Every day, we see our great Indian tourists displaying their 'coolness' by cooking on the curb, drying their clothes on their vehicles or on the dividers and throwing garbage and pissing everywhere. But it seems that we still don't have any concrete plans to get quality Indian tourists instead of the BYOK ones! Yes, Bring Your Own Kitchen (BYOK) Indian tourists seem to cross the borders in droves but we seem to make the least amount of money from such type of visitors.
First of all, they come in reserved vehicles and pay minimal permit fees while ferrying 40+ tourists with their own cooking gas, boras of potatoes, onions and oil and rice. I think we need to have strict monitoring at the border. Indian tourists can bring their packets of Halidram's but not boras of rice and potatoes. And maybe it's about time we start charging per head instead of per vehicle. If you are carrying 50 passengers in Indian plate vehicles, then daily road tax should be at least Rs 8,000 NPR per day.
And it's about time we ban Indian cooking gas cylinders and not allow the 'cook your own food' crowd but encourage them to try our thalis and sel rotis and other vegetarian options if they do not eat meat!
Every year, we see hundreds of buses filled with the bhujiya Indian tourists in Pokhara and Kathmandu. They stay in the cheapest hotels, where 3 or 4 tourists sleep in a room and pay less than Rs 1,000 NPR. If you cross the border, you will get a shitty hotel room for that amount!
We seem to be losing business from such tourists. Our Scorpio wallahs, the taxis and even restaurants make nothing from such visitors because they have their own ride, they have their own kitchen staff and food and hotel sahujis may be cash flow positive but make minimal profits from such visitors!
Maybe, we should have a minimum room rate enforced strictly for our hotel sahujis. Why on Earth are you selling your rooms for Rs 800 and have four people sleep in a room? At least charge per person, even if it's Rs 500 per head and you will make Rs 2,000 from the room and do not allow their BYOK deal and make a mess in your hotel!
And when it comes to UP and Bihar, we see lot of these private vehicles speeding in Pokhara and paying less for hotel rooms, while bringing their own booze and asking for girls. It's about time our police personnel and the concerned authorities do something about it or else these stupid arse buggers will think we are only selling rooms and sex workers and that gives us a bad name.
We need tourists. But we want quality ones. Yes, you can stay in a clean, cheaper accommodation, but don't expect to wrap your Nepal tour in less than 5K while spending a week in Pokhara or Kathmandu or Chitwan combined. If you are a tourist, then spend and enjoy instead of thinking of this as a neighborhood field trip where you spend the least amount of money and try to extract ten times more in services!
We cannot blame such visitors because of course, everyone wants to save their dough and spend wisely but we have to enforce some rules so we can make some money instead of making peanuts or nothing from such visitors!
And why on Earth are our Indian tourists given free SIMs and their digital payments work fine, while we do not get the same facilities when we visit our chimeki? Hope Balen Sarkar will look into this and make us equal instead of us providing all freebies while we are treated like some aliens at Indian airports and borders.
I think we need to do more to promote Pashupatinath, Muktinath, Pokhara, Kathmandu and Chitwan and other tourist places. Let us bring in 100 million Indian tourists every year but quality ones, those who can afford to pay at least Rs 2,500 per day for hotel rooms and spend the same amount on food and beverages as well, instead of the BYOK crowd.
It's not only the Indians but also the Chinese and other foreign visitors as well. Why are we only attracting shady Chinese businessmen to Nepal while we can promote our mountains and cool places to the fat wallets in Shanghai and Beijing? It seems that Chinese mundrey gundas are in Nepal, especially Thamel, opening guest houses and food joints and dealing with Yarshagumba and illegal websites and scams!
It's about time we focused on tourists who will spend more than Rs 5,000 per day in Nepal. We seem to spend a billion dollars every year visiting mostly Thailand, Bali and ASEAN countries, while we make barely half that amount from our international visitors. We need to have at least 10 million tourists visiting Nepal annually and stop the tourism dollar deficit.
I think we should also strictly ban roadside cooking, spitting red gutkha stains on our roads and pissing wherever they like and place heavy fines to deter such acts. We are kind of tired of shaking our heads in disbelief while we can do nothing but curse ourselves and most of the time, just ignore the BYOK Indian tourists who come to Nepal not to spend or enjoy but just to tick off the number on their bucket list and contribute minimal revenue for our tourism entrepreneurs.
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