Recovering from the quake

Photo by: Rocky Prajapati

Every century, with a cycle of around 80 years, a devastating earthquake shakes up the two continental plates below Nepal, jolting all life above it. With each repetition, buildings collapse, lives are lost, and normalcy turns upside down for a while.

Yet every time it happens, the country comes together, gets stronger, and works harder to build back. And build back it does. Better, stronger and more resilient. This has been proven time and again.

The two major earthquakes of 25th April and 12th May caused widespread damage in some districts in Nepal, no doubts about that. That was the earthquake doing its thing.

The reaction of the people, considered to be one of the best crisis managers in the world, was extraordinary. Before the government or international aid could kick in, the youth, business-people, monks, nuns, schools, colleges all started to work in relief, and before anything had even arrived in Nepal in terms of aid, had conducted an astounding amount of relief runs, mobilising funds and resources and moving tons upon tons of relief into areas that needed it.

In the far flung villages, the youth had dug up bodies, cremated them, and had started on emergency shelters within a few days already, conditioned by centuries of living in isolated small valleys and knowing how to be self-sufficient.

This strength and resilience is something worth experiencing, the nature of this incredible mix of over 100 ethnic groups living in this stretch of land that is Nepal, nestled between giants of China and India, never colonised and never conquered.

In tourism, the reaction was similar. First priority was getting everyone home safe, so rescue missions were organised to get stranded travellers out of the way. After that, companies started looking after their own - staff, guides, porters etc who needed help. After that the industry rallied together to start a recovery process, running as we write and which has developed into a very unique industry led initiative thats taking the lead in turning the tourism of this country for the better. An understanding of this process and the participation in it, can change ones understanding of how an industry should react in disasters of this magnitude.

At socialtours, we are working hard on several aspects of the recovery process

1. Leading an industry initiative to recover tourism through engaging in designing of mitigating strategies and actions to back it up. A big positive results of this has become the new recovery website endorsed by the government www.nepalNOW.org . We urge all partners to also endorse this, as this is beneficial for the one voice that is required to drive customers to buy trips again. 
2. Developing post quake recovery products that are experiences that encompass what we have described above. Most of our trips have already become relevant in the recovery process, as travellers can now meet survivors, relief workers and real champions in order to understand how a country responds to something like this. This is a strong promise and in Nepal NOW easy to deliver. We ourselves are survivors and socialtours alone has organised and is implementing over 50,000 USD worth of relief works and we continue to do so since day one. 
3. Initiating confidence building campaigns like the I AM IN NEPAL NOW and I AM GOING TO NEPAL campaigns that are viralling on social media. 
4. Finding ways to make the travellers in this two year window feel even more welcome, sometimes things as little as finding out which room is allocated and leaving a nice note for them.  

Together in Tourism!

Ropain: The rice planting festival 2015

Pic courtesy - https://www.facebook.com/jaysan.photography

Carrying on with the tradition of celebrating ROPAIN as in yesteryears, socialtours organized a group of expatriates and tourist to travel to the southern ridge of the Kathmandu Valley to indulge in one of Nepal’s most colorful and exuberant festivals. After the earthquake of April 25th this was one of the major events to take place.

On 27th June, 2015, the journey towards the paddy fields began at 8 am and we reached the Bajrabarahi temple after an hour of driving through earthquake damaged village houses and well manicured terraced fields. A brief stop at the temple and the team was on its way to the fields. After a quick change of clothes the planting began in earnest. Fifteen minutes of rice planting then gave way to over three hours of fun and frolic in the mud. Mud wrestling, tug of war and mud racing then over took rice planting.

In between local rice beer, rice wine, Newar style sautéed buffalo meat and spicy potato was served. This served as an energizer for the mayhem in the mud to continue for another two hours. After another hour in the fields mingling with the local farming community and giving continuity to on the spot invented games, it was time to relish a typical village Newar lunch. After shower and change of clothes under the open sky an eight course Newar lunch was laid out. Food was as varied as from beaten rice, chicken, bamboo shoot to your regular potato curry. 3 pm and we were pulling our tired bodies into the bus for the ride back home.

