From a Bare Hillside to a Living Centre
PAARC Nepal did not start as an institution. It started as a slope.
Before there was a farm, a research centre, or a name, this was simply a stretch of hillside overlooking the Bijayapur River, unused, and, to most people who saw it, unremarkable. It belonged to our family, the way a piece of land often does: inherited, quietly held, waiting for someone to decide what it could become.
That someone was Kishor Dutta Baral. What began as a family effort to make something of that hillside has grown, step by step, into the Pokhara Agro-Tourism Academy and Research Centre, a place where agriculture, education, research, wellness and community now share the same ground that once grew nothing at all.
This is still, at its core, a family business. Every terrace, every planted row, every building on this land was built the way most real things are: by hand, over time, by people who lived close to the problem they were trying to solve.
Why We Built This
We didn’t set out to build a “centre” in the abstract. We set out to answer a simpler question: what can this land actually become, if we take it seriously?
The answer turned out to be more than a farm. As the hillside slowly filled with dragon fruit, fruit orchards, native trees, and returning wildlife, we realized we weren’t just growing crops, we were building an ecosystem that could teach, host, and support people who had never had a reason to visit an ordinary farm.
Students needed a place to learn outside a classroom. Researchers needed a site diverse enough to be worth studying, with somewhere to actually stay while they did the work. Farmers needed to see, not just hear about, what climate-smart, organic cultivation looks like in practice. And travellers increasingly tired of moving fast and seeing little needed somewhere that let them slow down and reconnect with land, food, and quiet.
PAARC Nepal grew to hold all of them, because none of those needs are really separate. They all come from the same place: a desire to learn something real, from something real.
What Guides Us
- We believe a farm can be more than a place of production – It can be a classroom, a research site, an innovation hub, and a place to reconnect with nature often within the same afternoon.
- We believe development means more than growth – As our founder puts it: “True development is not only about economic growth, but also about meaningful living, healthy communities, cultural continuity and human connection.”
- We believe in one gate, many reasons to enter – A university researcher, a smallholder farmer, a burnt-out remote worker, and a curious traveller can all walk through PAARC and leave with something different and equally real.
Who PAARC Is For
We built this place to be useful to very different people, on purpose:
- Students & researchers, who need a biodiverse, accessible field site with facilities to actually work not just observe
- Farmers & agricultural entrepreneurs, who want to see organic and climate-smart practices in action, not just in theory
- Travellers & wellness seekers, who are looking for a slower kind of trip one built around yoga, nature, and honest farm life rather than a checklist of sights
- Fellows & changemakers, through our Green Idea Fellowship, who are ready to turn ideas about sustainability into something they can actually build
