More Indians head to Nepal

Kathmandu, May 3 (IANS) Nepal has witnessed a sustained tourist inflow with visitor arrivals in April rising by 23.1 percent year on year, according to official figures released Thursday. Arrivals from India went up by nearly 45 percent.

Visitor arrivals by air totaled 207,961 in April, up by 23.1 percent from a year earlier, according to the Immigration Office at Tribhuvan International Airport, the only international airport in the country.

Arrivals from the South Asian region have shown a positive growth of 35.4 percent with mixed performance, Xinhua reported.

Arrivals from India and Pakistan went up by 44.5 percent and 14.8 percent, respectively, whereas arrivals from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka dropped by 12.9 percent and 41.2 percent, respectively, according to the Nepal Tourism Board.

Arrivals from the other parts of Asia - except the South Asian region - saw a rise of 16.7 percent. Except for Thailand that had a drop of 14.7 percent, almost all the markets have shown a positive trend with China up by 42.9 percent, Malaysia up by 16.8 percent, Singapore up by 5.7 percent and Japan up by 13.1 percent as compared to the same month last year.