NATIONAL8 (Spotlight Weekly]

ADVENTURE TOURISM

Advantage Nepal

Nepal stands to gain a new and significant mileage thanks to the cross country race the international media will highlight

BY NAVIN SINGH KHADKA

Raid gauloises : Race across the Himalayas

It is no less than a heavenly sent gift for the national travel industry. Just when experts have been prescribing different strategies to reposition Nepal's image in the international travel market, Trans Himalaya 2000 -- a cross country race -- is all set to promote the country as an adventure destination, and that too all free of cost.

With a foreign organizer, 69 participant teams from 18 countries, dozens of international electronic media and 120 print journalists from around the world covering the event, the cross country race may prove to be the biggest publicity opportunity for the country. And that has only one reason: Nepal will host the major segment of the race.

Of the around 800 kilometres race from Tibet to Janakpur expected to conclude between 10 and 12 days, the participants will be spending the majority of the days in the Nepalese varying topographies -- mountains, hills and the plains.

Starting from Shegar Dzong in Tibet on the last of this month , competitors will reach the highest point of the entire race (5,510 meters) in the Tibetan Plateau. As they descend toward south, they will enter Nepal through the Kodari point. The participants will cover this distance by trekking and riding horses. After reaching Dolalghat. they will perform activities like white water swimming, canoeing, rafting, and cayoneering (climbing against water falls) on Sunkoshi River to reach places like Manthali, Harkapur, among others.

Having reached Rajbiraj, the adventurers will trek and do mountain biking toward the west to reach the final destination -- Janakpur. The participating teams will have to pass through 44 check points to reach the finishing point. There will be four headquarters and assistance camps at different points in the race route. According to Patrick Brignoli, President of Raid Gauloises, a Paris based organization, the organizer of Trans Himalaya 2000, 15 medical doctors will be deployed at different points in the route. "We will also have four helicopters stand-by for rescue operations."

Even government officials claim that they have made necessary preparations for security. "We have already talked to the Police Headquarters to provide security throughout the route," said Ganesh Raj Karki, Under Secretary at the Industry Administration Division, under the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation.

Briefed about the race and equipped with the route map, the teams -- each comprising of four men and one woman -- are all set to leave for Tibet on April 25. The participating teams have paid 40,000 US Dollars each as entry fee. The winning team in the race will be rewarded 20,000 US Dollars, according to organizers.

But Nepal will not have to vie with any other destination to be rewarded for having hosted the event. The country will be enjoying free of cost publicity as mediamen will be covering all the activities throughout the race. Renowned TV stations like Euro Sport International Channel, ABC of the US, NHK of Japan, and other international channels will tele-cast a 20 minute program every day during the event. "The program will cover the environment and landscape of the event-spots, the local culture, ethnicity and lifestyles besides informing about the performance of the leading and the last teams.

According to organizers, on the last day of the event, the TV channels will show a 50 minute program including the highlights of the race. Euro Sport International will shoot a three-hour documentary on the adventure program to telecast it through its different channels in different European countries. In a bid to promote its eleventh sporting event to be held elsewhere, Raid Gauloises will also prepare a separate documentary on Trans Himalaya 2000 -- the tenth event the French organization will be organizing in the last ten years.

The ninth event of Raid Gauloises, which took place in Equador in 1998, was telecasted by different television stations for 177 hours and broadcasted by different radios for 62 hours. Around 2000 write-ups on the issue appeared in different newspapers, magazines and periodicals in 1999. Nearly 400,000 persons learnt about the event through the internet. "This time, above 10 million people have already surfed the net to know about Trans Himalaya 2000," said Brignoli.

Be it viewers watching the event on their TV sets or any internet-surfer learning about the race in the information superhighway or any reader reading any write-up on the issue, they all will not miss one thing to notice: Nepal's varying topography and rich biodiversity. Mediamen, whether in print or electronic media, will definitely include the beckoning Nepalese landscape while covering Trans Himalaya 2000's seven sporting activities.

Towering mountains, deep gorges, rugged terrain, lush jungles, rivers and rivulets, flora and fauna, all will be there in the media to attract visitors from around the world. "We are also trying to show the international mediamen covering the event our other tourism products as well," says Pradeep Raj Pandey, Chief Executive Officer of Nepal Tourism Board.

"The event will also promote village tourism, since the participants will have to pass through the different villages," said Dr. Surendra Bhakta Pradhananga who heads Kathmandu Research Center.