DHAMPUS, NEPAL - On a foot-worn path in the Himalaya Mountains, there is a small checkpoint. Set up alongside a busy trekking route banked by terraced fields of grain, it consists of a stone wall used as a table and a red hammer-and-sickle flag drooping from an old shed. It demands money to pass: 300 rupees, the equivalent of only $5 or £2:50p.
Aside from that Communist flag, the makeshift operation has all the menace of a high school car wash. The young Nepalese who staff it - three men and a woman no older than their 20s - greet hikers with smiles. They even issue handwritten receipts, documents thanking the bearers for their donation.
The name at the top of the receipt, printed in bold red lettering, is the United Revolutionary People’s Council. The $5 payment funds a Maoist Revolution formed to wage a guerilla-style “people’s war” in Nepal.
For the growing number of tourists who visit this Asian nation each year, encountering Maoists on the popular Himalayan backpacking circuits has become a rite of passage of sorts. The checkpoint fee is a minor expense . The experience becomes a travel war story; the receipt goes in the scrapbook of cool, adventurous things.
I was one of those tourists.
Six hours into a three-day hike in the Annapurna Circuit in October, accompanied by a friend and a Nepalese guide, I hit the checkpoint. My friend, a government health worker fluent in Nepali, negotiated a two-for-one rate. After handing over the cash, she was given a payment slip torn from a small booklet. Then we hiked on.
At the time, I was almost giddy about the whole encounter. I’d never felt unsafe, and I now had a sensational souvenir: a personalized memento from guerilla fighters! The leaf of paper wasn’t just from another place; it was a sliver of obscure political history. The Maoists let me snap a few pictures of them wearing their red lanyards and holding their receipt book.
As travelers push into ever more remote and unstable places, thorny ethical dilemmas are often placed squarely in their hands. With package tours, you rarely know who gets paid off behind the scenes.
The US government sees the Maoist rebellion as flat wrong, and the State Department considers the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) a terrorist group. In theory, this could expose me to prosecution, since multiple laws, including the USA Patriot Act and something called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, prohibit US citizens from funding ‘terrorism’.
Americans are advised not to travel to Nepal, mentioned the Maoists’ ‘terrorist’ status, and noted the relevant statutes. But their underlying message was this: Don’t worry about it.