05/03/2026
Parsa National Park Has a Story Worth Telling. Subham is Writing It.
Parsa National Park sits in the shadow of Chitwan — quieter, less visited, and largely unknown to the travellers and researchers who flock to its famous neighbour. But it has a story worth telling: a critical wildlife corridor, 500 species of birds, thriving Tamang homestays with almost no foreign visitors, and communities who have yet to fully benefit from the national park on their doorstep.
Subham Koirala, a Development Studies student at National College, Kathmandu University, grew up near Parsa. He knows this story personally — and through the Himalayan Adventure Labs Grant 2025, he had the resources to research it properly. He has since completed his fieldwork and submitted his final research draft to his college.
Since 2022, the HAL Grant has supported one undergraduate student each year to take their research out of the classroom and into the field — working at the intersection of conservation, tourism development, and rural economy. Subham is our 2025 grantee, and his work on Parsa's ecotourism potential is exactly the kind of research the grant exists to support.
Here's what makes Parsa worth paying attention to:
🐅 It forms a critical wildlife corridor between Chitwan National Park in Nepal and the Valmiki Tiger Reserve in India — tigers, elephants, and rhinos move through it freely.
🐦 It is home to over 500 bird species, including the rare Giant Hornbill, making it a potential world-class destination for birding specialists and wildlife photographers.
🏡 The Tamang homestays of Suwarnapur offer travellers something Chitwan cannot — an intimate, uncrowded, deeply cultural experience. Yet the homestay chairperson told Subham that they receive almost no foreign visitors.
📍 Most people don't even know Parsa was upgraded from a Wildlife Reserve to a National Park in 2017.
Subham's research explores how ecotourism can create real economic alternatives for local communities — reducing dependence on subsistence farming, easing human-wildlife conflict, and giving communities a genuine seat at the table in conservation decisions. His findings point toward something simple but important: Parsa doesn't lack potential. It lacks visibility.
We're proud to have played a small part in changing that.
For full interview https://www.himalayanadventurelabs.com/2026/02/09/meet-the-hal-grantee-2025-studying-parsa-national-parks-ecotourism-potential/
