Targeting the Visit Nepal Year 2020, preparations are being made for beginning a night-time jeep safari in Sauraha of Chitwan. The new addition is aimed at lengthening the stay of the tourists in Sauraha and will begin soon after Tihar festival, said Chairperson of Regional Hotel Association Chitwan, Dipak Bhattarai. The Jeep safari will start from Sauraha and reach up to Lothar via the Kumaroj buffer community forest. This is claimed to be the first night jeep safari in the country.
'Visit Sauraha campaign' to attract tourists in Sauraha
The route of the night safari passes in between a community forest and the Chitwan National Park, also including the Rapti river. The distance designed for the night safari is about 30 kilometers and is expected to take around 4 hours, said Bhattarai. This is expected to help attract both foreign and local tourists. Kumaroj buffer community forest Chair Ganesh Kumar Shrestha said 60 per cent of the income made from the night jeep safari will be used for the protection and conservation of the forest itself. This will be new for those coming to Chitwan for Jungle Safari.
Meanwhile, Chief Protection Officer at Chitwan National Park Narayan Rupakheti says special attention needs to be paid to protection issues while running Jeep Safari and other activities inside the park. He emphasized on the need to use electric vehicles as far as possible to minimize pollution caused by vehicles. Rupakheti however said that the park authorities stand ready to support the great campaign of VNY 2020 announced by the government. Sauraha is the third most preferred tourist destination in the country. Tourists especially come here for visiting the National Park and going for elephant ride and jeep safari. There are 150 hotels and 80 restaurants in Sauraha, with a capacity to hold 7,000 tourists in a day. In 2018, a total of 150,000 tourists including domestic and foreign had visited Sauraha.
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