Provided all goes well, Nepal will soon have a new tourism policy based on the suggestions the government is canvassing from many sectors of the industry. Various associations of tourism entrepreneurs have already submitted their input.

"Given the changed national and international scenario, we need to have a new policy," Rabi Jung Pandey of the Tourism for Rural Poverty Alleviation Program told us. "New concepts that are picking up, like domestic tourism, will have to be included in the new policy."

Some quarters in the travel industry want issues like categorisation of travel and tour operators, standardisation of services and quality control, among others, to be included in the new policy, while others have been opposing it.

The list of what tourism entrepreneurs want and what they don't may go on and on. But the key challenge, tourism pundits say, is to maximise the contribution of tourism industry in the national economy with due attention to sustainability. So far, tourism has been contributing a meager 0.3 percent to the GDP. "We will first go through the suggestions of all the stakeholders and hold a national level workshop for the final draft of the policy," an official at the Tourism Ministry said.

Tourism arrivals grew by 44 percent last month compared to figures for the same month in 2003, bringing visitor totals up to a total of 24,456.