Darjeeling, June 25: Nagaland has woken up to its tourism potential and has decided to seek expertise from Sikkim and Darjeeling to make the state one of the best tourist destinations in the Northeast.
A team of 25 tourist guides from Nagaland arrived in Sikkim on Sunday for the training programme.The team will also visit Darjeeling.
Another batch of 20 guides is expected to reach the hills in three weeks’ time.
The Nagaland government has entrusted the Ecotourism and Conservation Society of Sikkim, a non-profit organisation, to impart training to the guides of adventure tourism.
Founder chairman of the society P.D. Rai said: “Among the Northeast states, it is Nagaland that is promoting tourism aggressively. Last October, we had been invited for an eco-tourism conference there. As the meet was successful, the Nagaland government wanted us to train our guides and I was asked to shortlist around 200 candidates for the training programme.”
The society will provide comprehensive training on various aspects of tourism like tourist management and interaction, nature camps, rafting demonstration and practice, first aid and bird watching.
“Our society has joined hands with the Bombay Natural History Society, founded by the famous ornithologist Salim Ali. We will use their expertise to train the team to identify the calls of the various birds,” said Rai.
The guides will be given an idea of the different facets of the tourism industry like waste and staff management, program me production and cost management.
The society, which has imparted training to teams from Bhutan and Vietnam in the past, will also arrange for the Nagaland guides to visit the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling. The trainees will interact with local NGOs there. They will leave Darjeeling on July 4.
“We are training them to become good guide-trainers so that they can go back and train others,” said Rai.
Experts from the tourism sector feel the Nagaland government’s move to choose Sikkim and Darjeeling as training grounds for tour guides will go a long way in developing tourism on a sub-regional and regional basis.
