Kathmandu, Chitwan and Nuwakot, Nepal – Like every year, Pushpraj Rimal, a tour planner and taxi driver in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, was looking forward to September for his business to boom. But what he got instead was a series of cancellations by tourists after catastrophic floods last month killed more than 1,450 people and destroyed key highways, deeply impacting the Himalayan nation heavily dependent on tourism. Pushpraj, who speaks Nepali and Hindi, works on commission for several hotels and trekking companies in Kathmandu and the scenic town of Pokhara, known for its lake nestled in the Annapurna mountain range.
Pokhara also serves as a base for Himalayan trekkers. Nepal’s tourist season peaks after the monsoon ends in August and the skies are clearer. Tourism attracts thousands of international travellers, accounting for nearly 8 percent of Nepal’s gross domestic product and employs more than 1 million people.
Last year, Nepal saw more than 1.15 million tourists visiting the country, nearly a third of them during the September-November season. But the floods this year, triggered by a glacial mountain collapse along the Nepal-Tibet border in the north, have pushed tourists away from the unaffected areas as well. Tourists generally start pouring in from September, but most of them have cancelled this year,” he said.
I will have to break their hearts and my promise to them for the very first time.” Seeta Nepali, 61, and her husband, Ramakant Nepali, 68, sell homemade buttermilk on the highway connecting Kathmandu to the tourist towns of Pokhara and Chitwan. The couple, who also sells cottage cheese in their neighbourhood, depend on these daily sales to make ends meet. We could earn nothing for 11 days after the flood because the road was blocked,” Seeta told Al Jazeera.
Now, some tourists are coming in, and we are able to sell, but it is not even half of what we used to sell earlier because there are far fewer people. … We are making barely one-fourth of what we would usually do,” she added. British national Alexa, who goes by a single name, had planned to visit Pokhara and Dhulikhel, a hill town near Kathmandu known for its cultural experiences and homestays, with five of her friends. But the flooding forced the group to cancel their trip.
When we learned about the disaster on the 26th [of August], we had to cancel everything,” she told Al Jazeera. A traveller from Japan, who asked to remain anonymous, said the washed-out roads and bridges were the least of his concerns. Others like Tapas Kumar from India changed their itineraries instead of cancelling their trips.
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