Muckraking in ‘Mandu

Nepal’s post-Covid planners need a different tactic. Trying to convince people around the world to visit Nepal because it is there is not working anymore. Maybe they should try to tell them not to visit Nepal. Go away. Scat. Vamos.

That way people may actually be more curious about why we are trying to keep them away, what we are hiding, and they will have FOMO and want desperately to visit.

Tourists are also told not to visit Nepal in the monsoon. Some guidebook in the 1960s declared the rains as the off-season, and that has stuck. It is time to change that.

We need a new slogan, how about: ‘Off to Nepal in the Off Season’, or ‘Visit Nepal: Take a Rain-Cheque’. With our picturesque flooded streets and casinos in every hotel, Nepal can be the combination of Venice and Las Vegas. Only in Nepal can visitors expect the unexpected at every step. Elsewhere in the world it rains cats and dogs, but in Nepal it rains only dogs. And lots of them.

Soon the monsoon will be here. And the Tourism Revival Committee should be trying to turn Nepal’s liabilities into asses. For example, Kathmandu can rebrand itself and turn its name into Mudmandu. If Glastonbury can make wallowing in mud pools a tourist attraction, we have far more ooze here. And it is of better quality.

Every monsoon, Nepal turns from a dust bowl into a mud bath, and we are wasting the opportunity by not making the best of it.

New tv commercials can show monsoon scenes with hit songs like ‘Singing in the Rain’, ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain’, or ‘A Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall’ and dub them in Arabic so we can woo visitors from the Gulf countries where it has not rained since dawn of the new millennium. We give them workers, they give us tourists.

The Ass has a few free tips for catchy taglines to market the monsoon:

‘Nepal: Where It Always Rains on Your Parade’

‘Visit Nepal in the Monsoon for a Crash-course in Political Mud-slinging’

‘Join the Kathmandu Muckrakers’

‘Visit Nepal: Be a Stick-in-the-Mud’

‘Watch it rain water buffalos and hippopotami in Chitlang.’  

‘Nepal Airlines: Flies You to the Slime with a Smile’

Monsoon is the time for Nepal’s national disease: gastroenteritis. But this explosive affliction need not be a deterrent, it can be turned to our advantage.

We can in fact promote diarrhoea, we just need to figure out how to spell it correctly. And that opens up the opportunity for more slogans:

Enjoy Runs in the Rain 

Guaranteed Weight Loss Plan: Lose 10kg in 10 Days

Visit Nepal and Take Part in a Violent Uprising

Develop a Gut Feeling for Nepal

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