After a recent high-level review meeting of tourism, art and culture, youth affairs departments, Nitish Kumar, Chief Minister, Bihar said that Ghorakatora, Rajgir and Jethiyan would be developed as international tourist destinations. Facilities of adventure sports like parasailing and paragliding will be provided to tourists at these places.
According to a report in The Telegraph, Kumar said desilting work would be done in the pond at Ghorakatora, which is surrounded by hills on three sides. A large scale plantation work would be undertaken in the area which will be developed as an Ecotourism destination.
He said that there are plans to use the ‘Ganga diara’ as a tourist attraction and for this, special camps would be set up in the diara area to attract tourists. There is also a plan to start Ganga Aarti from February and this would be a regular feature.
With the number of tourists increasing and tourists having crossed the 5.5 lakh mark till November this year, a decision was taken to increase facilities being provided in Bihar State Tourism Development Corporation (BSTDC) hotels, as well as enlist private hotels and equip them with the latest facilities for benefit of tourists. The state government has also decided to purchase luxury Volvo buses to boost transport facilities for tourists.
To ensure that tourists coming to Bihar are provided with relevant information about important tourist destinations, it has been decided to have 50 tourist websites giving details of these places.
He also asked the officials to expedite the work on the proposed international museum, which is to be set up in Patna. It was decided that the next meeting on the progress made in this project would be held under the chairmanship of Anup Mukerji, Chief Secretary, Bihar and departmental heads of building construction, tourism and art, culture and youth affairs department too would take part in this meeting. Divisional commissioner of Magadh range, Vivek Kumar Singh, who was earlier posted as secretary of art and culture department, too has been directed to take part in this meeting.