September was another bad month for tourism: all arrivals were down by almost 29 percent, and that of Indian visitors by a whopping 44 percent. What is more worrying is that the Nepal Tourism Board's numbers compare the changes with the year before (2000), when tourism numbers had dropped by about nine percent. Nepal's tourism averaged at around 350,000 until the Visit Nepal Year (1998), when the numbers had reached 463,684. The growth spilled over into 1999-there was a six percent increase in overall arrivals. But the industry took a downturn since the hijacking of the IC814 flight in December 1999, and recovery has been very slow.

There was some hope in the first three months of 2001, when overall arrivals grew by about 15 percent. April arrivals were lower than last year, but there were some signs of recovery in May. The numbers nose-dived after the 1 June massacre. This season, there has been a similar story-it looked good and then came the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. The resulting cancellations in travel plans worldwide, and South and East Asia in particular, has reduced the number of tourists to Nepal to a trickle. With the overall arrivals (from January to September) already down by about 10 percent, and Indian arrivals are down by 26 percent, a total recovery looks almost impossible. It may only be a matter of time before the travel industry begins to downsize.