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Tourism - one of the sources of Nepal's economy - is gradually limping back to normalcy after being battered by the COVID-19 pandemic for nearly two years.

This spring season witnessed a considerable number of foreign tourists arriving in Nepal with a total of 42,006 tourists coming via air route in March alone.

Last year, 14,977 foreign tourists had visited Nepal during the same period. According to statistics of the Department of Tourism, Nepal has received a total of 78,747 foreign tourists from January to March end this year.

The government has formed a Tourism Revival Steering Committee under the chairmanship of the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Civil Aviation, which is tasked with taking initiatives to revive the tourism industry by exploring new possibilities, identifying and promoting tourism industry and creating enabling investment climate in the tourism sector, among others.

The Nepal Tourism Board has been organising Travel Mart in all the seven provinces.

Fewa Festival is going to be held on April 13 and 14. A team of foreign chefs led by MasterChef UK contest winner Santosh Shah will reach various destinations for 10 days and participate in tourism promotional events with special focus on culinary tourism.

Mahesh Phuyal, general-manager of Ramada Encore, a 4-star hotel in Thamel, Kathmandu, said the hotel had 70 per cent occupancy lately.

"The hotel comprising 90-rooms mostly has American, Indian and European tourists," he shared.

The inflow of foreign tourists has enthused tourism entrepreneurs in Pokhara, one of the popular tourist destinations in the country.

Bharatra Parajuli, a local entrepreneur, said tourism entrepreneurs like him were upbeat due to the increasing number of tourism activities in Pokhara. He said development and promotion of adventure tourism destinations in and around Pokhara, famed for lakes and natural landscapes, had helped boost the country's tourism.

Similarly, Hotel Association of Nepal's Acting President Binayak Shah shared that the hotels in Pokhara were receiving so many inquiries lately. He opined that tourism had been gradually reviving in Nepal after two years of pandemic-induced crisis.

Likewise, Trekking Agencies' Association of Nepal former vice-president Nilhari Bastola has suggested that the government of Nepal spread the message that Nepal is ready and open to tourists, to revive tourism in Nepal. According to him, this can be done through foreign ambassadors and consuls stationed in Nepal.

He further recommended that the government devise attractive packages such as free visa for a month, among others, to bolster the influx of foreign tourists.

NTB's CEO Dr Dhananjay Regmi informed that the number of tourists from India and Bangladesh had increased significantly as the Board had conducted targeted promotional events in these countries.

Echoing Shah, Regmi said tourism in Nepal, which was plagued by COVID-19 was slowly coming back into normalcy.

He stressed the need to facilitate Indian tourists arriving Nepal by roadways through various border points. RSS

The historically famous and important Biska Jatra of Bhaktapur has begun from today.

The Biska Jatra, which begins with the arrival of the New Year, begins this evening by pulling the chariot of Nakinju Azima to Ghatkha from the front of the Panchatle temple in Tamari and pulling the chariot of Bhairavnath.

The Jatra is celebrated with much fanfare for eight nights and nine days.

Before pulling the chariot, Bhairavnath is worshipped and the pilgrims pull the chariot with the help of ropes attached to the front and take it to their respective tole. The main attraction of the procession is pulling the chariot, which is also done in a competitive manner among the toles or settlement blocks.

There is a religious belief that watching the Biska Jatra destroys the enemy, so this Jatra is also called Shatruhanta Jatra.

On the last day of the procession, Bhairavnath’s chariot is pulled from Gahiti as it was on the first day by the residents of Thane and Kwane Tole.

Meanwhile, Chief District Officer Rudra Devi Sharma said that a strategy has been prepared after holding discussions with the stakeholders to complete the Jatra in a dignified and timely manner.

Metropolitan Police Chief Shiva Kumar Shrestha informed that 950 Nepal Police and 400 Armed Police personnel will be mobilized for the Jatra. The CCTV cameras have been installed at the crossroads to identify the rioters during the Jatra. RSS

A series of deaths at a hospital for elderly patients in Shanghai is underscoring the dangerous consequences of China’s stubborn pursuit of a zero-COVID approach amid an escalating outbreak in the city of 26 million people, Associated Press reported.

Multiple patients have died at the Shanghai Donghai Elderly Care hospital, relatives of patients told The Associated Press. They say their loved ones weren’t properly cared for after caretakers who came into contact with the virus were taken away to be quarantined, in adherence to the strict pandemic regulations, depleting the hospital of staff.

Family members have taken to social media to plea for help and answers and are demanding to see surveillance video from inside the facility after getting little to no information from the hospital. 

The conditions and deaths at the hospital are a sharp rebuke of China’s strategy of sticking to a zero-COVID policy as it deals with the outbreak in Shanghai in which most of the infected people don’t have symptoms. With a focus on forcing positive cases and close contacts into designated collective quarantine facilities, the costs of zero-COVID may be outweighing the risk of getting sick, according to the Associated Press.

On Saturday, Shanghai Vice Mayor Zong Ming said the lockdown could soon be lifted or eased in communities that report no positive cases within 14 days, after another round of citywide COVID-19 testing. 

