It is hard to imagine a more spectacular - or pleasing - natural setting. Green and purple hills rise around the tranquil Phewa lake that reflects the colours of the sky. For most of the year, the further backdrop is formed by the majestic ice-capped peaks of the Annapurna range of the Himalayas, with the Machchapucchre (fishtail) peak the most prominent. Nearby, there is a magnificent view into the hills surrounding the Seti river, as well many other beautiful lakes that are ideal for boating.
Truly, the town of Pokhara in Nepal has surroundings especially blessed by nature. But the visitor to this town is struck most immediately by the human degradation of this location. The lakefront is barely visible along the main road of the town, obscured by tightly packed, determinedly ugly hotels each blocking the view and spilling over into the street. The construction all over this part of town is both haphazard and hideous in the way characteristic of many parts of urban South Asia, but more intensely so because of the severe jostling for "prime space" evident in the manner of building.
This means, of course, that from the town one can barely see the lake which is the main pride of the town. There is a sad little open clearing remaining on the lakefront, which serves as the remaining public space, but this is effectively no better than a rubbish dump, strewn with litter and foul smelling. This decay is apparently encouraged by the hoteliers who now occupy the lakefront area, no doubt to preserve their advantage in terms of providing a view. And most of the rest of the town provides this same startling aesthetic contrast to the sumptuous natural beauty all around it, producing dismal proof of the innate inferiority of human creation.
It was not always like this, of course. Even as recently as a decade ago, local residents remember a more charming aspect for the town dwellers. Construction on the side of the main road facing the Phewa lake was banned, and the glorious vista was open for all to see and marvel at. Hotels were numerous of course, given the town's eminent suitability as a base for treks into the Himalayas, but they were not so packed that they generated the sense of being crammed sardine-like into narrow boxes, as most of them do now.
But the pressure to gain more tourist income, combined with the inability to regulate the urban space, inevitably left their mark. From the late 1980s, there was growing pressure from some entrepreneurs - who (again typically) also had muscle power and political clout - to allow private construction directly on the banks of the lake. Finally, in 1988, a few privileged parties were allowed to construct along the lakefront where the only previous construction was the large, heavily enclosed palace of the King.
Once that happened, it became difficult to stop others from joining in, and within a few years the entire lake front was completely filled up by hotels that were on uniformly narrow plots but with varying degrees of hideousness. The same lack of discipline that characterised such construction is also evident in other aspects of urban life : in the polluted waters of the once pristine lake, in the littered streets and graceless buildings that cram the area. This story typifies the problem of tourism in Nepal, which has been characterised not only by oversupply and therefore falling margins, but also by major environmental damage and relatively less long term advantage to residents. Thus in Pokhara, most of the hotels, restaurants and shops cater to the cheaper and lower middle range of tourists, who spend less and mess up more. The large expensive resorts have effectively distanced themselves away from the town
This in itself is not necessarily a problem, but it does mean that the net gains from tourism for the local economy and society may end up being much lower than otherwise. Higher value tourism need not be but still has the potential to be more easily controlled so as not to destroy the environment, and also tends to be less invasive for the host society. And lower-end tourism all too often brings with it other problems like drug abuse and prostitution, as tourist havens such as Thailand and Bali have already found to their cost.
It is sometimes argued that lower-end tourism spreads the benefits around more to the various strata of the local population, and is therefore more democratic both in terms of those who travel and those who serve the travellers. But there are surely ways to ensure that even such tourism can be regulated in a way that both provides more income to the host population and prevents the destruction of local environment and culture. But the proliferation and fierce competition between hoteliers in Nepal - struggling with occupancy rates of around 30 per cent on average even as new hotels keep coming up - and other segments of the tourism industry makes this almost unrealisable in practice.
One reason for this state of affairs is the sheer openness and lack of regulation in Nepal's tourism industry. As Kanak Mani Dixit has pointed out in a recent issue of Himal ,"Nepal's tourism has always started at the high end, but then the 'service providers' proliferate and the asking price plummets. The country becomes a tourist heaven and tourism hell - enough to begin asking whether the industry is here to serve Nepal or vice versa." (South Asian Himal, May 2000 page 16)
One way out of this would be to promote high value tourism systematically, even to the extent of limiting the number of tourists and charging high rates. Countries like Bhutan and the Maldives have been using this strategy, exploiting their special natural environment to some effect. In Bhutan, however, while it does mean that traditional ways of life have been preserved, it has meant hardly improvement in the material standards of the people even in the areas commonly frequented by tourists.
The Maldives presents a different picture. The government confines tourism to individual otherwise uninhabited islands, with a developer having unique access to a particular island for its own resort. This has allowed very high value tourism, and has also meant huge employment generation, to the extent of attracting migrant labour from elsewhere in South Asia.
But in Nepal so far such efforts have been less successful. The comparable model is for the region of Mustang near Tibet. The walled city 3,500 metres above sea level is still one of the last outposts of the animistic Bon Po religion which existed in Tibet before Indian monks brought Buddhism to the plateau in the fourth century. The visit requires a five day trek from Jomson to Lo Manthang, which is not easy but commands stunning views of the Tibetan plateau and the summits of the Himalayan peaks to the south.
Because of this, the number of hikers undertaking this journey increased steadily over the 1980s. Since 1992, the government in Kathmandu has strictly limited tourist access to the area to 1000 trekkers per year and charges a premium tax of $70 per day in the form of a special permit for visiting the roadless plateau. This is intended to preserve the local culture while providing more income to the community. But local residents have complained that most of the money has gone to Kathmandu rather than into local infrastructure such as schools, hospitals or badly needed bridges, and that the limited number of tourists means that little income or employment is generated within the area. There have also been complaints the thefts of priceless religious objects from the crumbling monasteries have been on the increase.
This last point exemplifies the pitfalls of being less security-conscious, less obsessive about own possession, which are in fact some of the more attractive Nepali attributes. Indeed, in tourism, as in much else in Nepal, it is precisely these easygoing traits which may have worked against the best interests of the people themselves. As one Pokhara resident put it, "our problem is that we are too open and too easy about allowing everything, from building ugly shops on the lakeside to allowing foreign terrorists to operate in the country". It is sad but possibly correct to think that more sustainable and less damaging tourism in Nepal would have to built upon a change in such attitudes, and a more rigid and controlled context.