Reconnecting South Asia through TourismFriday, August 11th, 2017
Embassy of Nepal and Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses (IDSA) jointly organized a one day workshop on Nepal-India Trade, Transit and Connectivity and its Issues and Facilities on 12 July, 2017 in Vishakhapatnam, Andra Pradesh of India. One of the sessions of the workshop was on reconnecting south Asia in terms of tourism promotion and development.
His Excellency Ambassador of Nepal to India, Mr. Deep Kumar Upadhyay spoke on various aspects of trade, transit and connectivity. He highlighted on the long and deep rooted ties between Nepal and India and emphasized on the tourism products and its importance to Nepal’s economy. He emphasized that Nepal does not need any travel formalities and offers similar culture and religion. All these facts have positioned Nepal a very promising travel destination for Indian tourists. The natural beauty, the climate and the accommodating and smiling nature of Nepalese people can make a tourist feel that Nepal is a heaven on the Earth. Indian tourists can satisfy their travel purposes with the exquisite beauty that Nepal offers at their proximity and at same time they can feel rejuvenated and fulfilled with religiously and spiritually heightened feelings and fervours.
On the occasion, Mr. Nabin Pokharel, Manager at Nepal Tourism Board presented on tourism products and its relation to overall trade, transit and connectivity. He emphasized that the ease in trade and transit facilities and well-established connectivity obviously play a vital role for tourism promotion and marketing of tourism products of Nepal.Vishakhapatnam is a promising gateway to Nepal in terms of international trade of goods. Once its potential is started to be utilized substantially, it creates potentiality for direct or comfortable air connectivity between Nepal and Vizag, which ultimately translates into supporting Nepal to bring more number of tourists from this region. Moreover, Mr. Pokharel expressed that the region of Vizag bears a close connection to Nepal in terms of both Hinduism and Buddhism.
The region of Vizag used to lie as a part of Kalinga region, which was lost to King Ashoka in one of the bloodiest war that the history of this region records. After the bloodiest war, the King resorted to saintly approach in his life and embraced Buddhism. Subsequently, the region came under direct influence of Buddhist teachings too, and it still safely cradles historical Buddhist sites. Some of the major sites which are near from Vizag and fell inside the then Kalinga regions are Sankaram, Bojjannakonda, Yaksha Relief (Pavurallakonda) and Barikonda. When the question of developing Buddhist circuits and Hindu circuits arises, materialization of business connection of Nepalese private sectors to the business counterparts from Vizag obviously helps a lot in this direction though Nepal has many other unique tourism products to offer to the world tourism market independently. Mr. Pokharel further reiterated the need of making joint destination promotion involving products of Nepal and India.
Europe has in many ways been promoted as a regional destination. Single Schengen visa works for entering into many countries of the region and a single Eurail pass is a passport to travel by any form of land transportation within the specified region. The SASEC (South Asia Sub-regional Economic Cooperation) envisaged similar type of joint promotion, where, for an example, trekking in Khumbu region and enjoying the Mangrove forest in Bengal can be packaged and can jointly be promoted and sold in tourism market though the concept is yet to be materialized in tourism sector.
The tourism products of northern sites of West Bengal and tourism products of Eastern Nepal can be packaged; similarly products of western Nepal, Southern Nepal can be integrated with the similar products of adjoining region of India; and such packages need to be promoted jointly India and outside India too. Such joint destination promotion can substantially help cut down the marketing expenses and yield increased incomes for the businesses of both countries. It is high time to look into the ways to bring such concepts into fruition with joint destination marketing efforts of tourism business counterparts of South Asian countries.