Ilam, Jan 19, 2018
Foreign tourists have been facing problems due to lack of immigration office at a Pashupatinagar checkpoint in Ilam, the main border transit point with India.
The foreign tourists visiting Nepal via the border checkpoint have been compelled to go to Kakadvitta of Jhapa district to get travel permits.
Although Indian tourists do not need the travel permit to visit Nepal, tourists from other countries need travel permit.
Most of the foreign tourists wanting to visit places in the eastern part of Nepal via Pashupatinagar return as they have to go to Kakadvitta to get a travel permit.
Similarly, Nepali and Indian businessmen have also been facing problems due to lack of immigration center at the Pashupatinagar checkpoint.
Ilam is a touristic area and many domestic, as well as foreign tourists, visit the district. However, foreign tourists visiting the eastern part of Ilam via Pashupatinagar from Siliguri and Darjeeling have to go to Kakadvitta even for simple paperwork to get a travel permit.
A tourist guide, Binod Gupta, who arrived in Nepal accompanying Bengali tourists from Siliguri, said that theirs, as well as businesses of tourist entrepreneurs in Ilam, would be affected if the problem was not resolved soon.
Chairperson of Hotel Association of Ilam, Devi Poudel, said that the number of foreign tourists visiting Ilam would increase if tourists would get a travel permit from Pashupatinagar.
Poudel said that they knocked the door of the government time and again to resolve the problem, but it has been turning a deaf ear so far.
