Come to Nepal this Fall. Raft,
Bike, Trek, Relax, Explore and SPEND your money directly with the people who
need it to rebuild their lives. Help Nepal by giving them their jobs back.
Tourism is the way to rebuild this incredible country.
In the aftermath of the earthquake that shook Nepal on the
25th April 2015 many people are asking me, ‘how can we help Nepal’.
My answer changes pretty much daily. To begin with the advice I was giving was
to send your money – anything you ship over will take to long to get here and
we needed immediate access to food, shelters, blankets, the list goes on. Then
my answer was KEEP sending money (and this one still stands). Nepal is going to
need a huge amount of money once the rebuild starts and my continuous answer is
to help spread the word and keep Nepal in the media as much as you can.
If you ask me today what you can do to help, my answer is
COME AND VISIT. I don’t mean now, I don’t even mean tomorrow, but come the
fall, once the monsoon is over and the land has settled, Nepal will NEED your
tourism now more than ever.
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Anyone who has visited Nepal before will tell you how
Nepali’s are the most generous and friendly people they have ever met, how the
mountains are awe inspiring and how somehow, Nepal gets under everyones skin
and once you have been here one time, you will be back before you know it. It is
truly a very special country with so much to do and so much on offer.
Over 1 million foreigners travel to Nepal every year and
without their valuable income, Nepal will find it hard to get back on it’s
feet. Nepal Tourism accounts for hundreds of thousands of local jobs and a huge
percentage of the countries national income.
From taxi drivers, hotel owners, bar staff, restaurants, rafting
companies, trekking guides, tea house owners, porters, mountain biking
companies, paragliders, bus companies, internal flights….the list goes on and
on and on. All these people are currently out of work and can then not support
their families, thus causing more undue hardship.
At the moment the media is (rightly so) focusing on all the
destruction to the country, however, it is only certain areas, and most of the
tourist destinations in the country are totally unaffected. I do not want to
detract from the devastation that has happened, because it is bad, it is
serious and it should not be taken lightly. But it is only in certain areas and
most of these villages survive on money sent back by relatives working the
cities, and if they have no work, the villages have no money to rebuild.
Thamel, the tourist district of Kathmandu has been relatively unaffected, as has
Pokhara one of the main destinations on every ones hit lists
when they travel to Nepal. Whilst the Langtang region has been harmed, many
other trekking regions are unaffected and theses guides need employment.
Annapurna, Mustang, Makalu, Kanchenjunga are all fine. For those interested in
wildlife, Chitwan National Park and Bardia National Park are open and
unaffected.
And from our personal point of view, the rivers are still
flowing and screaming out for the rafters and kayakers to come back. The only
rivers we will not commercially running at the moment are the
Upper and LowerBhote Kosi and the
Belephi, as although the river is fine, the areas surrounding it have been
devastated.
Mohan Krishna Sapkota, spokesperson
for Nepal’s Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Civil Aviation said “Our priority
is to bring more tourists and provide them quality, safety, hospitality and
other services to their satisfaction,” he says, expressing a desire to
re-establish Nepal as a “safe, unique and attractive tourist destination.”
In a country where tourism is the largest domestic
industry, what Nepal doesn't need is potential visitors to be scared off because
of over exaggerated media. The whole of Kathmandu has not been flattened, I have
seen for myself, it is only certain areas. If you love Nepal and want to see it
rise once again, please help by giving donations to reliable organisations to
assist the rebuild, but also come here on holiday yourself this Fall.
In the meantime, we as a company are focusing our efforts on
rebuilding the homes of many of our staff members but we are OPEN FOR BUSINESS AS NORMAL.
If you have any questions about certain areas of Nepal
and whether they are safe to travel to or not, or you would like to enquire
about travel here next season, please email us on info@grgadventurekayaking.com
#AwesomeNepal #NepalTourism
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