Democracy in Nepal : Rucksacks amid the revolution

It has long been a must-see destination for the world's backpackers. And they're still arriving, despite curfews, demonstrations and vicious police beatings. Justin Huggler reports from Kathmandu

Claire Maxted and Kate McKerrow have just flown into the middle of a revolution. They are sitting over a couple of beers in a garden restaurant in Kathmandu, while all around them the city is in chaos.

Day after day, crowds of hundreds of thousands of Nepalis gather and try to surround the royal palace. Police have fired into the crowds, killing unarmed protesters, and beaten children as young as 14 so hard that their heads caved in. But Ms Maxted and Ms McKerrow are not journalists or human rights activists. They are British backpackers.

Nepal must be the only country in the world where tourism is still going on in the middle of what is one the verge of becoming a revolution. As many as two million people are expected to gather today for the biggest protests yet, in a big push to force the King to hand over power, and there are grave fears of further violence.

But Ms Maxted and Ms McKerrow have joined hundreds of backpackers who find themselves trapped in the narrow lanes, cafés and bars of the Thamel tourist quarter while all around them the protests rage.

Last week the backpackers decided to stage a protest of their own, in solidarity with the Nepalis demonstrating against the King. Leaflets were distributed around Thamel, and the backpackers emerged from their hotels and guest houses and began to march through the streets.

The police looked on in confusion. Foreign tourists are supposed to be exempt from the curfew, but these tourists were taking part in the protests. Eventually the police decided to break up the backpackers' rally and arrested several of them, including one Briton. He has since left the country, after his experience of Nepali police custody.

It is not the only time the protests have intruded on the travellers' haven in Thamel. Thousands of protesters trying to break through police lines and reach the royal palace burst into its narrow lanes on Saturday. Police released tear gas into the streets, under the windows of the backpackers hotels, and baton-charged the protesters, severely beating many of them.

Some backpackers who happened to be in the street when the protesters came through got hit accidentally with the police's lathis, long bamboo canes.

"I was pretty scared when I got on the plane and saw it was only a third full and I had six seats to myself," says Ms McKerrow, from London. "I thought 'What have we done? This is stupid.' But Claire had paid for her ticket and got time off work, so we decided to go ahead with our travel plans. I don't know how wise a decision it was."

"My dad's advice - get this - was if you see a crowd don't go to investigate, just run the other way," Ms Maxted said while laughing. She recently started working for a mountaineering magazine in Peterborough. The two friends, who recently graduated from university, had originally planned to spend several months travelling together in India and Nepal. Once Ms Maxted started working, they did not want to lose her two weeks holiday - the only chance they have to travel together.

"We got up at 5.30am this morning because we heard the curfew was going to start at 9am and we wanted to see some stuff, but it actually started at 11am, and it doesn't seem to matter much in Thamel anyway," says Ms McKerrow. "To be honest it hasn't been anywhere near as scary as we expected."

The two women are flying out of Kathmandu on a trip to Everest base camp today to avoid the mass rallies.

The Foreign Office has advised against all but essential travel to Nepal, but Ms Maxted and Ms McKerrow are not the only tourists coming in. Every day new arrivals reach Thamel, hefting their backpacks through the lanes on foot because there are no taxis.

You can still get on a scheduled flight to Kathmandu, and pick your visa up at the airport. After that it gets a bit harder: the curfew and general strike called by the opposition mean there are no taxis, and the only way into town is on a bus covered in banners that read "Tourists only" to stop the protesters pelting them with stones.

But the Nepalis have remained extraordinarily hospitable to foreigners, even with their country in crisis. When The Independent arrived last week, the only road to our hotel was blocked by protesters and police squaring off against each other. But when they saw foreigners, both sides parted to let us through and pointed the way to the hotel with a smile, before resuming their tussle.

The lanes of Thamel are usually thick with tourists at this time of year. The locals say it is impossible to walk through Thamel without some one offering to sell you marijuana at least once. But this week the streets are full of rotting rubbish which has been lying there uncollected after the general strike which has lasted two and a half weeks. The shops are shuttered. The famous bars, where trekkers usually gather to swap stories of Everest and Annapurna, have instead been full of nervous backpackers comparing notes on the day's violence and whether it's safe to head for the aiport.

Emily Hobbs and Daniel Nagre, from London, have been here for four weeks. Ms Hobbs is working as a volunteer at an orphanage and her boyfriend, Mr Nagre, has just returned from a trek to Everest base camp. They are travelling around the world for a year, Mr Nagre has recently left the British Army and Ms Hobbs has also given up her job in the United Kingdom.

