Direct flights from Kolkata to Kathmandu are aborted. For the time being.
And with that the travel-friendly Bengali, ahead of the Durga Puja vacations, has to strike off another tourist destination from the bucket-list.
After April’s terror attack in Pahalgam, where among the dead were two travelers from Kolkata, the natural disasters in the western Himalayas spread across parts of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, and tourists from Bengal were looking elsewhere.
Buddha Air, Nepal’s leading airlines, had announced plans to resume direct flights between Kolkata and Kathmandu from September 1, just ahead of the festive season, after a hiatus of six years. The operations got delayed as adequate permissions are yet to be granted.
“Nepal is usually a last-minute destination for many tourists. An Indian can visit Nepal with just a valid voters’ identity card. Still, we got solid bookings. Now there seems no light at the end of the tunnel,” Anil Punjabi, the owner of Ares Travels Pvt Ltd, and a member of the Travel Agents Federation of India. “This is the time when the entire family goes on a vacation. Safety has become a top priority. Be it a terror attack or a natural calamity, travelers don’t want to end up in a situation where their lives are at risk.”
Till the first week of September, Punjabi’s agency had between 100-150 bookings to the restive Himalayan democracy.
A student-led anti-government protest in the monarchy-turned-democracy led to the ouster of the incumbent prime minister KP Sharma Oli on Tuesday. The unrest started from Monday onwards and spiraled since, with homes of the President Ramchandra Paudel, several ministers and the Nepal Parliament set ablaze, and some of the ministers chased and assaulted on the streets of Kathmandu.
Just two weeks ago, in another young democracy, this time to the east of Bengal, students and youths led massive protests in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. The socio-economic and political factors being played out in the streets of Jakarta, and now Kathmandu, are near similar.
And the Bengali tourist is determined not to get caught into another nation’s turmoil.
“Till Monday night, I thought things would settle down in a day or two. Today, we cancelled the tickets,” said Amitava Mukherjee, a retired media professional, who had booked the tickets to Kathmandu for himself and his wife. “Ke aar oi jhamelay porte chaaye (Who wants to get into trouble)?”
Industry insiders say they had pumped in around Rs. 2-3 lakh as advance for hotel bookings.
“A few crores are blocked. And if the bookings get cancelled, we will have to bear the loss. The travelers will not like to pay twice,” said a travel agency owner based in Salt Lake.
With the terror threat in Kashmir and the climatic calamities in the western Himalayan states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the favourites this season are Kerala, Rajasthan, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Arunachal Pradesh and the perennial one, Sikkim. Also featuring prominently is PM Narendra Modi’s own constituency Varanasi, as a spiritual destination.
"Bookings in Bali have been cancelled due to the protests in Indonesia. And now, Nepal. People don't want to travel. We are facing tremendous losses," said Amrita Roy, owner of Travelogue, a Siliguri-based travel company.
Software consultant Shalini Nayak is keeping her fingers crossed for her week-long post-Durga Puja trip to Bali with two other friends.
“The tickets are booked and I do not want to cancel them. Our travel agent has assured that Bali is safe,” Shalini said.
