Katmandu Flights to Aid Tibet Tourism

Air service between Nepal’s capital of Katmandu and Lhasa, the ancient capital of Tibet, will start in mid-September, the official New China News Agency reported Thursday.

By linking Lhasa with one of Asia’s most popular tourist spots, inauguration of the 50-minute flights will mark the end--at least as far as tourism is concerned--of Tibet’s historic isolation behind the immense barrier of the Himalaya Mountains.

The national carriers of China and Nepal--the Civil Aviation Administration of China and Royal Nepal Airlines Corp.--will initially run only charter and non-scheduled service between the two cities, according to the news agency report.

The agreement was reached at a six-day meeting in Katmandu of delegations from the two airlines and the Nepalese government, the agency said.

Gopi Dawadi, consul at the Nepalese Embassy in Beijing, said the new route will be a boon to tourism for both Nepal and Tibet.

“We are having many tourists coming to our embassy for visas,” Dawadi said. “Presently they fly to Lhasa (through China) and travel overland to Katmandu. Once the flight opens, it will facilitate it for many tourists who want to visit Tibet and Nepal.”

30,000 Foreigners in 1986

Chinese officials have said that Tibet, which was host to 30,000 foreign tourists last year, hopes to attract 100,000 visitors annually by 1990. The goal for the year 2000 is half a million tourists per year, the New China News Agency reported last month.

During its history, Tibet, one of the world’s most isolated places, has sometimes been part of China and sometimes independent. It is now part of China, firmly controlled by Beijing since 1951.

Few Western travelers had ever seen the region before 1980, when the Chinese government began to allow visits by limited numbers of tourists. From 1980 to 1984, Tibet averaged about 1,500 foreign visitors a year. In 1985, partly because the land border with Nepal was opened to tourists, the number grew to about 10,000.

Last year’s jump to 30,000 tourists came even though getting to Lhasa and back still is not easy. Lhasa is linked by air with two major cities in central China--Chengdu and Xian--but reaching those cities involves extensive travel in China, and it is difficult for independent travelers to make advance bookings of return flights from Lhasa.

Tourism on the scale Chinese officials envision would have a great impact on Lhasa, a city of about 160,000.

Temples Being Restored

The interest of foreign tourists in Tibetan Buddhism provides an incentive for the Chinese government to maintain a relaxed attitude toward religious practice and to continue restoration work on some of the temples damaged or destroyed during the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, when religion was severely suppressed throughout China.

In Tibet, all but a handful of the most important of the region’s thousands of monasteries were destroyed. Since 1979, Tibet has renovated and reopened 234 monasteries, temples and nunneries, according to a report last month by the New China News Agency.

Chinese and Tibetan officials say they expect major economic benefits from tourism and a general opening to the world.

The New China News Agency reported last month that at a press conference in Lhasa held for reporters accompanying Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany on a visit to Tibet, Doje Cering, chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region government, stressed that the region welcomes foreign investment and trade as well as tourism.