An Indian insurance company is starting a scheme for travellers to Nepal from Feb 1, offering them a smoother trip despite the nine-year-old Maoist insurgency, increasing number of road and air accidents and hazards on the mountain slopes.

The Indian government-owned National Insurance Company (NIC), doing business in Nepal for over three decades, is signing an agreement with Nepal Association of Tour and Travel Agents, a private body with 235 members, to defray the medical expenses of tourists during their trip to the Himalayan kingdom.

For three years from Feb 1, NIC will offer two policies to travellers at a very attractive premium: Pay Nepali Rs.325 (Rs.200 Indian) and get a travel safety policy if you are looking at leisure travel or Nepali Rs.455 (Rs.285) for a travel safety plus policy if you are a trekker heading for the mountains where the hazards are more.

The cover protects a person from the time he registers in Nepal. The policy can be taken anywhere - the immigration counter at the airport, the check posts along the road or even the hotel. In the first category, it covers a traveller for 21 days and for trekkers 30 days. The policy lapses after the person reaches home.

The buyer is entitled to hospitalisation or medical expenses upto Nepali Rs.32,000 if he is injured due to accident, riots, strikes, malicious damage, sabotage or an act of terrorism.

In the case of death or permanent total disablement, NIC will pay Nepali Rs.1 million ($14,000).

The new policies were hailed by Nepal Tourism Board as these would send out "positive feelers" about travel to Nepal.

They come at a time the nine-year-old insurgency has started targeting ordinary citizens, especially travellers.

Last week, two passengers in a bus were killed and several injured when the vehicle ran into a roadblock set up by the Communist guerrillas and tried to remove it.

It is not only the budget tourist who is at the mercy of the Maoists and mishaps. The upper class tourist also received a jolt last year when communist guerrillas set off bombs in two upmarket hotels in the capital.

Chartering a helicopter for flying over the Himalayan range is one of the major tourist attractions in Nepal. This month, a helicopter flying to the Everest region crashed, killing all the three passengers abroad.

NIC's Nepal manager J. Ghosh says that the company is trying to tie up with the hotel associations so that the policies can be bought at local hotels as well.