February 1: The arrival of domestic and foreign tourists in Bardiya National Park has started to increase of late. According to the park officials, tourists come here to see wild animals such as tigers, leopards, elephants, rhinoceros, swamp deer among other wild animals.

Chief Conservation Officer of the national park, Ashok Kumar Ram, said that the number of domestic and foreign tourists increased after the number of tigers in the park rose to 125. According to Ram, around 2,000 foreign tourists had visited the national park as of mid-January of last fiscal year while the number of foreign visitors has increased to around 4,000 by mid-January of the current fiscal year. He added that about 90 percent of tourists have reported sighting tigers at the national park.

Meanwhile, around 6,000 domestic tourists visited the park as of mid-January of the previous year, while the number has reached 10,000 in the corresponding period this year. Similarly, 500 tourists from SAARC countries had visited the park as of mid-January last year, and the number has increased to around 800 this year.

Chief Conservation Officer Ram said that around 20,000 tourists are expected to visit the park this year, the main reason for this being the increase in number of tigers.

According to him, most of the foreign tourists are from USA, Germany, France, New Zealand, China, and India. -- RSS