Walled City: Tourist guide course to start this month

The course aims at projecting less-frequented parts of the Walled City.

LAHORE:

The Walled City of Lahore Authority (WCLA) is planning to launch its second tourist guide course at the end of this January, The Express Tribune has learnt.

The course participants will be given indepth knowledge of tourism, ethics for tourist guides, tour management and storytelling.

In addition, the students will also be given an indepth knowledge of the Walled City.

WCLA Director General Kamran Lashari said “Our guided tours have really picked up in the last few months… the credit goes to the tourist guides.”

Lashari said the young guides had “really proved themselves.” I invite everybody to experience the conducted tours.

WCLA Media and Marketing Deputy Director Tania Qureshi told The Express Tribune, “We trained 26 tourist guides in 2013, but the number seems to be inadequate now as we are conducting so many tours.”



She said the guides would help the authority promote tourism. “We hope to train a good number in the second batch.”

The second course aims at projecting less-frequented parts of the Walled City. Residents of the Walled City would be preferred, Qureshi said.

WCLA Marketing and Tourism Director Asif Zaheer said, “It is a three month course… we invite all those interested in exploring mostly hidden areas of the Walled City of Lahore.”

Zaheer said the course fee would be minimal so more people could participate. The tutors will include communication and tourism experts. Historians on Lahore would be invited to address the students.

Muhammad Muddasir, a graduate of the earlier course, said, “I participated in the tourist course offered by the WCLA in June, 2013. Now I am earning Rs20,000 per month from the guided tours.”

Khairun Nisa, another tourist guide, said at first it had seemed difficult but in the end she had picked up.

“We had to learn and understand many things.”

Nisa, a resident of the Walled City, said she had not visited many places before she became a guide.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 10^th, 2014.