Sustainable Tourism Development Strategy for Cold Desert Landscape: Case of Mountainous Village, Nako

Background: Carrying capacity assessment is an important component of maintaining sustainability in the tourism sector. All the concerns in tourism are linked to the number of tourists that visit a particular spot. The study area has beautiful landscapes in the cold desert ecosystem as well as Buddhist distinctiveness, which attracts mass tourism. Nowadays, tourism development has introduced concerns about sustainability and establishing standards for tourist destination capabilities.Objectives: The present study aims to analyze the following objectives: ۱) To assess the physical carrying capacity (PCC), real carrying capacity (RCC), and effective carrying capacity (ECC) of selected tourist spots in Nako village and ۲) To calculate the parking capacity of the monastery.Methodology: The methods specified in the International Union of Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) were used to measure the carrying capacities of particular tourist destinations in Nako. Three-level techniques were applied to assess the physical (۲۸۱۶۱ persons), real (۴۱۶۲ persons), and effective (۲۹۶۸ persons) carrying capacities.Results: Results indicate that ECC is the most suitable for the estimation, and the current situation of tourism is underexploited in the study area.Conclusion: There are very small to large types of systems found in Nako, and these systems also support different types of activities. Tourism is a highly practiced activity, and it has environmental, social, cultural, and economic impacts. They are dependent on different parameters and also vary with the changing nature of the interaction. It is found that the present status of tourism activity in the study area is highly underexploited vis-a-vis it carrying capacity.

Keywords:

Land Use/Land Cover , Physical Carrying Capacity , Real Carrying Capacity , Effective Carrying Capacity , Parking Carrying Capacity