We met two years ago in Kathmandu. We’re only the seventh same-sex couple to marry in Nepal and the first mixed foreign-Nepali couple,” Joey Foster Ellis proudly proclaims. Originally from upstate New York, Ellis has been living and working in Nepal since 2015. “It turned out to be easier to get married here than in the States because getting a fiancé visa to the US is difficult and expensive. That said, we wouldn’t have been able to get married in Nepal if it were illegal to get married in my home state, because I had to show my eligibility to get married in America here in Nepal.”
Ellis’s husband, Prajeet Budhathoki, hails from Dharan in eastern Nepal and co-owns Queermandu, a Kathmandu-based travel company offering inclusive LGBTQ+ adventures, cultural journeys and sustainable gay tours. “I moved to Kathmandu five years ago because being gay is more acceptable here. I also moved for educational opportunities that don’t exist back home. I fell in love with Joey and was ready to marry him, but my hometown is very conservative. My parents are accepting but it’s hard for them when people in the community talk about it. In the local government office, too, it was a struggle. It would have been impossible to get married without a lawyer whom we had to fly down to my hometown. The officials back there were asking us about the law. They had no idea.”
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