Nepal, India to jointly promote domestic religious sites

KATHMANDU, Jan 15: Nepali and Indian travel agents are jointly launching a travel package to promote Lumbini and other Nepali religious sites, and increase the flow of foreign tourists to Nepal. The religious tourism package is being launched at the Nepal-India Joint Travel Mart scheduled to begin in Lumbini from Tuesday. The package aims to promote major Buddhist religious sites in Lumbini and Kathmandu, as well as Bodhgaya and Sarnath of India. Lila Bahadur Baniya, manager of Nepal Tourism Board (NTB), who is coordinating the event, said around 125 travel-related companies from India and Nepal, airline companies, hotels based in Kathmandu, Pokhara, Chitwan and Bhairahawa are participating in the mart. Out of these, around 30 are India-based companies, he added. The Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation, NTB and the Embassy of India are jointly organizing the event, which will also be attended by senior officials of the Ministry of Tourism of India, and representatives from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar tourism authorities. Along with the business to business session, the event will also feature a three-day symposium, which will seek ways to launch the joint tour package through Nepali and Indian travel agencies and tour operators. “The tie-up will be crucial for us to bring in more Indian tourists to Nepal,” Baniya said, adding, similar event will soon be held in Pokhara and Kathmandu. The figures provided by immigration office at the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) show around 165,000 Indian tourists visited Nepal last year, which was 27.5 percent of the total foreign tourists received by the country. Though neighboring India receives around one million Buddhist pilgrims every year, Nepal, where Lumbini, the birth place of Lord Buddha, lies, does not even receive 10 percent of that crowd, according to the organizer of the event. To promote Lumbini, Nepal organized Visit Lumbini Year in 2012, during which 509,073 tourists from 92 countries visited the birth place of Lord Buddha. Of this, 113,195 were Indian, 52,671 were Sri Lankan and 28,480 were Thais.