India, China and Nepal have come together to develop the holy Kailash Mansarovar landscape in the Himalayan region as a major tourist hub.
Since Kailash Mansarovar assumes special significance for Hindus and Buddhists, therefore, the main focus of all the stakeholders is how to integrate this holy Himalayan landscape with tourism activities and launch tour operations in a responsible manner in future, keeping intact its fragile ecosystem.
This is perhaps the first meeting of the major stakeholders, including India, Nepal and China and tour operators from different countries that took place recently in China. Commissioner of Kumaon Division AS Nayal, was representing India in this recently concluded meeting in China.
"All the stakeholders have shown their willingness to go ahead with the ambitious plan of making this holy Kailash Mansarovar landscape a major tourist destination, maintaining a balance between the human interventions and ecological and environmental concerns of this Himalayan zone," Nayal told The Pioneer in an exclusive interview after attending this meet.
As the holy Kailash Mansarovar landscape holds huge importance due to its cultural as well as geographical reasons, so all the stakeholders have shown great interest on how to exploit this less traversed upper Himalayan zone for tourism purpose, maintained the Commissioner Kumaon.
Thus a wide range of issues from poor state of basic amenities available in this region for tourists to how to develop this region as a modern and eco-friendly tourist centre, were discussed in this meet. "According to this ambitious Kailash landscape development plan for tourism, the Indian side upto Bageshwar has to be covered," added the Commissioner of Kumaon Division.
Apart from discussing how to promote tourism activities, conserving ecosystem of the Himalayan zone, the participants also focused on how to integrate all these plans with exploring of livelihood options for the people living in these upper Himalayan region across the border, he further said.
However, the participants also expressed their concerns over increasing civic wastes in this Himalayan landscape and discussed how to address these concerns in future in this global meet.Given extremely sensitive nature of this Himalayan zone, some of the representatives in the meeting also raised concerns over the way the visitors take bathe in the holy lake in the Kailash Mansarovar applying soaps or shampoo.
The participants were of the view that use of soap and shampoo may pollute the lake waters. The participants also raised issues like poor state of basic facilities like toilets in this Himalayan region which came as a huge inconvenience for the woman visitors. But they decided to address all these concerns in a scientific manner without disturbing the Himalayan environment. The stakeholders will soon meet again on this issue.
Meanwhile, experts here are of the view that though the idea of exploring scopes for tourism in this Kailash Mansarovar landscape is a major development, much seems to be depend on how to proceed ahead with this plan on the political will at the Government level of respective countries, keeping in view trans boundary matters.
Otherwise, the idea of developing this holy Kailash landscape for promoting tourism activities is a welcome development they added. A Nepal-based firm engaged in conserving environmental concerns in the Himalayan region, is instrumental in bringing the major stakeholders including India, Nepal and China together to jointly work on how to tap tourism potential this Himalayan region possesses.