"One of the friends we've made up here was pretty involved in helping people after the police charged the protesters the other day," says Ms Hobbs. "He was pulling people out after the crowd had stampeded in panic."

"The army must be very poorly trained," says Mr Nagre. "I served with the UN peacekeeping force in Cyprus and we did a lot of crowd control. We would never open fire on the crowd like they have here, it's the last thing you'd do."

But Ms Hobbs says they don't feel unsafe in Thamel. "It's a world of its own. But it must be so frustrating for the people who live here. I see it at the orphanage where I work. You can't buy anything because of the general strike. At the orphanage we've run out of soap.

"But as a tourist it's fine. I went to Durbar Square the other day and we were worried the police might try to stop us. But all they wanted was to have their photograph taken with us."

Durbar Square, a vast space crowded with Hindu temples and palaces, is one of Kathmandu's main tourist attractions.

"We had Nepal on our tickets and we did wonder, should we change it or not?" says Mr Nagre. "But when we arrived four weeks ago it wasn't this serious. We're scheduled to leave next week and we're not going to leave early."

"I used to go on the Underground in London every day," says Ms Hobbs. "You could get blown up any day on the Tube. I don't really feel unsafe here."

Now the couple are worring about their next destination, Sri Lanka, which has seen a sudden surge in violence and there are warnings of a return to civil war.

Most of the tourists still in Kathmandu are backpackers, on long trips through South Asia, and trekkers. Those on family holidays have cancelled or changed their tickets, and the city's luxury hotels are empty. It is the backpackers' hostels that are full. For the backpackers, who travel the world with only a Lonely Planet guide, on a shoestring budget for months on end, the cost of changing an air ticket can blow the expenses for their entire journey - and if you are several flights from home that is not always easy to do.

Richard Kirtley has been in Nepal since 3 March. He recently gave up his job as a bar manager in Cheltenham and is travelling the world for several months before returning to the UK to train as a teacher.

"I'm feeling quite relaxed about things," he says. "I'm keeping an eye on the situation, spending a lot of time in the hotel watching the television news.

"I'm only going to be worried if the King is actually deposed. It's frustrating for me not to be able to get around but I feel sorry for the locals who cannot open their businesses."

But he has spent a lot more than he planned to because of the security situation. Mr Kirtley was on the streets on Saturday when the protesters suddenly burst into Thamel and the police began beating them.

"I could hear it and I was worried - but only in terms of it coming in my direction," he says. "For some reason I wasn't that afraid, I don't really know why." Fortunately the violence did not reach the streets where he was.

Mr Kirtley has just returned from a trip to Everest base camp. He was stuck waiting for a flight in Lukla, the nearest airport to Everest, with crowds of other tourists for two days before one made it in from Kathmandu.

"Even with Kathmandu under curfew I was glad to get out of Lukla, because there's quite an air of threat up there from the Maoists," he says.

The Maoist rebels, who have fought a 10-year war against the Nepalese army, control territory close to Lukla, and capturing the airport would be a major success for them. "We met one guy who had tried to get back to Kathmandu by land and been sent back by the Maoists." The Maoists control the land route and demand a "tax" payment from all tourists who go through. "He didn't have enough money to pay them so they sent him back," says Mr Kirtley. "In the end a few of us clubbed together to buy him an air ticket to Kathmandu."

Even so, the word in Kathmandu is that the trekking route from Lukla to Everest base camp is completely overcrowded with tourists fleeing the upheaval in Kathmandu and the other cities.

There is a great deal of agonising over what flights are still available. Most of the south is completely unaccessible because of the strike and curfews. Whitewater rafting and jungle safaris are off. That leaves the mountains. But no one wants to go to Annapurna because it means catching connecting flights, and with everything in disarray people are afraid of getting stranded.

Everyone wants to know what is going to happen at the protests today. Ode Lofveldahl and Evelin Everz, from Sweden, say they will probably stay in the hotel to avoid any trouble.

"I feel frustrated and depressed for the Nepalis, because they depend on tourism," says Nick Lenz, from Denmark, who is in Nepal trying to set up a business.

"The other day I was bitching about how I can't get enough food for my house because of the strike and I turned on my television and the news said there are 5,000 people in the hospitals from when the police attacked the protesters. It's so much worse for the local people."

Mr Lenz looked around the Thamel streets, crowded with backpackers looking for somewhere to eat. "It's surreal here," he said. "When you think what's going on outside and all this is still here, the Nepalis are still so hospitable. Where else in the world could this happen?"