LGBTs symposium for Nepal’s tourism on horizons

Kathmandu – December 7^th
Nepal’s sexual minority will make history when they play host to a historic symposium on gay and lesbian tourism on Feb. 26 to explore Nepal as a potential destination for the world’s estimated 670 million LGBTs {lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders} LGBTs, oft known mischievously as ‘Dinki’ {‘double income no kids’}, and are considered to be a ‘roller coasting high-spending and a most flexibly mobile group. The US-based Community Marketing Inc. {CMI}, the world’s leading market research, has joined hands with Nepal’s well known Kathmandu based INGO  Blue Diamond Society {BDS} and a number of private tour operators to host the event, a first in Asia.

Organizers said the Ministry of Tourism & Civil Aviation & the Nepal Tourism Board {NTB} have given the green signal & agreed to support the programme, but details are yet to be worked out.
The symposium will try to swoop in at least 200 representatives of international travel and tour operators, airlines & journalists of international travel magazines.

‘Though we are yet to officially announce the programme, we have received encouraging feedbacks from within and outside the country,’ said Constituent Assembly member and BDS Chairman Sunil Babu Pant. Pant is the first openly declared gay gentleman in South Asia to become a lawmaker. Lovingly known as ‘Babu’, Pant deserves all the credit and respect imagined for the monumental task he has undertaken to fight for the rights of Nepal’s LGBTs, in a country still seeped in its fading conservatism and yet seeking to be in sync with a world that has overtaken all limits in its glitzy and glamorous modernism.

Minister for Tourism & Civil Aviation Sharat Bhandari will likely inaugurate the programme, said a senior government official. The programme, said Pant, will serve as an official invitation to the world’s LGBT community and aims to spread worldwide that Nepal is a LGBT-welcoming country.
Organizers have estimated that the symposium will help Nepal register a 100% increase in the number of foreign visitors into the Himalayan country. LGBTs have been visiting Nepal for years but an official welcome from a minister will sure go a long, long way,’ said the BDS Chairman. Still, the organizers concede they had a hard time convincing the officials that promoting gay tourism is in no way promoting tourism for sex. ‘Government officials were concerned that welcoming the LGBTs officially would lead to a surge in sexual tourism as in Bangkok,’ said Pant. However, what’s wrong in it anyways, feel certain tourism entrepreneurs; a little sexual romping on the sidelines would play a healthy role for the frustrated denizens of the country who have been reeling under political instability, strikes, robbery, kidnapping & rape for years without any let up from this internal menace. Let the public enjoy them so long as healthy preventives are used. It is even felt that Nepal’s LGBTs are known to be one of the most exotically sexually attractive in the world.

While officials seem keen to promote LGBT tourism, they don’t seem to want to come out clearly on their stand with the coming programme. It would be wise for Nepal to take a beeline from the Indian government that recently passed a bill allowing India’s LGBTs to live freely according to their familiar ways and even guaranteed them all the constitutional rights as provided for every other citizen of India.
‘Given our marketing policy, we would like to welcome tourists’ of any sexual orientation,’ said a senior NTB official insisting anonymity. ‘We don’t & ought not to discriminate against any tourists’ on the basis of their sexual orientation.’

Nepal’s LGBT community are all pumped up with excitement & the support it is receiving from the government, especially after the 2007 Supreme Court ruling that guaranteed their rights. The upcoming symposium, they say, makes a statement that honors and respects the rights of sexual minorities which has come a long way in Nepal today. And rightly so feels Zenith Adventures, a well known brand for the outdoors & challenging adventures in the country. This is the world’s oldest known community since ancient times where LGBTs factually first stole the limelight. This goes back to a time when ‘Alexander the Great ‘of Greece almost ruled the whole of the world & when he reached the shores of India and battled with King Porus, he had captured an exquisite gay named ‘Kalikanta’ & was so attracted to this gay that he appointed Kalikanta in the most sought after position of those times as ‘head of his concubines’ with all the royal facilities imagined.  Retroactively, we need to accept the fact that ‘LGBTs’ were also the off-springs of a divine mother like any one of us and feel the same emotional pains as anyone of us would feel & it is their divine right to be allowed to co-exist in peace & harmony with all the other communities found in Nepal’s  social fabric. Should international LGBTs decide to travel to Nepal through Zenith Adventures, we shall give them a special welcome reception that shall be unique in its entire entirety.