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als, rituals), and their values and lifestyle.

Environmental Tourism: Environmental tourism, ecotourism, or nature tourism provides an opportunity to visit undisturbed natural areas, scenic vistas, and observe plants and wildlife. Ecotourism is responsible travel to fragile, pristine, and usually protected areas that strive to be low impact and often small scale as an alternative to mass tourism. Its purpose is to educate the traveller and provide funds for ecological conservation, directly benefit the economic development and political empowerment of local communities and foster respect for different cultures and for human rights. Generally, ecotourism focuses on volunteering, personal growth and environmental responsibility. Ecotourism typically involves travel to destinations where flora, fauna, and cultural heritage are the primary attractions. One of the goals of ecotourism is to offer tourists insight into the impact of human beings on the environment, and to foster a greater appreciation of our natural habitats. Responsible ecotourism includes programs that minimize the negative aspects of conventional tourism on the environment and enhance the cultural integrity of local people.

Rural Tourism: Any form of tourism that showcases the rural life, art, culture and heritage at rural locations, thereby benefiting the local community economically and socially as well as enabling interaction between the tourists and the locals for a more enriching tourism experience can be termed as rural tourism. Rural tourism is essentially an activity which takes place in the rural areas.

The term 'rural tourism' was adopted by the European Community to refer to all tourism activities in rural areas or as an economic activity, which depends on and exploits the countryside.

Figure 1: Rural Tourism Approach

Forms of Rural Tourism
Agritourism: Agritourism or farm tourism refers to an organization working on farm or agricultural plant made for entertainment of tourists or visitors, thereby generating income for farm owners. This may help the farmers to interact with the visitors, thereby benefiting the visitors to enrich their knowledge regarding agritourism.

Sports Tourism: It involves tourists to participate or observe rural sports. It teaches the local rural people how to get scope/chance in international game and to compete with opponents. It enables the people of different cultural background to mix with other people and exchange cultural activities between the parties and thereby they are culturally rich.

Pro-Poor Tourism: Pro Poor tourism is set up in developing countries as a means to improve the local economy for local people. It enhances the linkages between tourism businesses and poor people; so that poverty is reduced and poor people are able to participate more effectively in tourism development. The aims of pro-poor ranges from increasing local employment to involving local people in the decision making process.

Introduction to Rural Tourism in India
Majority of India is among the rural category with the sanctity and subtleness intact in the very essence of the village soil. This pious environment of the rural India attracts lot of interest among the tourists in India and thus rural tourism is a fast emerging category.

A national tourism policy was introduced in 2002, with rural tourism identif