Durbar Square, today has more pagoda temples and palaces than foreign visitors. Lines of handicraft and jewellery shops stand empty. Dozens of child hawkers pursue occasional visitors with tales of financial desperation.

The fifth-floor terrace of the Old House Cafe overlooks the ornate roofs of the sun-splintered square, but owner Bharat Sundar Shrestha is struggling to cover his overheads. The business, which includes a music and statues section, is surviving on 50-60 customers a day, but more than 40 are local. “Tourists? A few come but it’s not like it was before. We rely more and more on the locals,” Shrestha says. According to the Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) the number of arrivals by plane to the landlocked kingdom fell to 14,001 in February, 43 per cent fewer than the same period last year.

Officials say the March figures look set to be 25-30 per cent down on 2004, raising some hopes of a revival, although the January figures were already 16 per cent down. On the eastern side of the stunning medieval square, Bikas Man Pradhan sits behind the counter of his jewellery shop.

“My business is going down,” says the 47-year-old, “Today it’s very bad.” Pradhan too has adapted for the local trade, but that involves cutting prices. He remains open because he owns the small premises and pays no rent.

Not so lucky is Nirmala Raj Bhandari, who runs the Tushar Bouddha Arts and Craft shop, in the shadow of the giant Bouddhanath Stupa, another World Heritage monument, five-km northeast of the capital.

She pays Rs 10,000 rent every month and is losing money. Her second outlet is also in trouble 300-km at the Japanese-run Lumbini Hotel in Lumbini. “Half of the hotel bookings have been cancelled there,” she notes.

Neighbour Lila Magar also fears she will have to close down her Pancha’s Collection Fashion Gallery where income no longer covers rent. Like the others she occupies a prime site at one of the kingdom’s most celebrated attractions. The immediate future looks bleak. Most local businesses trace the slide in tourism back to the June 2001 palace massacre. In fact, the official statistics put 1999 as the best year on record when 421,243 people flew into the landlocked nation sandwiched between India and China.

In 2002, arrivals plunged to half that figure, before slowly climbing back to 379,027 last year. Tourism provides 80,000 direct jobs and some 300,000 indirectly for a population of 24 million.

The Hotel Association of Nepal (HAN) warned this week of imminent closures and demanded government assistance for the industry which includes some 850 properties offering 45,000 beds. Nepal staggers from crisis to drama. Tourism board officials talk of an image problem in attracting foreigners to this Himalayan outpost once sold as the fabled Shangri-La. Paradoxically however, officials, diplomats and businessmen agree that the king’s power grab has drastically improved security, notably in the capital region. Violence in the Kathmandu Valley, where bombings had become an almost daily occurrence last year, is now rare.

Small businessmen like cafe owner Shrestha say they are happy to let the king try to restore stability after years of political and security chaos. “The politicians spent the years (since 1990) quarrelling among themselves. “We need a strong man in authority,” he says, bemoaning the corruption which has undermined democracy and the traditional political class.