Pokhara is Nepal’s second largest city and tourists keep dropping here to get the best views and click pictures on their cameras. Amid such picturesque settings, Takashi Miyahara, an 82-year-old Japanese tourism entrepreneur is engaged in his latest venture. Currently, he is involved in building a 40-room hotel in Sarangkot, which will offer wonderful views of the Annapurna range to its guests. To quote Miyahara, “The mountain views are the selling point in Nepal; they are unique. You build a hotel with a view and the tourists will come.”
Miyahara came to Nepal in 1962, as a young Japanese mountaineer with a zest for adventure. After a decade, he built Everest View, a hotel on a ridge 3,880 meters high. The Guinness Book of World Records called this 1972 hotel the “highest placed hotel” in the world in its 2004 edition.
This hotel is considered a landmark by the local travel industry and it owes much to Miyahara’s native homeland Japan. The hotel is designed by a Japanese architect and it was financed mainly by about 100 million Yen in contributions from the mountaineering clubs of 15 universities in Tokyo. However, the Nepal government also gave 500,000 Nepali rupees as a subsidy. Along with his investments in three hotels, with one in Kathmandu, and his tourism-related activities, Miyahara has helped shape Nepali tourism since the early 1970s
