No T-Shirt, No-Visiting Card
Been there, done that and got a T-Shirt!! Nepal's iconic backpacker's souvenir is the "NO-T Shirt" which started off as an optimistic but ineffectual attempt at keeping tourist touts and hustlers at bay during the "Dum maro Dum" Hippie Era. There is even a rip-off Varanasi version with the same words only with Hashish replaced with Ganja and an additional line "No Boat." As to why I remembered this piece of nostalgia from my long-past wandering days of my misspent youth, is the number of times I am forced to say NO!! Only not to touts and panhandlers, but loud-mouthed freeloaders hustling free service posing as potential clients or future partners. In fact, I am seriously intending to print a similar message on the back of my Visiting Cards: NO-Free Consultancy, NO-Free Write-ups, NO-Free Concept Notes, NO-Free Market Overviews, NO-Free Service, NO-Free Visits, NO-Pun Intended!! Not that I have any illusions it will shame them into offering to pay