Nepal will commence expedition activities for foreigners from October 17. This was announced by the Nepalese government along with the decision to allow domestic airlines to operate flights to all destinations across the country from Thursday.
Nepal halted its expedition activities in March as COVID-19 spread in the Himalayan nation. Hundreds of trekkers in remote parts of the country were hurriedly flown back to capital Kathmandu while some were evacuated to their respective countries.
Early this month, Nepal government had decided to grant permission to allow a Bahrain Royal Guard expedition to climb Mt Lobuje East and Mt Manaslu. Based on the proposal from Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, a team of 15 Bahrainis along with Prince of Bahrain and three British nationals, which makes it a total of 18 people, was given permission to visit Nepal in a charter flight.
Team was given the permission to climb Mount Manaslu (8,163 metres), the eighth highest mountain in the world. Before attempting to climb Manaslu, the team will be scaling Mt Lobuje East (6,119 metres) in the Everest region to acclimatise with the conditions. The team is also planning to scale Mount Everest in the spring season of 2021. The team is already in Nepal and under a seven day quarantine.
Although, the government had announced the resumption of mountaineering and expedition in the country last month, hundreds of tourists have been awaiting the green signal. Now it has announced to resume expeditions from October 17. Though mountains in Nepal are open for expedition, no foreign climbers are permitted to make summit attempt before October. An all-Nepal expedition team has been permitted for 7129 metre Baruntse for the autumn Season apart from the Bahrain Royal teams. Now foreigners will be allowed for trekking and mountaineering activities in Nepal from October 17. But they will have to produce a negative RT-PCR test not older than 72 hours upon their arrival in Nepal.
Nepal government had earlier announced that resumption of domestic flights would commence from the hilly and mountainous regions that had been less affected due to the COVID crisis, but later it decided to open all destinations for domestic airlines. Now, it will depend on the airline companies which destinations they want to fly. Long-route public transport services have also been resumed in the country.
However, airline operators can operate only 30 per cent of their earlier slots. All the health safety protocols will also need to be implemented. The resumption date has been advanced from September 21. Based on the earlier decision, airline companies have also notified passengers for flight booking.Earlier, the government had announced it would allow resumption of both domestic and international flights from September 1. However, it allowed resumption of only international flights on the given date and that too by limiting the number of flights while extending suspension of domestic flights till September 15.