Nepal 14th in tourists’ beeline

Posted by: NTN  | Date: July 11, 2010

The number of Nepali tourists visiting India has been steadily increasing to earn the country a slot in the southern neighbour’s list of top arrivals.

Nepal ranked No. 14 in foreign visitor arrivals with 87,487 Nepali tourists travelling to India by air in 2009, according to the Indian Tourism Ministry.

Nepali outbound to India was greater than Indian inbound to Nepal last year in terms of air travellers. According to the Nepal Tourism Board (NTB), 86,696 Indian holidaymakers arrived in Nepal by air in 2009. CEO of NTB Prachanda Man Shrestha, however, said that Nepal was not in a deficit position as around 300,000 Indian tourists visit the country overland annually.

Tour operators cited three reasons for the substantial rise in the number of Nepali visitors to India — popularity of pilgrimage destinations, growing trend of using India as a transit point for onward flights to Europe and the US due to cheap tickets, and rising frequency of guardians visiting their children enrolled in Indian schools Sudhir Upadhyay, managing director of Ama Travels whose main business is operating tours to India,

said that more medium-class Nepalis were travelling to India as tourists. Earlier, only high-income people used to visit India.

C.N. Pandey, managing director of Samrat Travels & Tours, said political instability had forced large numbers of Nepali students to pursue their studies in India.

 

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