Pilgrimage Tourism in Godavari Dham Kailali

Abstract

Pilgrimage is a religious journey with non-economic motive based on religious objectives. Pilgrimage and tourism share same components like mobility, finance and acceptances for travel that make those two term same alike. Pilgrimage tourism denotes the outward journey towards a sacred and holy goal and inward journey towards greater humanity from self. This field has gained its importance after 1990s and has soon occupied a major space in academic studies due to its multi sectoral and multi-dimensional characters. The socio-economic significance has highlighted pilgrimage tourism among other fields. Godavari Dham of Kailali is one of the major pilgrimage destinations which has a huge potentials of advancement due to its religious sanctity and historical faith of the people. The Hindu texts provide evidences of its importance and the local population’s faith makes it one of the final religious destinations in Nepal’s far west region. No academic studies so far has been done despite of such huge potentialities of Godavari Dham. This thesis aims to explore the religious importance of this place and intends to discover the possibilities of pilgrimage tourism in this site. The researcher has visited the field and used a qualitative method to carry out this research. The lack of motivations, inadequate focus on environmental issues, lapses on management of the site, less attention in diversification, and diversion from sustainability were key issues in sustaining the pilgrimage tourism in Godavari Dham. Still, the Dham has huge potentials and bright future if those issues are timely addressed. The religiou purity and geographical beauty after all, is the only components for this place to highlight its image. Keywords: pilgrimage tourism, Godavari Dham, Religion, Hindu God, Destination