Bhumika Shrestha tests out her new passport denoting “other” as her gender at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal
by Heather Cassell
Looking at Bhumika Shrestha as she makes her way through Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal, an average onlooker would only notice that she’s a beautiful young woman.
What onlookers don’t know is that Bhumika has officially become Nepal’s first woman to travel using a passport that legally identifies individuals as “other,” meaning the “third gender,” which could be someone who identifies as transgender or intersex.
Bhumika, a transgender woman, traveled from Kathmandu to New Delhi, India to apply for a visa to Taiwan on Tuesday, October 6. She will be participating in an international conference on gay rights, reports the Kathmandu Post.
Shrestha went to Delhi to apply for a visa to Taiwan, where she will be participating in an international conference on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex rights.
“This is the first time a person has traveled by identifying themselves as ‘other’,” says Madhav Dulal, a member of the Blue Diamond Society, Nepal’s LGBTI rights organization. “The TIA has a system now where it will read ‘other’ as a gender category.”
In August, Nepal’s Department of Passports issued its first transgender passport to Monica Shahi. The government extended allowing the use of “other” to identify an individual’s gender in January after having utilized the system implemented in 2011 on government census and citizenship cards.
Three other people, including Bhumika, also received passports with the “other” demarcation.
Nepal joins Australia, India, and New Zealand in identifying gender variant individuals on passports.
To book your trip as a gender-variant person, contact Heather Cassell at Girls That Roam Travel at Travel Advisors of Los Gatos at 408-354-6531at or .
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