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Caching in Nepal – An Opportunity


ludozone

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Hello,
I am a Geocacher from the USA, and I just moved to Kathmandu, Nepal. I will be based here for three years as I am following my wife who is a diplomat. I will have plenty of time on my hands during these next 3 years, so I would like to re-insert myself into one of my passions: Geocaching.

Geocaching in Nepal is very interesting. Here are some facts for you:

  • The country of 56,000 square miles (approximately the size of New York State) only has 57 enabled caches. 25 are Earth or Wherigo caches. There are only 7 caches within 10 miles of the capital.
  • 40 caches (70%) have a terrain rating of 4 or above as they are targeting trekkers in the mountains. There are only 7 caches with a terrain rating of 2 or below.
  • Only 5 caches have been added in the last year. 47 caches are more than 2 years old. 6 caches are more than 10 years old.
  • 43 caches have been found in the last year. The most popular cache in Nepal is the Thamel TB Hotel (GC1353G) located in the most touristic area of Kathmandu which has been found 1564 times in 10 years (That’s once every two days on average!).
  • Most of cache owners do not reside in Nepal. There are no local reviewers in Nepal either. The reviewer for Nepal is Crow T Robot.

Given this picture and the fact that 800,000 tourists visit Nepal every year, and that many Nepali speak English and have phones with 4G, I believe there is a real opportunity to grow GeoCaching in this part of the world.

Therefore, I would like to call for volunteers to join me in creating a steering committee in Kathmandu with the purpose of expanding, promoting and chaperoning GeoCaching in Nepal. I think the first step would be to create a SubForum for Nepal here and then to host our first meeting (I can take care of that part).

What do you think?
Ludo.

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10 hours ago, ludozone said:

Hello,
I am a Geocacher from the USA, and I just moved to Kathmandu, Nepal. I will be based here for three years as I am following my wife who is a diplomat. I will have plenty of time on my hands during these next 3 years, so I would like to re-insert myself into one of my passions: Geocaching.

Geocaching in Nepal is very interesting. Here are some facts for you:

  • The country of 56,000 square miles (approximately the size of New York State) only has 57 enabled caches. 25 are Earth or Wherigo caches. There are only 7 caches within 10 miles of the capital.
  • 40 caches (70%) have a terrain rating of 4 or above as they are targeting trekkers in the mountains. There are only 7 caches with a terrain rating of 2 or below.
  • Only 5 caches have been added in the last year. 47 caches are more than 2 years old. 6 caches are more than 10 years old.
  • 43 caches have been found in the last year. The most popular cache in Nepal is the Thamel TB Hotel (GC1353G) located in the most touristic area of Kathmandu which has been found 1564 times in 10 years (That’s once every two days on average!).
  • Most of cache owners do not reside in Nepal. There are no local reviewers in Nepal either. The reviewer for Nepal is Crow T Robot.

Given this picture and the fact that 800,000 tourists visit Nepal every year, and that many Nepali speak English and have phones with 4G, I believe there is a real opportunity to grow GeoCaching in this part of the world.

Therefore, I would like to call for volunteers to join me in creating a steering committee in Kathmandu with the purpose of expanding, promoting and chaperoning GeoCaching in Nepal. I think the first step would be to create a SubForum for Nepal here and then to host our first meeting (I can take care of that part).

What do you think?
Ludo.

 

First of all, it's good to see a local cacher in an area without a lot of geocaches (or geocachers) making an effort to build up the community.

There are quite a few other countries, many larger than Nepal that are similarly under served.  When I first visited Ethiopia there were only 14 caches in the country and even though I passed close to one of them several times I was never able to get closer than 1000' to it (I was there on business and just didn't get the opportunity).  Fortunately, I've been back twice and have found other caches.  I read something a while back from project-gc that indicated that there is only 1 active geocacher (that has hidden any) in the country.  I noticed that almost half of the geocaches in Nepal are earthcaches, which don't require the owner residing near GZ.

