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The Covid-19 pandemic has devastated economies and destroyed industries all over the world. In Nepal, which went into a lockdown in March this year and is still under restrictions, the pandemic meant an end of thousands of businesses. For some, there might be a chance of a revival but for many others, their doors may have shut forever. Among businesses that do not see any hope of a comeback in the near future, wedding photography—albeit fairly new as an organized industry in Nepal—might soon be a dying art.

When you type ‘Wedding photography in Nepal’ in any search engine or social media, you’ll find a couple of dozen names pop up as suggestions within the first few pages. And then a more thorough search will lead you to at least a 100 or so companies providing wedding photography services, with most of them fully dedicated to clicking weddings.

Such was not the case even a decade ago. It was mostly your local studio photographer covering weddings with a single camera, a photojournalist doing part time-work at weddings, or a family friend with a camera doing the honors. But the concept of having a whole team of photographers dedicated to creating photos and videos of different events within a wedding came only around 10 years ago, say photographers APEX talked to—with companies like Wedding Diary Nepal and Foto Pasal among a few others taking charge. Mixing art and creativity with commerce, the wedding photography companies not only started giving best services to their clients, but also created opportunities for budding photographers and helped them gain financial independence.

Shahnawaz Mohammad, the founder of Wedding Diary Nepal, worked in the Nepali media industry for 12 years before opening his company in 2010.

“First of its kind for photography services in Nepal” is how Wedding Diary Nepal’s introduction reads on its Facebook page, and Mohammad reiterates that the company was indeed one of the frontrunners in wedding photography. With a team of 16 professional photographers, Wedding Diary had built good enough reputation to keep it busy all year, especially during the wedding seasons, before the pandemic took over the world.

“We were looking forward to another busy wedding season this year when the pandemic spoiled all our plans. Everything got cancelled,” Mohammad says. “As we are purely a wedding photography-based company, we have now been out of work for over six months.” Although a pioneer of the business in Nepal, Wedding Diary had already been facing challenges from freelancers, with growing competition in prices, even before the pandemic. The current situation has forced Mohammad to reevaluate the company’s business structure.

“We might now have to start taking small private events and couple shoots as well,” he says. “If that doesn’t work, I am thinking of getting into some other profession. It’s not that I will forfeit this business for good; but this alone may not sustain my livelihood.”

In better days, the 16-member crew of Wedding Diary with their individual gear worth Rs 800,000 to Rs 1 million each were earning enough not only to sustain their lives, but also to make some savings. The savings are still providing for them, Mohammad informs, and the only major loss so far has been having to relocate their office due to rent issues. “We have been fortunate enough to have some savings to tide us over these hard times,” he says. “I think compared to freelancers, it is especially difficult for business owners.”

Pritam Chhetri, owner of Kathmandu Wedding Studio, has not been as fortunate. Originally from Pokhara, Chhetri is a former employee of APEX who quit his photojournalism job in early 2019 to make a full-time career in wedding and event photography. His company, established as a part-time business in March 2018, was barely two-year-old when the pandemic hit Nepal. Starting from ground zero, Chhetri had invested in assets worth millions and created a 14-member team by the start of 2020.

“Now the team has broken up after so many months of being without work. Some have joined other professions or taken up new jobs,” Chhetri says. “Some of my team members even had to sell their equipment to cover their living expenses.”

Kathmandu Wedding Studio was also training a female photographer, a rarity in Nepal, who is now back at her home in Butwal, Chhetri informs.

Chhetri himself had to forfeit his office space and move all equipment to his small rented flat. As the situation gets worse and prospects of getting back to normal appear slim for his business, Chhetri has been trying to extend his portfolio by working in product photography as well as creating presets and plugins for photo-editing softwares.

While many photographers into Events and Wedding photography have started looking for alternatives to the profession, it is not an option for Indian national Param Narain who has been running Wedding Sutra Nepal for three years. Originally from Chandigarh, India, Narain comes from a family of photographers and is the fourth generation in the family to continue the profession. “My family has moved to Mumbai now and my brother and his children are established photographers there,” Narain says.

