Pitch for Nepal as Adventure Water Tourism Destination

In a move promoting its adventure tourism potential, Nepal conducted its annual river rafting festival on May 26, 2018.

The 30^th Annual Rafting Festival 2018 held under the theme ‘Let’s Protect our Rivers for Tourism and Environment’ witnessed more than 400 local and foreign participants.

As part of the festival, an annual white-water rafting was organized at the Benighat-Phisling section of Trishuli River, 40 km away from Kathmandu.

“Being enriched with water resources, Nepal has a huge prospect for water adventures. Thus, through this event, we aim to promote water adventure rafting which highly contributes to the country’s tourism,” said Shiva Adhikari, general secretary of Nepal Association of Rafting Agencies (NARA), an umbrella organization of rafting agencies that organized the event.

Besides tourism promotion, the festival was also aimed at protecting and preserving the rivers across Nepal for environmental conservation.

Sharing his experience about the festival, Sujata Bhattarai, a health professional and one of the festival participants said, “It was my first time and I enjoyed paddling along with the water waves. It’s an amazing experience.”

On the occasion, NARA pitched for the Nepal’s status as the best destination for adventurous water tourism.

Among various other adventure sports such as cannoning, kayaking and stand-up paddle, Nepal has a special place for rafting because of a good number of river bodies across the country.

While there are nearly 6000 big and small rivers across the country, 16 big rivers including Trishuli, Kali Gandaki, Sunkoshi, Bhotekoshi and Karnali, among others allow river rafting under government’s approval.

Nepali rafting industry has around 65 river rafting agencies and nearly 1,500 rafting guides.

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