Although vacations caches (the creator doesn't live in the area and doesn't have a maintenance plan) are not allowed now, those that have been published can remain viable as long as someone maintains them.  I know of one in the Caribbean that was placed in 2001 and has almost 1300 finds.  There are quite a few countries in the world which don't have a reviewer specific for the region. Crow T Robot is one of the reviewers that has covered many areas around the world that don't have a specific reviewer assigned to the region. I've found caches he published on a couple of different continents.

I doubt that you'd have much luck getting a subForum just for Nepal.  GS isn't going to create a sub forum unless there appears to be a demand for it.  Given the very low volume in the "All Nations" sub-forum having any discussions about the development of geocaching in Nepal here would work fine.  The types of things being discussed would apply to many other countries/regions that could use some promotion/development as well.  

 

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Well, we have to start somewhere so I will move forward (hopefully with the remote help from Crow T Robot) and try to do good things. I have started a "clean-up" effort by contacting cache owners that have problems and either suggest description updates or even adoption.

Here are two questions (somewhat related to each other) that perhaps someone can help with:

1) In Kathmandu, there are two caches that were placed via a school program (GC50HKN and GC5CT2D). The caches are fine and active, but the owner (SAMS School) is an unverified member that has not logged in since October 2016. I tried to contact them via message but no answer. I wanted to offer to adopt their caches for the next 3 years since I am local, but I am afraid there are not tuned in at this time. What is the proper course here? Wait until maintenance is needed ?

2) There is a multi-cache in Kathmandu (GC2JG4D) where the formula for finding the final location is wrong. People still find the cache because of the numerous photos and log entries, but it would be nice to have the description corrected. I wrote (and emailed) the member-owner (Kathmandoodle), but they have not logged in since October 2016 and I have received no answer. What should I do? Can I enlist the help of Crow T Robot to fix the formula?

Next step will be to start a few more hides and see how it goes.

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8 hours ago, ludozone said:

Well, we have to start somewhere so I will move forward (hopefully with the remote help from Crow T Robot) and try to do good things. I have started a "clean-up" effort by contacting cache owners that have problems and either suggest description updates or even adoption.

Here are two questions (somewhat related to each other) that perhaps someone can help with:

1) In Kathmandu, there are two caches that were placed via a school program (GC50HKN and GC5CT2D). The caches are fine and active, but the owner (SAMS School) is an unverified member that has not logged in since October 2016. I tried to contact them via message but no answer. I wanted to offer to adopt their caches for the next 3 years since I am local, but I am afraid there are not tuned in at this time. What is the proper course here? Wait until maintenance is needed ?

2) There is a multi-cache in Kathmandu (GC2JG4D) where the formula for finding the final location is wrong. People still find the cache because of the numerous photos and log entries, but it would be nice to have the description corrected. I wrote (and emailed) the member-owner (Kathmandoodle), but they have not logged in since October 2016 and I have received no answer. What should I do? Can I enlist the help of Crow T Robot to fix the formula?

Next step will be to start a few more hides and see how it goes.

Both of these questions boil down to who owns the cache.  

For the first question, geocaches can not be adopted without the owner initiating the "Adoption" request.   The issue of being unable to contact an unvalidated member either through the message center or via email throws a wrench into the adoption processes.   If the cache owner is no longer active and has basically left the game, then they're not going to initiate an adoption request and there's nothing you can really do.  Neither a reviewer nor someone from Groundspeak will intervene to "force" an adoption because the cache owner "owns" the cache.  The best that you can do is post a note log indicating that you're willing to adopt it.   If, after some time, you don't get a response you can post a NA log and the reviewer would archive the cache due to an inactive owner.  You could then submit a new cache request and even use the existing containers.  That may actually be better for developing geocaching in Nepal as any local cachers would have an opportunity to find a "new" cache.  I'd review the cache descriptions on the first one as it might be considered by the reviewer as too commercial (suggesting eating at a specific restaurant).

The second question has the same issue.  A reviewer won't intervene to "fix" a cache listing.  A NM log, followed by a NA log might eventually lead to the cache being archived and you can decide whether to create a new multi which fixes the description.  

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I will be in Nepal for the next two weeks. I just found this thread but it looks like the number of caches hasn't changed since this thread was started.

I'll be in Kathmandu for a couple of days and in Kakarvitta the rest of the time. No caches down that way so I'll have to find something in the capital.

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