In an effort to boost their sagging business, some enterprising tour operators in Nepal are courting visitors from the gay community.

With tourism suffering due to the nine-year-old Maoist insurgency, some tour operators have started specialised services for gays, lesbians and bisexuals to enhance business by venturing off the beaten track.
 
Aasha Nepal is one such agency that caters to the gay community. It has services that range from providing gay guides and booking accommodation in gay-friendly hotels to providing information about gay bars and nightclubs and orientation about the social mores in Nepal.

The agency was started by 35-year-old Bhismaji Pant in Thamel, the hub of western tourists in Kathmandu. 

Though homosexuals form a considerable part of the country's population, they started coming out of the closet in the male-dominated, traditional society only as recently as 2000, when the first public platform for the gay community, the Blue Diamond Society, made its appearance as a group registered with the government.

Aasha Nepal, currently constructing its website, is mentioned by leading gay portals in Asia and Europe, including Utopia, the Bangkok-based site that is the largest of its kind in South Asia. 

Bhismaji Pant said he got the idea during his two-year stint in Japan, where he worked with a travel agency, followed by a couple of years more in Bangkok. 

"In these countries I found gay clients making enquiries about gay-friendly services and guides and I realised we had no such agencies in Kathmandu," Pant told IANS.

When he returned to Nepal and started his tour agency three years ago, he was looking for a unique selling point that would bring in additional business.

Probably another deciding factor was his own brother Sunil, who founded the Blue Diamond Society and is spearheading the movement in Nepal to respect the rights of sexual minorities.

Aasha Nepal is the official tour agency of Blue Diamond Society with most of its gay clientele coming from Holland, New Zealand, Spain and Italy. 

And now, a newly formed trekking agency, Himalayan Humanity Trekking, is following in Aasha Nepal's footsteps.

Arjun Chhatkuli, CEO of Himalayan Humanity, started out as a porter bearing the luggage of tourists during long treks. 

Together with American tourist Ben Ayers, Arjun started an organisation for humane and lawful treatment of porters and a library of clothing and equipment that would kit out porters on hire. 

"An American tourist and her group donated several pieces of warm clothing and we became acquainted," said Chhatkuli.

"I realised she and her group were lesbians who were smarting under the treatment meted out by the trekking agency they had hired when the men came to know about them.

"She felt she was being treated with disrespect. That set me thinking. I thought everybody, irrespective of their sexual preferences, is entitled to basic human rights."

Chhatkuli's fledgling organisation is also based in Thamel, which abounds with tour operators.

"Some of them are curious why I have chosen to include special services for the gay community," said the 27-year-old. "But there's no outright condemnation."