Narain himself had a successful run in India, also taking professional photos of Bollywood celebrities, before coming to Nepal to start Wedding Sutra. Married to a Nepali, Narain co-owns the company with his local partner Anil Shrestha. Despite the complete disruption in business for over half a year, he is determined not to give up. “Quitting is not an option for me as this is family legacy, and also the only thing I know,” Narain says. “I will wait out the pandemic and I am positive that once it is gone, we will go back to our normal lives.”

Want to earn a little on the side while you explore your hobby? Why not take up blogging?

Outside Nepal, there are folks who are pursuing viable careers as bloggers. Some, like Harsh Agrawal from India with his award-winning blog ShoutMeLoud.com, have even become global celebrities. But professional blogging is still in its infancy in Nepal.

Ganesh Karki, who started blogging in 2008, says being a blogger at the time was something completely new. He used to write poems in Nepali and found they had a big audience online. “I started seeing it as an income source,” he says. He regularly updates contents on paniphoto.com and ujyaalopato.com and claims to earn $150-200 a month through his blogs.

Does blogging have a scope in Nepal? “If you are ready to put in some effort, it can be an additional source of income and, if you are any good, you get recognized globally,” Karki says.

Mahesh Gautam, who started blogging a year ago, runs three blogging websites—theviralstars.com, tecktruck.com, and nepalientertainment.com. On an average, he earns around Rs 10,000 a month from them. “They allow me to cover some of my monthly expenses,” he says. Of his three sites, the first two are in English while the third is in Nepali. 

Bikash Rai, another blogger at nepalitrends.com, started out by sharing his knowledge of trending topics. He says, “Blogging has scope if you can cover global topics. But, really, it can be on any topic if you are ready to work hard to popularize your blogs.”

Google AdSense is the most common (though not for blogs in Nepali) source of revenue for Nepali bloggers. You earn a certain amount when visitors click on ads on your website. 

Besides AdSense, backlink selling, and sponsored content (ads from different companies) are other viable income sources for Nepali bloggers.  

Rai says he earns Rs. 15,000 a month on average working only in his free time. But income is not fixed and depends on such factors as traffic, ads, and other sponsored content.

You can also do affiliate marketing on a commission basis as well as instant articles. “Affiliate marketing is best for tech-related blogs. For instant articles, you have to connect your website to a Facebook page,” Rai adds. 

Shankar Kapri, a blogger at meronotice.com, says he has earned $200 in two months by blogging. “The income depends on your effort and traffic,” he adds. 

How does the blogger get the generated income? Facebook makes the deposits in your bank account. Google used to pay through Western Union but has started directly depositing money in your bank account as well. Some international clients even pay through PayPal.

But as PayPal is not available in Nepal. Rai has found a way out though. He adds, “In that case, I channel my income through my friends abroad.”

“Only good traffic earns good money,” is the mantra bloggers live by. But the blogs targeting Nepali audiences find it hard to get traffic, not the least because Google ads don’t apply in the case of Nepali blogs.

And the competition is tough. “Your blogs must be unique and the very best,” says Rai. 

Lack of knowledge about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is another problem. “Many bloggers neglect SEO and their contents don’t reach target audience,” says Aakash Karki, an SEO consultant for bloggers. SEO is compulsory to rank in Google and get traffic. “When someone searches related content on Google and doesn’t find your blog, your site doesn’t get visitors, simple as that,” he says.

Nor, for that matter, are Nepalis used to the idea of blogging. “They are more into news website and largely in the dark about blogging,” says Ganesh Karki. He says most Nepali bloggers are irregulars, just like him. As his content is in Nepali and competition has increased, it is not generating the income it used to.

So there are plenty of obstacles for would-be Nepali bloggers. Right now, it appears to be a good source of additional income if you have something else going on the side. It may be a tougher sell as a full-time career option. 

This is a tragic story from Dhorpatan west of Baglung district where floods and landslides this year have killed 17 people while 21 went missing. Some have lost their entire families, while others are left only with children. Many have become squatters overnight, with nothing left of their own.

It was difficult to identify the deceased from the September 2 floods as their newly-unearthed bodies had rotten. This delayed their last rites.

As if losing his young son to the floods was not enough, Tul Bahadur BK of Dhorpatan-9 found that his 22-year-old son Narayan BK was mistakenly buried. “My head spun when I found out that my son had been buried by some other family,” he says.

