Everest set to become new Brokeback mountain after Nepal U-turn on gays

As recently as 2007, Nepal classified homosexuality as a crime, punishable by up to two years in prison. Gays and lesbians were harassed and beaten by police, and denounced by Maoist rebels as “a product of capitalism”. Three years on, this Himalayan nation is not only about to become the first in Asia to allow same-sex marriages: it is promoting gay weddings on Everest in an attempt to become the continent’s top gay tourism destination.

“We’re completely changing this country. It’s a newborn republic — and we want to showcase this change,” Sharat Singh Bhandari, the Tourism Minister, told The Times. “We also want to re-establish tourism as a major industry.” He aims to attract one million tourists in 2011, more than double the number last year.

He kicked off the marketing campaign in October with a written message to the International Conference on Gay & Lesbian Tourism in Boston — an unprecedented gesture for an Asian minister. “As the world knows, Nepal is the land of Mount Everest, world’s highest peak and the birth place of Lord Buddha, light of Asia,” the message said. “I, therefore, would like to take this opportunity to invite and welcome all the sexual and gender minorities from around the world.”

Nepal is also due to host the first Asian Symposium on Gay & Lesbian Tourism in Kathmandu in June. This sudden turnaround highlights the extraordinary change that has swept the country since a democratic uprising forced King Gyanendra to renounce absolute power in 2006 and the Maoists won power and abolished the world’s last Hindu monarchy two years later. The new republic is still unstable, with the Maoists and their rival parties unlikely to agree on a new constitution — supposed to guarantee gay rights — by a deadline of May 28.

But a same-sex marriage law is working its way through parliament after a Supreme Court ruling in 2008 that ordered the Government to safeguard the rights of “sexual minorities”. “Before that, people did not know if it was natural or unnatural, legal or illegal,” says Sunil Babu Pant, Nepal’s leading gay rights activist and the only openly homosexual MP in South Asia.

Much of the credit for this progress goes to Mr Pant, whose own life story mirrors Nepal’s transformation. Born into a conservative Brahmin family, he had no concept of his own sexual orientation while growing up in rural Gorkha district. He had not heard the word “homosexual” until he went to Belarus on a scholarship in 1992, and did not learn about gay rights until he visited Japan in 1997.

On his return to Nepal five years later, Mr Pant founded the Blue Diamond Society, an organisation campaigning for gay rights that now has more than 120,000 members. Today, he also runs a travel agency called Pink Mountain and advises the Government on how to tap a market worth more than $63 billion (£41 billion) in the United States alone. “The tourism thing is an obvious idea — we should have thought of it much earlier,” he said. “With proper marketing, we could bring in half a million a year.” While some officials fear a backlash in more conservative rural areas, Mr Pant says that most Nepalis are instinctively tolerant “as long you don’t walk naked or do something explicit”.

The tourism board is already talking about same-sex weddings on Everest, elephant safaris for gay honeymooners and other specialist activities. Mr Pant wants to broaden the drive to promote all Nepal’s tourist activities. “There are plenty of gays and lesbians who want adventurous, sporty, outdoors kind of tourism,” he said. “In other Asian countries which offer this, they are either not welcome or considered criminals.”