Nalanda's place in the modern world

The number of international visitors coming to Nalanda has increased by more than 10% in the recent decade. This provides an ample opportunity to develop plan to involve community in the mainstream tourism and develop some unique cultural experience for the tourists while improving the local economy and giving people the control of their own lives. Such initiative will not only enrich the experience of the visitors and increase the qualitative and quantitative stay of the visitors but will also benefit the community and the visitors while conserving the heritage.

Nalanda is in the tentative list for being nominated as a world heritage site and with that status the inflow of tourist domestic as well as international will grow at a significant pace. Right now is a good time to develop infrastructures with reserve capacity to meet such challenges in the future rather than scrambling for option when the benefit of time has left us.

Besides being a major Archeological site, Nalanda offers religious destinations in the vicinity that attracts tourists to the area. To estimate for the potential increase in tourists with the growing popularity, the traffic generated by these places needs to be taken into account as some of these tourists are bound to be redirected to the Nalanda ruins. This would also help while designing the infrastructure needs and make them more flexible to accommodate the seasonal influx.

Nalanda ruins are surrounded by three Jain temples and the Sun temple at Bargaon. The visitor statistics at these places are as mentioned below: