CONFERENCE DETAILS

Participants themselves are required to arrange for their air travel, hotel accommodations, and local transportation to and from the airport. All the necessary information including phone numbers and some valuable tips are provided below.

Conference Rooms: Capitol A and Capitol B (second floor), The Madison Concourse Hotel and Governor's Club.

Hotel accommodation and other Details:

Nepal Study Center will provide breakfast, lunch and refreshments on the day of the conference. For hotel accommodation at a discount rate, please contact Madison Concourse Hotel. Participants also gather to do a group dinner in the evening (self pay).

Other nearby hotel and dorm accommodations within .5 to 1 mile:

Short term dorms and hostels: reasonable rates (as low as $15) and within the walking distance from the university area (1. Lowell Center/ Wisconsin Center Guest House / Lowell Hall, (608)256-2621 Guest House; wcgh@admin.uwex.edu; 2. Memorial Union Guest Rooms, (608)262-1583 *Guest Rooms Reservations; 3. Union South Guest Rooms (608)263-2600 Union South Info Desk / Corner Store; 4. Short Course Dorms / Humphrey and Jorns Hall / Agriculture Residence Halls; (608)262-2270 Office/Reservations; m.vance@cals.wisc.edu;

Great Deal / Madison Hostel (608)441-0144 Madison Hostel; madisonhostel@yahoo.com; Office Hours: 8-11am and 5-10pm. Tentative rates: Dorm room: female dorm 6 beds in a room $22/person/night, across the hall bath; Male dorm: 6 beds in a room $22/person/night, attached bath; co-ed room 6 beds in a room $22/person/night, attached bath; Private rooms: 1 room with two beds $58/person/night; 1 room with 1 full size bed $58/person/night; 1 room with 4 beds $22/person/night. Within walking distance from Concourse Hotel. Arriving at the Madison Hostel by Bus, by Car, or from the Airport: http://www.madisonhostel.org/find.shtml

Doubletree Hotel Madison, 525 W. Johnson Street, Madison, Wisconsin, USA 53703; Tel: +1-608-251-5511  Fax: +1-608-251-4824 (.5 miles away)
Best Western Inn on the Park: 22 S Carroll Street, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703-3309, US; Phone: 608-257-8811 Fax: 608-257-5995; ( 0.18 miles away)
Edgewater Hotel: 666 Wisconsin Avenue , Madison, WI;l 1-800-922-5512; (0.28 miles away)
Hilton Madison Monona Terrace, 9 East Wilson Street , Madison, WI;Tel: 608-255-5100 (0.35 miles away)
Holiday Inn Madison At The American Center, 5109 W TERRACE DRIVE MADISON, WI 53718 UNITED STATES
Hotel Front Desk: 1-608-2494220; Fax: 1-608-2494110 ( 0.44 miles away)
Hotel Ruby Marie, 524 E Wilson, Madison, Wisconsin (WI) 53703 Telephone: 608-327-7829 or Toll Free: 877-690-7829 Fax: 608-327-7833 (0.48 miles away)
Campus Inn and Chancellors Club, 601 Langdon Street; Madison, Wisconsin 53703; (608) 257-4391 (800) 589-6285; Fax (608) 257-2832; (0.53 miles away)
Hostelling International at Madison (Madison Hostel): HI-Madison; 141 S. Butler St.; Madison, WI 53703 (608) 441-0144; madisonhostel@yahoo.com; (Shared room: $23; Private room: $47 as of September 20, 2007); Two blocks from the Capitol.
Lowell Center / Wisconsin Center Guest House / Lowell Hall 610 Langdon St; Madison, WI 53703; (608)256-2621 Guest House; (608)262-5445 FAX; E-mail: wcgh@admin.uwex.edu; Overnight accommodations (single and double rooms) for people affiliated with the university, i.e., attending a conference or meeting sponsored by the state or university. Pool and sauna available for guests. 79 guest rooms available. Limited parking provided for guests. Can accommodate prospective UW students--must mention that they are a prospective student and what department they are visiting.

Travel Information: (Disclaimer: Use this information at your own risk and after verification.)
To arrive at Madison, the Dane County airport (MSN) is quite convenient, although, it can be somewhat more expensive.

If price is a concern, it may be cheaper to fly into either the Milwaukee Airport (MKE) or Chicago's O'Hare Airport (ORD). There is a bus from O'Hare to Madison that will stop right in front of the UW Memorial Union. Takes about three hours from O'Hare and costs about $25.00. We don't know about ground transportation from Milwaukee, although the distance is 75 miles. Here is the web site of the bus company that provides O'Hare to Madison service.

Local Transporation to and From the Airport

NSC conference does not provide any transportation to and from the airport. You should contact your own hotels or hostels and ask for the shuttle or the local bus schedule routing information.

Here is the web site for the main event venue Concourse Hotel: http://www.concoursehotel.com/. Their web site says they have a "free complimentary shuttle" for their hotel guests. The main hotel is generally booked in advance, so your best options would be to look for nearby accomodations (see above).

Those who are staying elsewhere should contact them directly to find out about the shuttle arrangements. Smaller lodges, hostels, university housing, and motels generally do not provide shuttle services. But Madison being a small university town, taking local buses and getting off near the nearby street intersections is not that inconvenient. Make sure to have some one dollar bills with you.

Bus ride: The Madison Metro provides bus service which connects the airport to downtown. The one way fare is $1.50 (exact change required). The airport stop is outside the baggage hall just beyond the taxi stand.

Cab Ride: You can also use a cab that may cost you about $17- $20 depending upon the traffic and the location of your hotel/hostel. There are cabs generally available outside the airport. Or you can use the courtsey phone at the airport to call Union Cab (601 242 2000).

Conference Proceedings: The proceedings of that Conference are published in a special issue of the Himalayan Journal of Development and Democracy (HJDD). We encourage you to take a look at the HJDD journal site. The abstracts, the feedback from participants, and some of the photos and videos are also available there.

Association for Himalayan Policy Research: One of the goals of the annual HPR conference is to form an Association for Himalayan Policy Research and obtain a membership of the Allied Social Science Associations which conducts annually the largest of such conferences in the U.S. For this purpose, Nepal Study Center has prepared NSCPolicyResearch-L, a list of people conducting policy research in related fields. If you are a research scholar but not yet a member of this group, we encourage you to sign up for the listserve and contribute to forming the Association. For further details about the whole SA conference, please check the University of Wisconsin's South Asian Conference Website.

	Dr. Alok K. Bohara is a professor of economics at the University of New Mexico (UNM), and the founder of the Nepal Study Center at UNM. His research focus is in the areas of environment and development and their relationships with poverty and conflict. His is currently interested in looking at the ways of using the information communication technology (ICT) to alleviate poverty (health, education, and the environment). He is interested in undertaking initiatives to foster global scholarly connectivity to promote interactions among the scholars with policy research interest on the Himalayan region.
	Dr. Mukti Upadhyay is a professor of economics at Eastern Illinois University. He specializes in development economics with a focus on macro and international aspects of development.
	Dr. Vijaya R. Sharma., Faculty in the Economics Department of University of Colorado, worked from 1975 to 1990 in the field of industrial sector policy, planning, and programs in Nepal and was an active member of the task force to prepare the Seventh Five-Year Industrial Development Plan and the 1987, Industrial Policy.
	Dr. Jeffrey Drope, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Marquette University
	Dr. Jennifer Thacher, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, University of New Mexico. She specializes in environmental economics and empirical modeling and non-market valuation.