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The trafficking of women and girls to India is a major problem which has made international news. The sex industry contributes between 2%-14% of in countries such as Nepal. These issues of poverty are part of why many people, including both cisgender and transgender men and women, go into the sex industry in Nepal. She recalled being shy at first.

For many, entering into the sex industry is the only way in which they could survive economically in Nepal. Dance-bar women were very alert to this weakness. Nepal, where over 30 per cent of the 30 million population is below the poverty line BPL , 42 per cent are unemployed and which until 2006, saw an armed struggle by Maoist insurgents, it is hard to resist the money the trade offers.

Next Story - In the past weeks, she had been collecting papers to obtain a passport and visa, with which she could travel abroad.

ITAHARI, NEPAL — Soft morning light seeps in through the single window in the small room which Bibina Meya rents for herself and her 2-year-old daughter, Swastika. Her lips are a bright shade of orange. Meya, 21, a sex worker, is preparing to meet a client in Itahari, a city about 5 kilometres 3. Itahari, host to a highway that connects Nepal and India, which share an open border, is a boom town for the sex trade. The town is a popular destination for Indian traders who want to hire prostitutes. She stopped working when, in 2013, she married a man she met at the hotel where she worked. The man was not a client of her or any other sex worker. But he left when Swastika, his daughter, was three months old. She meets customers during the day, when a neighbour looks after Swastika, because she tends to the toddler at night. With just an eighth grade education, Meya, who lives with her daughter in a rented room, says she has few options. The sex trade is globally denounced for its ties to sex trafficking and forced prostitution, but in Itahari, a major transport hub in Nepal, the trade is booming because young girls with little education and few job options choose to work in it. There have been no national surveys on the sex trade in Nepal, but one 2011 estimate by the National Centre for AIDS and STD Control put the number of female sex workers in the country over 26,500. Another survey conducted by Swiss relief agency Terre des hommes in 2010 estimated that between 11,000 and 13,000 girls and young women were working in the entertainment industry in the Kathmandu Valley. The sex trade generally pays well. The number of sex workers will keep increasing. Two years after she arrived in Kathmandu, a friend told her that she could earn more money by working in a factory. But when Meya agreed to the plan, the friend took her not to a factory, but to the hotel in Itahari, and left her there. After two weeks, she agreed to become a sex worker. Meya was 14 years old. The young teenager was popular with customers. Many men waited for spots in her schedule. There were five other sex workers in the hotel, but they were all between 20 and 25 years old. In some cases, Thakuri says, the girls are even younger than 12. Nepalese girls are popular with Indian clients, Thakuri says. Some of the girls are barely literate, she says. I have to eat and I have to pay rent. They should be considered as trafficked. Sunita Danuwar, founder and executive director of Shakti Samuha, an organization that fights sex trafficking Kaphle, the joint secretary of the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare says education is the key to curtailing the sex trade, especially for young girls. The government provides free education up to grade 10, he says. But Danuwar says free education is not enough. Access is a problem, she says. There are child marriages and domestic violence at home. She wants to connect her daughter with an organization that can support her. Shilu Manandhar, GPJ, translated all interviews from Nepali.

But flirting at times did take on another meaning for both jesus and men. Flexible working times and the lack of physically strenuous work attracted some of the women I talked to. The venue I visited in Thamel was not the most obvious gig and may not represent the complete and complex picture of how the sex entertainment autobus works in Nepal. They laughed about their ventures with foreign tourists in the Himalaya or their night-time indulgences as we spoke. By law, all music in public places has to be turned off by 22. She recalled being shy at first. As a village between, she remarked, sex in kathmandu would not be able to enjoy the freedoms her current situation afforded her. Dance-bar women were very alert to this weakness. Flexible working times and the lack of physically strenuous work attracted some of the women I talked to.