Most Frequent Burmese visitor to Nepal and first Burmese Everest Summitters honoured

In a bid to promote the Visit Nepal 2020 campaign amid Burmese the Nepali Embassy in Yangon, Myanmar has been organizing various events, prompting the locals to visit Nepal.

With more than 55 million population, Myanmar has nearly 90 per cent of the population with Buddhist faith, a factor Nepal, being the Land of Lord Buddha, could capitalize to draw more and more Buddhist Burmese.

Towards this saw a felicitation programme was organized in Kandawgyi Lake in Yangon, the capital of Myanmar, where the only two Everest summiteers Burmese nationals so far and the most frequent Nepal visitor Burmese were honoured.

Pyae Phyo Aung and Win Ko Ko, who climbed the highest mountain in the world- Sagarmatha (Mt Everest) in 2016 and Da Thajin Mint Ai , who has visited Nepal a total of 325 times so far were feted.

Everest summiteers Pyae Phyo Aung and Win Ko Ko univocally admired Nepal to be the best destination for adventure tourism in the world.

According to them, more and more Burmese know Nepal as the land of Lord Buddha. Hence, they spoke of the need to rebrand Nepal as the land of exotic mountains, including the ‘Land of Sagarmatha’, and picturesque hills.

The two asserted, "The Burmese here hardly get to see mountains and snows. For them, the hills and mountains of Nepal could be attractive tourist products as Burmese generally live in tropical climate."

Similarly, Da Thajin Mint Ai pointed out the need for Nepal to lure more and more Buddhists during the Visit Nepal Year 2020 campaign and even after as.

According to Da Thajin, there were more than 40.5 million people were followers of Buddhism in Myanmar and Nepal’s had Lumbini, the birthplace of Lord Buddha, the founder of Buddhism.

More than ,1000 Burmese were present in the programme where Nepali Ambassador to Myanmar Bhim Krishna Udas informed that this year also marked the 60th anniversary of the diplomatic ties between Nepal and Myanmar.

Stating that various types of promotional events would organized round the year to promote the Visit Nepal Year 2020 to encourage as many as Burmese to visit Nepal in 2020.

The government of Nepal has launched Visit Nepal 2020 campaign, beginning from January 1 this year with an aim of attract at least 2 million foreign tourists.

Likewise, Yangon’s Chief Minister Pyo Min Thein lauded the contributions of Gurkha Army of Nepali origin for the unification of Myanmar and said that many Burmese of Nepali origin were still contribution in nation-building of Myanmar.

He viewed that Nepal could attract more Burmese to Nepal by considering exempting visa charges for them.

Three Nepali Embassy here on the occasion distributed T-shirts with the logo of Visit Nepal Year 2020 to more than 700 participants free-of-cost.