No tourists please

JULY 2001 - The seventh month of the current year will soon be over leaving us just about five months in which to mount elaborate plans for the year 2002 - already declared The United Nations International Year of Mountains.

As yet, mum is the word as far as Islamabad is concerned and no policy framed by the bright lights that run the ministries there, has emerged into the light of day. How we therefore plan to capitalize on this unique opportunity to showcase our great mountains, remains as most things do in the nation's capital - a blooming mystery. In the end, some babu will cobble together some draft or the other, lacking utterly in imagination or breaking new ground and this will be made public and result in precisely one thing. Nothing.

Pakistan actually has no tourism. The few hardy and reckless souls who wander into our land, are lucky to get away with their bodies and souls still intact. From Karachi where they usually arrive from - the fabled Khyber Pass now all but closed thanks to the mad people who continue to make a mess of the area, tourists face hostility, indifference and resistance at every step. Everything is designed to make their visit an ordeal. The lucky ones escape unscathed and some even experience the traditional hospitality for which we are known in some parts of the world, but for most it is not a pleasant time.

I recall taking slides of our stunning northern areas and giving an off the cuff slide and lecture show to about 250 students in the University of Texas some years ago. While I was no tour operator and had only sketchy details of the areas that were being shown, so beautiful and awe-inspiring were the vistas that I was mobbed by dozens at the end of the show. How do we get there, where do we get tickets from, what about visas, where can we get literature, what about travel facilities over there, what's the best time of the year, what about clothing – the questions rained on and on. When I told them we had no tourist office in the USA and going to the Pakistan embassy would be an exercise in sheer futility, their faces fell. Years later one can safely assume that things are no different. In fact given the downward slide for which we now hold a world record, things must be even worse.

A group of Rotarians planning to travel to Pakistan a few years ago went through something resembling a macabre farce as they tried to get visas and information from the embassy in Washington. While they scored with the visas - these were grudgingly given after no more excuses could be manufactured not to give them, there was no luck with the information.

There was one video tape with the embassy and the group leader was provided this on a 'personal' grid by an embassy staffer who gave strict instructions to the bewildered group leader that after copying it, the VHS was to be returned immediately since it was the only copy they had. As it turned out, the copy was a copy of a copy of a copy and after taping it, all the Rotarians got to see was some very grainy images of what looked like people, land, rivers, towns and roads. Most of everything the video contained was indecipherable. A request for some literature received a photocopy – yes you guessed it, of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. The Rotarians gave up and decided to take their chances and take a PIA flight - no shortage of courage there. They had a good trip thanks to their Rotarian set up here, but they continued to live through a willing suspension of disbelief throughout their stay.

The group leader was flabbergasted that a land with so much to offer, was so difficult to reach or travel through.

The Rotarian story is one of many thousands that have filtered in and out over many years. Some have not been as lucky as the Rotarians, who spent a lot of greenbacks and had a jolly good time. There have been too many cases of tourists trapped by officials, women gaped at, molested, raped and even killed and constant fleecing of those who have traveled many thousands of miles to see our country.

Every government has wasted time and money in doing nothing for tourism. There have been so many blueprints manufactured in Islamabad that you would be surprised to learn the government is not actually in the business of organized pornography. Plans, proposals and more proposals are laboriously put together by committee after committee and then discarded, filed or simply dropped into a trash bin. When Mr Mushahid Hussain was ruling as the Governor General of Islamabad, there was a huge and largely unmanageable gathering of 'tourism technocrats' who descended into Islamabad like drones and were herded into a large hall, given a few minutes each in which to present their ideas. This mad and utterly purposeless farce was enacted over a whole day and every idea, cockeyed or otherwise was assembled and patched together. This one understood was going to be the bedrock of Pakistan's new tourism policy. It is to Mr Hussain's everlasting credit that the entire farce was forgotten just as quickly as it had begun. Some minion entrusted with the daunting task of putting it all down on paper produced a document that resembled the Book of Lists. Expecting an enlightened policy from such a document was akin to asking a potato to produce a truck. Others before Mr Hussain and undoubtedly since Mr Hussain have fared no better. After 54 years, we have no real tourism policy. As for a mountain policy, banish the thought. These turnips don't grow here.

Pakistan has a great deal of potential. So has a turtle but potential is neither here nor there, just as talent is not enough to become somebody. The babus and the clerks and the bureaucrats - bureaurats is more appropriate, have simply got to be removed as far away as possible from tourism if anyone is seriously serious about promoting this great money making, image building resource. As long as they are around, write off tourism as a serious industry. With their closed minds and the general mindset in the country of creating problems, not solutions, tourism will simply limp on and on. While countries like The Maldives (is it a country or a very large beach?) soar ahead minting millions of dollars, we are scraping the bottom for a few morsels. We have mountains like no one else has in the world, which probably explains why we have made sure, more or less no one gets to see them. Ever. There are archaic rules with restrictions on photography the silliest of them all, but above everything else reigns attitude, a mindset that will never allow tourism to flourish here. What is required is a 180-degree turn by the country to make tourism the goldmine it's been for other countries, but chances of that happening are the same as K-2 falling into my backyard.