It was the same Time magazine that CK Lal has trashed ('Time to get the story straight', #163) which devoted four premium pages last year to Nepal and its tourist destinations. Shoba De wrote glowingly on Fulbari Resort and Baber Mahal Revisited in an issue of India Today Plus. Today Fulbari is deep in controversy and Baber Mahal's Gautam Rana fears for his life. When there are good news stories about Nepal-and there are plenty-we take them as heaven-sent and remain silent and thankless. When there is bad publicity, we make a lot of hue and cry and beat our breasts.

But individual awareness and initiative can greatly help in these times of e-mail velocity to counter alarmist embassy advisories, sensationalist news stories and wrong information routed through the same medium. Please allow me to give my own modest example.

Joan Windsor Sarasin is a major convention tourism operator in Bangkok and well known in Kathmandu's tourism circles. Re-establishing contact after 40-years though email, she felt sorry for having been forced to cancel her FAO convention at the Soaltee Crowne Plaza because her contacts in Kathmandu and Bangkok warned her of army "tanks" rumbling around in Kathmandu. So Joan's FAO conference would be held in Singapore or Hong Kong. This misinformation culture seems to tally well with CK Lal's reference to the cancellation of the Asia-Pacific Human Rights Forum that was to be held this week in Kathmandu.

I explained to Joan that her convention would be held in a secure hotel and not in some war zone. Also that the Royal Nepali Army doesn't have tanks, and what her lords-of-poverty parachutist FAO friends saw were small armoured personnel carriers. The 500-strong convention did indeed take place. As ordinary Nepalis, we did what we could. Sorry to blow my own trumpet, this is just to show how individual initiatives can turn the tide in tourism or any other sector, and not just efforts by the Nepal Tourism Board.

Peter J Karthak,
The Kathmandu Post