A memorable year for Arunachal Pradesh should be 2012. It was the 50th year since the India‒China Boundary Dispute of 1962, in which the region was in the center of conflict, the 25th year since it rose to statehood in India, and the 20th year since it was opened for tourists in 1992. In addition, the world famous travel guide book, The Lonely Planet, selected Arunachal Pradesh as the one of TOP 10 REGIONS of Best in Travel 2012. They admirably describe the state as "The last of the great Shangri-la."
The state government is encouraged by this selection and eager to promote tourism, which appears to be the best way to generate internal revenue and increase employment as well as accelerate development. However, since the region was opened to outside visitors, tourism has developed at a slow pace.
Shangri-la was the utopia imagined by James Hilton, the author of Lost Horizon. It reminds tourists of the Tibetan Buddhist world, even though Buddhists constitute only one of the state's various religious groups.
This paper considers why Arunachal Pradesh has been unable to implement tourism development, examining both internal and external factors. In particular, I will raise the question of whether it is possible for the state to be Shangri-la̶given its Buddhist image̶and whether promoting it in this way changes the situation of the border region.

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