‘Nepal is not closed’: tour operators battle flood fallout, urge visitors to return

Rajendra Lama’s phone has barely stopped buzzing. In between coordinating rescue operations for flood survivors with the Nepal-mountaineering-association" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="199427" data-entity-type="organization">Nepal Mountaineering Association and running his travel company, he spends his days communicating with anxious tour groups, trying to persuade them not to cancel their trips.“We have a crisis in one part of the country, but we’re open elsewhere and are not affected by the floods,” said Lama, a tourism entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience. “I’m just trying to communicate that to my clients.”Catastrophic flooding along the Nepal-China border on August 26 grabbed global headlines, as tsunami-like waves – a mix of water, sediment and boulders – raced down from the Himalayas, submerging villages more than 100km (62 miles) downstream across northern and central Nepal.