August 21, 2007 | 12:00am
KATHMANDU, Nepal – The travel time from Manila to Kathmandu is about six and a half hours, three and a half on Philippine Air Lines (PR) flight 730 to Bangkok and three hours from Bangkok to Kathmandu. PR 730 proceeded smoothly. The Bangkok to Kathmandu leg was, however, marred by lost luggage that was recovered three days after expensive overseas calls from Kathmandu to Manila, Colombia (the office of Assistcard, the travel insurance company, assigned to handle the lost luggage case) and Bangkok, the headquarters of the airline that brought me to Kathmandu.
Upon arrival at Kathmandu, I was met by Prabin Lama of South Asian Institute of Management’s (SAIM) Dean Bijay KC. The SAIM had invited the De La Salle Professional Schools Ramon V. del Rosario Sr. Graduate School of Business (DLS GSB) to forge collaborative arrangements that would, among other things, assist SAIM develop its new Master of Management (MM).
A number of items were discussed during my four-day visit to SAIM facilities: its temporary SAIM campus in Lalitpur, Kathmandu; a five-story building that it will occupy shortly for the next five years; and a three-hectare cool mountainous site eight kilometers from Kathmandu that shall be SAIM’s permanent campus.
I was surprised at the interest expressed by some of SAIM’s 26 students at the sports and recreation management of the DLS GSB. The surprise was due to the fact that based on my impressions, confirmed by a number of Kathmandu corporate executives who are sports buffs, there do not seem to be burgeoning sports and recreation activities in the city and the rest of Nepal. As was expected, the number one sport in Nepal is football and the sports main claim to fame is that it has a good record of wins against its neighbor and rival India and countries like Cambodia.
The reference to India as a country that it has beaten a number of times in soccer is borne by the fact that the two countries have had what some people call a love-hate relationship that dates back to British colonial times. The need to be different from Indian practices is reflected in that Nepal time is 15 minutes ahead of India which reminds me of a similar situation some time back between west and east Malaysia where there was a 30-minute time difference between Sabah in the east and the Malaysian mainland in the west.
A very interesting feature of this trip was my stay at the Le Meridien Kathmandu Gokarna Forest Golf Resort and Spa arranged by SAIM.
Le Meridien is located on the North Eastern side of Katmandu city sitting on around 230 hectares of the last remaining untouched ancient Gokarna Forest. The majestic Himalayas, known as the rooftop of the world, provide a dramatic background to trekkers and golfers who play the par-72, 6,755-yard course.
Inside the course, run by scratch player and golf director Deepak Acharya and golf professional Pashupati Sharma, is a centuries’ old temple guarded by a century old tree. Adding color to the round of golf I played on a rainy August morning (Nepal’s monsoon rains don’t end till around September-October), was the number of monkeys and deer that crossed my path while either on course’s tee mound or its generally narrow and dog-legged fairways or on its flat greens.
Despite the rains, the course can be described as player friendly with the forest reserve, the Himalayas and the cool weather all combining to make the course and Le Meridien a must in one’s itinerary in any visit to Kathmandu.
The staff of Le Meridien, headed by Manira Gurung of the sales department provided all the hospitality people who visit a place for the first time most certainly welcome. Ms. Gurung and her polite staff provided the personal touch that would make one enjoy a place fit for kings, Gokarna being traditionally the private Royal hunting ground of the Kings of Nepal. This temperate forest of medieval Kathmandu valley is a conserved area, never denuded in over 500 years of preservation.
Truly it is a perfect setting for environment-conscious golfers and sportsmen and women.
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For those who may have forgotten, today is the 24th anniversary of the execution of Sen. Benigno S. Aquino at the then Manila International Airport tarmac. A Mass at the late senator’s resting place in Manila Memorial will be held today at 10:30 a.m. Truly, the commemoration of a heroe’s death is a struggle against forgetting.
