Opportunities and Challenges of Rural Tourism in Besishahar Municipality of Lamjung District

Abstract

Tourism refers to the activities of people visiting to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year and that can be for pleasure, business, pilgrimage and other purposes. Tourism has great potentials worldwide. It is considered as a ‘smokeless industry’ and has grown up very fast in the last few decades. Nepal is one of the most beautiful countries in the world with lofty snows capped mountains and scenic, peaceful settings, making Nepal one of the highly potential countries for world tourist’s destination. Tourism industry is highly growing industry in Nepal as there are lots of places across the country, among them Lamjung district is one of the best destinations. Lamjung, a district that falls under the Gandaki Province, western part of Nepal has lots of rural areas that can be developed as best destination for tourist who wants to enjoy rural life style and scenic beauty. Among those beautiful and highly potential area for rural tourism Bajhakhet area is one of them. The general objective of the study was to explore tourism opportunity and challenges in Besishahar Municipality-10, Bajhakhet. Whereas specific objectives of the study were to explore the natural and cultural attractions of this study area, assess the involvement of local people in the tourism industry, analyze the challenges, in order to develop study area as rural tourism destination. This study has been carried out mostly on the basis of exploratory research design, also descriptive method of research design is used in order to describe the findings during the study. Qualitative and quantitative data have been collected for the study using both primary and secondary sources. Out of the total 133 households, 14 households having home-stay service, 17 household without having home stay service, 10 representatives from different sectors, all together 41 respondents have been selected. To collect data, household survey, key informant interview, observation, method have been used and different computer program, simple statistics tools like table, graphs, have been used for data analysis and descriptive methods has been used for qualitative data. Study area has huge possibility to be one of the best tourist destinations. Different attractions like, Gurung/Ghale culture, natural beauties, well conserved community xi

forest, typical rural lifestyle, clean environment, can be the reason for visiting this area. The involvement of local people in the tourism industry with their warm hospitality with traditional and cultural ritual encourage tourist to visit that place. Development of hiking route up to Barahapokhari, developing the trekking route for Dr. Harka peak, linkage with NTB and MoCTCA, Co-ordination among tourism committee and villagers, establishment of information center can definitely help to emerge this place as one of the major tourist destinations of the country. I believe that this thesis will contribute in some level for the promotion of the study area as tourist’s destination area, and helps to determine this area as a place having high potentiality for tourism. This study might be useful for the exposure of the study area and hope that this thesis will contributes to increase the number of tourists in study area.