The incident came to light after it was discovered that local police had handed over Narayan’s body to the family of another person—32-year old Prem Pun—who had also gone missing in the area. After Narayan’s body was handed over to Prem’s family by mistake, they buried it at Burtiwang Ghat on the same day. The next morning the police found Prem’s real body. The body was also handed over to the Pun family after postmortem. The family entered the real Prem Pun this time. But this deprived Narayan’s family the right to perform his last rites or even to see his deceased body one last time.

BK says he came to know about his son’s burial only after the completion of Prem Pun’s funeral. “Now it’s hard for us to accept that he is dead. We would have somehow accepted his death had we seen his deceased body. That chance of closure has now been denied to us,” says BK.

Even though he realizes that similar ages and body structures of the two dead youths might have led to the confusion, BK still finds it hard to come to terms with the incident. He is also livid with the police for handing over the first unearthed body to Pun’s family without informing him. “A family had to perform the last rites of their son twice and I did not even get to perform them even once for my own son. How should I console my family now?” he asks. BK has shaved his head after it was ascertained that his son’s body had been cremated. To compound his misery, his daughter-in-law and granddaughter are still missing from the September 2 flood.

The floods washed away 80 houses in Dhorpatan. Some evacuees are now living with relatives, while others are putting up in cattle sheds and makeshift tents.

On Thursday, September 3, the food delivery boys were getting ready for a busy day ahead after a week under strict lockdown. Then they got the dreaded message. Unlike what was being reported, they wouldn’t, after all, be able to make deliveries. To be able to do, they now learned, they had to get the PCR test done, which comes Rs 4,400 a pop. And even if they got the test done, it would be at least three days before they got the report. 

The government has offered next to no support for the restaurants and food delivery services. Instead, the police constantly harass them. On Aug 27, over 90 food delivery service owners and employees were arrested from various places in Kathmandu. This has discouraged established companies, but also put a big dent in the confidence of those starting out in the business.

Anita Timsina, founder of Fooddole, a Kathmandu-based food delivery service started a year ago, shares the bitter experience of her team-members being apprehended. “The way we were picked up without a warrant, it no longer felt like we were living in a democratic country,” she reminisces. Police arrested both office and field staff at Fooddole. Timsina says the police behaved with her staff as if they were criminals. She now wonders if delivering food really is a crime in Nepal.

Komal Niraula, co-founder at One-Eleven, another Kathmandu-based food delivery service started a year ago, speaks of how his startup has already had to shift to a cheaper office. They have also cut production and cut down on deliveries in light of reduced income. 

When he heard about the arrests, Niraula says he felt thoroughly discouraged as a professional. “I am particularly dissatisfied with the prohibition on the delivery of groceries. Moreover, it is not clear who is allowed to do business and who is not,” he adds. 

Sujan Rai, co-founder at Sanohaat, a food delivery service that opened up in June in Jhapa district of Eastern Nepal, says food delivery services are facing an existential crisis. “Forget rewarding us for making people’s lives easier by delivering food, grocery, and other essential stuff to their doorsteps; the government is instead arresting us,” he sighs. Nonetheless, he agrees that it is up to business-owners to ensure their services fully comply with safety measures.

Likewise, Nabin Raj Acharya, Managing Director at Mazzako Food, a Pokhara-based food and local grocery delivery service, feels highly insecure these days.

Mazzako Food had only started its services a month ago after being closed for almost three years. He says online delivery of food items with safety measures and regular monitoring is more secure than people visiting stores individually. 

“By the looks of things, the food delivery business is on the verge of collapse considering how much we have invested in it, often by taking out huge loans. And the government, instead of helping us, seems intent on making our lives harder,” he says. 

All food delivery personnel APEX talked to claimed they were following all necessary health protocols and safety measures. They are regularly taking the body temperature of staffs, making them use masks and hand sanitizers, and taking every precaution to minimize chances of infection.

So what was the reason behind the recent police action in Kathmandu? Spokesperson of the Metropolitan Police Office, SSP Sushil Kumar Yadav, says the police only acted on the administration’s directive. “Moreover, food delivery is not among essential services,” he adds.