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The Ministry of Tourism and Uncivil Aviation has hit upon a cunning plan for Visit Nepal year 2020: the strategy is to go for the quality of visitors rather than their quantity. By making it as difficult as we can for you to get into the country, and by ensuring that your stay is as gruelling as humanely possible, we can guarantee that we only get genuine holidaymakers looking for thrills and adventure, and not the riff-raff who want all creature comforts, fly first class, and stay in 7-star accommodation paying $1,000 a night. So, it’s not just numbers, we are looking to welcome 2 million kilograms of tourists in 2020.

Which is why, from April 1st, getting to Nepal is being made even more challenging because the nation’s only runway is down for repairs 10 hours a day. (This is no April Fool’s joke. -Editor) Direct flights to Lukla will henceforth be by hot air balloon taking off from Kirtipur. Most international flights, instead of waiting for hours to land during the peak tourist season, will open the hatch while circling over Kathmandu and paradrop tourists directly into city hotels below. This way, you also beat the traffic jams.

To streamline disembarkation formalities, the Department of Immitation and the Department of Strange Customs have set up visa counters and x-ray machines at Tundikhel itself for parachute tourists who are advised, to expedite the process, to fill out their arrival cards and visa forms while dropping.

Upon landing, and after neatly folding their chutes, all tourists will be treated like terrorists until proven otherwise. This is to make sure that only the stout-hearted will henceforth gain entry into Nepal. Terrorists without visas have to wait in five lines lasting 1 hour each: one to change money, the next to apply for a visa, third to clear immigration, fourth to get a chest x-ray, and fifth to get their false bottoms examined.

At the x-ray for carry-ons, the Department of Traditions and Customs is doing its bit to make Nepal a safer place. Contraband items like your extra bottle of Molotov Cocktail and the second Perambulator you are trying to smuggle into the country will be treated as threats to Nepal’s national security, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and will be confiscated on the spot without compensation. Walking through the Green Channel with more than one of each of these items will result in the immediate impounding of the Plastic Tricycle in question, which will be destroyed later in a controlled and safe explosion.

The new Immigration forms also have deeply philosophical questions for arriving visitors to fill out:

Name:

Nationality in the name of the father:

Gender (if any):

Date of Birth:

Date of Expiry:

Purpose and Duration of Stay on Planet Earth: