When one of the popular travel sites, roughguides.com, announced Nepal as number one travel destination for 2016 I am sure the site was not being sarcastic. But I doubt.
The fact that travel destinations change year after year means that those destinations undergo some kind of change each year. And it's a no-brainer that the change has to be for better. I cannot help but scratch my head and wonder what possibly could have gone so right in our case that we have now become number one country in the world. The same travel site did not have Nepal as number one recommended tourist destination for 2015. So why the change of heart in 2016?Indeed, 2015 has been historic for many reasons.
Things have never been the same since Dashain. There's nothing you can think of that brings smile to your face. The fast and furious process of constitution drafting and its hurried promulgation certainly could not be a reason for us being selected as number one destination. Could it be that, as widely claimed, we were chosen because we are no more land of Buddha and Himalayas but now also a land with the best constitution in the world?
The travel magazine must have observed that there cannot be a place like Nepal. When the world is celebrating breakthrough in green energy the wooden cooking stoves are selling like hotcakes in government-held Alternative Renewable Energy Expo. The load-shedding keeping the country dark for unimaginable hours is, in fact, not a new phenomenon. Or is it that when societies are debating intolerance, here is a little place nestled in the Himalayas that epitomizes tolerance. The reference here is related to the blockade, announced or unannounced, which showed to what extent a society could be pushed back in no time at all.
One can always look for other events but it is hard to think of any other that would make the year gone by so significant. Hence it is worth looking back at each of these major events to figure out which could be the most significant of the three to make us the number one destination of 2016.
The earthquake was a catastrophic experience. It certainly caught the world's attention. As bad as it may sound, it did give us some sort of 'recognition' in the world stage. Albeit for completely wrong reasons, it did force, or rather must have forced the majority of the mankind to sit back and think of a place where almost 9,000 lives were lost.
Right after the quake, there was a welling sense of patriotism and nation building that gave hope to the people. After despair, we were beginning to get back to our optimistic self. People started thinking of whether the quake was a reset button to re-build and new-build vital infrastructure. The outpouring of sympathy followed by outpouring of funds certainly made us see the silver lining.
Could this possibly be the reason? The travel site perhaps is suggesting to potential tourists that it's about time they visited a place in earth where they can witness people's emotional ride, from dejection to hope and nothing doing thereafter. There certainly cannot be many places where one gets to experience the government's complete and blatant negligence of its people.
If it is not the quake then it certainly has to be the constitution. After almost a decade of effort, or pretention of it, the nation finally did get a constitution, apparently the best in the world. It had everything one could imagine, claimed the drafters. I do not think that the site wants people to travel to Nepal to glimpse it.
The constitution resulted in a blockade. It showed us how a whole civilization can run into chaos, how a state can be anarchic in no time. When the incumbent prime minister took office, there was a certain expectation. He spoke, while his predecessor kept mum on most issues. However, as we were to discover, all he did was speak. To make matters worse, he even made us understand what Nero was doing when Rome was on fire.
Granted, the timing of his oath-taking could not have been worse. First the blockade depriving people of basics and then the onset of the winter load-shedding season. However, what happened was rather baffling. There was nothing to help people handle this difficult time. Rather, when people thronged to firewood depots, they got to hear the prime minister promise that load-shedding would be history in as early as 12 months.
This perhaps could be reason for Nepal's selection. The must-visit country where there is an open tamasha. We have been reduced to a country where newspaper editorials have long ago published 'enough is enough' and moved on.
Sarcasm aside, the travel magazine must have looked at the beautiful valleys and the magnificent Himalayas. As suggested in their website, one reason for selecting Nepal is the possible help tourism could provide to the battered economy.
There is no denying that Nepal is still one of the most beautiful countries in the world. It's just that if year 2015 is an indicator of things to come we may reach a situation when we no longer will be able to 'sell' tourism. So we should not be number one just because we have the world's tallest mountain or Buddha, but also because we are a stateless state.
Hiteshkarki@gmail.com
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