Development of Pilgrimage Tourism in Pashupat-Kshetra at Different Festivals

Abstract

Pilgrimage tourism is a holistic phenomenon which provides religious and secular foundations for the development of tourism sites. This paper aims to analyse the development of pilgrimage tourism in Pashupat-Kshetra, a holiest place of Nepal situated in the Kathmandu valley. Pashupat-Kshetra is the place of Lord Shiva and an important pilgrimage site especially for the Saivism community. Shaivism is considered as the most ancient religion of Aryans and Hindus. Lord Shiva is known as the owner of the open field and the husband of the animal or Pashupat. Overtime, Pashupat became special name of Pashupati as a symbolic name of Lord Shiva. This paper has used mixture of qualitative and quantitative approaches. Relevant information were collected from both primary and secondary sources. Primary data were collected from field survey through counting of tourist flow, observation, tourist interactions and key informant survey. Secondary data were collected from published and unpublished documents including Shivapuran and e-resources. The findings show that thousands of pilgrims come to visit Pashupat-Kshetra from different countries. They not only visit for Shiva Lingadarsan at different fairs and festivals, but also visit it other temples around the Pashupat-Kshetra. They also observe idols of gods and goddesses, art and architecture, festivals, regular and occasional worship, Pradakshina etc. as well to study scriptures of Eastern philosophy. However, pilgrims face a lot of problems due to lack of different types of service facilities that support to tourism carrying capacity.