Kathmandu, Oct. 9 -- From the third week of March 22 to mid-July, Rupakot Resort in Lekhnath, Kaski, wore a deserted look. The resort's 42 rooms were empty, and there were no diners at the restaurant, which offers gorgeous views of the beautiful Begnas and Rupa Lakes against the Annapurna Range.

During the roughly four months when the nation-wide lockdown was at its strictest, hotels across the country, like Rupakot, were either shut or had few guests.

It was finally in July, when the lockdown began loosening, that hotels started reopening. But by then, it had become known that international tourists, which the majority of hotels in the country rely on for revenue, were unlikely to travel to Nepal in the foreseeable future, and if the i...