Jharkhand lures tourists though a series of advertisements & promotions

From April 2009 to March 2010, the state played host to 2.4 crore domestic tourists and 17,000 foreigners

Travel News
Travel News

Jharkhand tourism department has invested in serious promotion and at its pavilion at the India International Trade Fair - which drew a little under 1.1 lakh visitors on Sunday - Jharkhand has presented its prettiest face. 

There is one kind of tourist who never stayed away. From April 2009 to March 2010, the state played host to 2.4 crore domestic tourists and 17,000 foreigners. Tourism director Siddharth Tripathi says 70% of the domestic travellers visited the state with "a spiritual or religious purpose" with several spots in Jharkhand - including Ranchi, Deoghar, Parasnath Temple, Itkhori - attracting over five lakh visitors in a year. But that's still nowhere near the kind of business Jharkhand has the potential to get. 

Tourist visits to places like Netarhat (a hill station in Latehar district) and Betla National Park (a tiger reserve) had declined to nothing in the last four-five years till the tourism department began advertising, targeting, mainly, the Bengalis. "We have organized three tourism fairs in Kolkata in the past seven months and have run 10 minutes of ads every day on a Bengali TV channel," says Tripathi. It worked. "This year, we made a turn-around," he says. "People are going back to these places." 

He'll introduce innovations that Jharkhand hasn't seen yet. There are plans of nature camps, hot-air ballooning and other forms of adventure tourism that despite the presence of "the righttopographical features, haven't really grown". There are lakes (Maithan, Netarhat) and waterfalls (Jonha, Hundru, Lodh) galore; Jharkhand has 23,605sqkm of forest area, including several national parks and sanctuaries (Hazaribagh, Betla) teaming with a stunning variety of wildlife - tigers, bisons, wild boars, deer, wolves and elephants; there's a crocodile breeding centre; there are 32 tribes, their surviving cultures and crafts; the Ganga at Rajmahal is 12km wide. 

Based on all these, the state is hardselling every kind of tourism - rural, adventure, heritage, tribal, eco, religious. Even Jhankhand's mines present a new, if radical, opportunity for tourism. "If the ground situation improves, we can have 10-12 crore visitors every year," says Tripathi. 

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