Shen Peiming, 71, was one such casualty of harsh measures. She died Sunday morning at the hospital, without any relatives by her side. A family member said they have been calling the hospital non-stop to find out the circumstances of Shen’s death, but have not gotten a clear answer. “How many times have there been lockdowns since 2020? They still don’t have experience managing this?” the family member said.

All they know is her doctor and nurses had not been there to care for Shen, who was partially paralyzed after a stroke. Her last nursing assistant had been quarantined for being a close contact of a positive case, the relative said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution. An unfamiliar worker called to inform them of her death. Later, the hospital said it was due to a chest infection.

The hospital had a COVID-19 outbreak, the family heard from orderlies, but Shen had tested negative as of last week.

Shanghai authorities have reported no deaths from this outbreak, but questions have been raised about the reliability of the data. A city health official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, said that the criteria for confirming cases and deaths are very strict and susceptible to political meddling, Associated Press reported.

It is unclear how many patients have died at the hospital, and whether any died of COVID-19. Families say they are talking with other families whose relatives have also died. An article from Chinese news outlet Caixin describing the deaths and infections was taken down shortly after it was published, apparently targeted by censors. Calls to the main office of Donghai Elderly Care went unanswered. The Shanghai government did not respond to a faxed request for comment.

Most experts agree that China’s zero-COVID approach was highly successful in keeping deaths to a minimum when there were limited drugs or vaccines. But now that shots are widely available in China, and with the advent of the omicron variant, many say the government should abandon the policy and focus medical resources on the elderly and vulnerable instead.

Instead, Shanghai has locked down its 26 million people and carried out repeated mass testing to tackle an outbreak driven by the highly contagious omicron BA.2 variant. On Saturday, the city reported more than 23,000 new local cases, of which only 1,015 had symptoms.

“If you’re asymptomatic, what’s going to hurt you?” said Ray Yip, the founding director of the US Centers for Disease Control office in China, who maintains close ties with Chinese health officials. “The only people who get sick are those with diabetes, obesity, chronic disease, old people. Protect those people. You can protect them.”

A low vaccination rate among the elderly, though, remains a concern. Only 62% of Shanghai residents over 60 have been vaccinated, according to the latest data available. Some experts support the strict approach, saying China needs to raise that rate before it can safely live with the virus, according to the Associated Press.

The US guidelines for asymptomatic cases, as in the UK, are that individuals isolate at home for five days. In Shanghai, workers are rushing to set up massive temporary facilities in exhibition halls and elsewhere to try to house everyone who tests positive.

The citywide lockdown has disrupted daily life and the economy. Many residents, trapped in their apartment buildings, are scrambling to buy food through apps and place bulk orders with neighbors. Some in quarantine have posted videos showing chaotic scenes of people rushing to get food and a lack of clean toilets. Others have posted pleas for relatives who need medicine urgently. 

The US said Friday that it is allowing the voluntary departure of non-essential personnel and family members from its consulate in Shanghai because of the situation, Associated Press reported.

Sri Lanka's central bank doubled its key interest rates on Friday, raising each by an unprecedented 700 basis points to tame inflation that has soared due to crippling shortages of basic goods driven by a devastating economic crisis, Reuters reported.

The heavily indebted country has little money left to pay for imports, meaning fuel, power, food and, increasingly, medicines are in short supply.

Street protests have been held nearly non-stop for more than a month, despite a five-day state of emergency and a two-day curfew.

The Central Bank of Sri Lanka's (CBSL) monetary board raised its standing lending facility to 14.50% and its standing deposit facility to 13.50%.

The build-up of aggregate demand, domestic supply disruptions, the plunge of the local currency and high prices of commodities globally could keep up the pressure on inflation, CBSL said in its monetary policy decision statement.

"The rate hike will give a strong signal to investors and markets that we are coming out of this as soon as possible," governor P. Nandalal Weerasinghe said at a post-policy decision briefing, according to Reuters.

INDEPENDENT CENTRAL BANK

Weerasinghe said that he wanted to run the central bank independently without any external influence and that he had been given the authority to do so by the president and has been asked to expedite measures to get the country out of the current crisis.

"I want to be very clear that my message is not one of blind positivity. Things are challenging and we need to take decisive action. Things will get worse before they get better, but we need to apply the breaks to this vehicle before it crashes," he added.

Inflation hit 18.7% in March.

An analyst had expected hikes of up to 400 basis points, Reuters reported.

"With the monetary policy tightening now finally clear, the stage is set to take the next vital steps with regards to IMF and debt restructuring and clearly communicate this to the international stage," said Thilina Panduwawala, head of economic research at Frontier Research.

Finance Minister Ali Sabry said earlier that the country must urgently restructure its debt and seek external financial help, while the main opposition threatened a no-confidence motion in the government and business leaders warned exports could plummet.

"We cannot step away from repaying debt because the consequences are terrifying. There is no alternative, we must restructure our debt," Sabry told parliament.

J.P. Morgan analysts estimate that Sri Lanka's gross debt servicing costs will amount to $7 billion this year, with a $1 billion repayment due in July, according to Reuters.

"We have to go for a debt moratorium," said Sabry, who offered to quit a day after he was appointed on Monday but later confirmed that he was still finance minister.

"We have to suspend debt repayment for some time and get bilateral and multilateral support to manage our balance of payments."