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BANGALORE, INDIA, January 28, 2004: The Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) is wooing people for next month’s Mahasivaratri at the shrine of Lord Pashupathinath near Kathmandu. The Chief Executive Officer of the board, Tek Bahadur Dangi, admitted that tourism had been affected by the Maoist insurgency in the Hindu kingdom during 1999 and 2002 but things improved in 2003 when the number of tourists grew by 23 per cent. No tourist had been targeted in the past eight years of Maoist violence, he stressed, adding that Indians accounted for one-third of the total inflow of tourists. There were some 30,000 Indians for Mahasivaratri last year. “That has prompted us to come here,” he said. The festival is on February 18 and the board, the Pashupathi Area Development Trust, and Royal Nepal Airlines (RNA), have a “Pashupathinath Darshan Package,” valid between February 15 and March 31. The package was launched in Chennai recently by the Shankaracharya of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam. Nepal has many religiously significant sites like Muktinath, Lumbini, Swargadwari, Janakpurdham and Manakamna, Mr. Dangi pointed out. For more details, click here.

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