This year the crowd was smaller than in previous years due to the earthquake, but let me assure the fun wasn’t. It was an occasion that everyone relished and spoke highly of. It was also a measure of how far we had come after the earthquake in terms of getting our lives back to normal. socialtours has come back stronger and better after April 25th and we promise you a bigger and more eventful ROPAIN 2016.

All photos sourced from https://www.facebook.com/jaysan.photography

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Psychological preparation for disaster

Today, at socialtours, we had a short session with one of our senior city guide Sarita Shrestha regarding the human psychology during and after the natural disaster.

The session started with the sharing of experiences related to the earthquake that hit Nepal on 25th April 2015 with the magnitude of 7.8RS. Everyone had their own stories about where they were, how they felt, what was their immediate response, what was the lasting impact and so on.

We realized that there was something common in the stories we shared. We all were in the state of high alert during the quake and were trying hard to find a safe place for oneself. This taught us the fact that the greatest threat of human being is the threat of life; it makes us ready to do anything... and that means anything.

Then, we evaluated the impact of disaster in our mental health. We found that most of us still have not recovered from the fear. This session, however, helped us to realize that it's normal for anyone to go through such trauma, everyone will get back to their normal life; the pace of recovery depends the personal strength.

On the whole, the session was quite fruitful.  

Socialtours would like to thank Sarita for her time and effort.

Press Release | Nepal is building-back-better for autumn 2015 tourist arrivals

source: www.humanitarianresponse.info

Kathmandu, 15 June 2015 - Major reconstruction work and in-depth assessments are underway in Nepal to build-back-better and get the Himalayan nation ready for the upcoming tourist season.

The two earthquakes that shook parts of Nepal on 25 April and 12 May 2015 have brought damage to 14 of the 75 districts of the country, and even though the devastation is extensive in some regions, many areas remain relatively unscathed and are fit for tourists to visit in autumn 2015.

“Our nation is working hard to make Nepal a safer place,” says the founder director of socialtours - Raj, who has been in the industry for more than a decade. “The tourist district Thamel has been relatively unaffected. Damaged hotels are getting a full structural assessment and are being restored to an even better condition than before.” Under the assessment project, engineers have marked safe buildings with a green sticker and started demolishing those deemed unsafe in and around the Kathmandu Valley.

Damaged sites, such as the historic Kathmandu Durbar Square, have partly been reconstructed and opened for tourists on 15 June. The main roads and air transport links are operational and life is getting back to normal in many areas. “Nepal is a wonderful country and one of the best qualities of the Nepali people is their hospitality. They are very resilient and are working hard to get their country back on the international tourism agenda,” says Katja Staartjes, a Dutch mountaineer and a Goodwill Ambassadors to aid tourism, emphasising the need for this source of income to return to the country.

Many trekking areas have seen little damage and, if the monsoon rains do not trigger landslides in these areas, trekking will be as safe as it was before the quake. “Apart from Langtang, Rolwaling and Manaslu, we do not see much of a problem with other trails, such as the Everest Base Camp Trek,” says Swiss geologist Erwin Scheibert, who is assessing the routes in the affected areas for the Local Road Improvement Programme (LRIP) in collaboration with the World Food Programme (WFP).

Other places further in the west, such as the popular wildlife parks Chitwan and Bardia, the lakeside town of Pokhara and the much-visited Annapurna trekking region have also escaped widespread damage, and are ready for visitors to showcase their abundance of natural beauty and wildlife. Buddha’s birthplace Lumbini, did not suffer damage and is thankfully all set to welcome visitors back to its sacred soil.

Tourism is a big contributor to the Gross Domestic Product of the Himalayan nation, directly supporting almost 500,000 jobs in 2014. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) this figure was due to rise to almost 700,000 in the coming ten years. “With tourists not coming to Nepal even more people will be forced to leave the country, which will be devastating for the future of our country,” Gyawali continues.

The Nepal Institute of Development Studies (NIDS) says that around 2.2 million Nepalis, which constitutes about 10 per cent of the population, have opted to leave the country to work abroad in order to provide the necessary means to feed their families.

For more information, please contact - NepalTourismRecovery@groups.facebook.com 
- or visit www.facebook.com/groups/NepalTourismRecovery

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