HOTEL ROYAL AND THE UNVEILING OF SHANGRI-LA

The story of the first hotel of repute in Nepal starts with King Tribhuvan opening up the country after his return from a short exile in India. The year was 1951 A.D. Just a few years earlier King Tribhuvan was the first monarch in several generations to be granted permission to leave the country on a private visit since the Rana family started ruling Nepal. In 1944 Maharajah Juddha Shumsher the prime minister made arrangements for the king to leave for Calcutta on health grounds and my father Kiran Shumsher, Juddha's son then Major General was deputed to look after the royal visit.

Boris Lissanevitch was the purveyor of European-style wining and dining to the metropolis that was Calcutta. The name of Boris's famed establishment was "Club 300", the name derived from his limiting its membership to 300 of Calcutta's elite while women too were allowed in bucking the Colonial trend. It became hugely successful. Soon it became as legendary as Rick's Cafe Americain in the movie "Casablanca" the Humphrey Bogart character presided over. I can vividly imagine the affable Boris telling tall tales of his flight from Odessa to Paris after the Bolshevik takeover, his successful stint with ballet master Serge Diaghilev's "Le Ballet Russes" and his later jaunts in pre-revolutionary Shanghai. He told stories of how he danced all the way to Calcutta with his dancing partner and first wife Kira before parting ways. King Tribhuvan, hitherto unexposed to life on the fast lane, must have been enraptured by the Calcutta glitterati and the charming Boris.


Boris and Kira in Ballet Russes

Soon after King Tribhuvan assumed power in 1951 it was his old acquaintance Boris of Club 300 fame the king would invite to open a hotel in Nepal. Boris Lissanevitch landed in Kathmandu in November 1953 with his newly-wed wife the Danish beauty Inger, 20 years his junior, and with their two small boys, Mischa and Alex. Nicholas my classmate in junior school was born in Nepal. Boris was handed over one wing of the large palace then known as Bahadur Bhawan, the residence of the eldest son of Maharajah Juddha, to open a hotel. He named it Hotel Royal in salient gratitude to royal patronage. It was never known as Royal Hotel as it might denote ownership of the Royal family, part of the calibrations a democratic post-Rana Nepal required.

Boris and Inger

The palace that Boris was given for opening a hotel had its own turbulent past. The palace known as "Char Burja" with four minarets on the roof following Mughal-era architectural tradition was built in 1889 by Maharajah Bir Shumsher Rana, prime minister of Nepal from 1885 to 1901. It was one of several opulent palaces Bir built to transform the landscape of Kathmandu Valley from ethnic Newari to European neo-classical. Tallo (or lower) Narayan Hiti, Lal Durbar, Seto Durbar and Phora Durbar were also built during his period. "Char Burja" was given to his son General Rudra Shumsher where he and his family resided until 1934 A.D. Rudra was the eldest son of the second wife of Bir Shumsher elevated to the rank of Maharani after he came to power and the sons were enlisted in the roll of succession as approved by the Privy Council.

Politics intervened cruelly to give new ownership to the building that was "Char Burja". On 18th of March 1934 A.D. Maharajah Juddha, succumbing to pressure from the restless "A" class Rana "nomenclatura", banished from the prime ministerial roll Commander-in-Chief Rudra Shumsher, second in line after the prime minister, and all other sons of Bir and Bhim Shumsher considered to have been born from their second wives and thus deemed unfit for the roll of succession. Their Kathmandu properties were confiscated by the state and they were exiled to albeit luxurious life of country squires but far away from the power center of Kathmandu. Rudra Shumsher was exiled to Palpa as the Bada Hakim or Governor of the province. Maharajah Juddha took over the palace and gave it to his eldest son Bahadur Shumsher.

Motley mix of cars bring guests

Cook's Tour, Hotel Royal, March 16, 1955

The palace forlornly houses the National Election Commission and the Office of the Vice President today. Despite its recent whitewash it looks lifeless. Boris the bon-vivant is missing, his tourists are missing, his royal guests do not visit anymore and his mother-in-law's antique shop does not bring in the curiosity hunters. Gray bureaucrats wander about aimlessly waiting for the next dubious election. Hotel Royal saw its halcyon days in the fifties and early sixties until newer hotels such as Soaltee and Annapurna opened to steal its thunder. But Boris and his Hotel Royal will always be remembered as the first among equals.

Boris in the background supervising a State Banquet