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Himachal gears up for festival tourist rush
By Baldev S. Chauhan,

Shimla, Sep 18  Planning a getaway to Himachal Pradesh during the Navratri and Dussehra holidays? It may be just too late now with most hotels reporting mass advance bookings for the upcoming festival season.

Holidaymakers from West Bengal, Gujarat and some northern states head in large numbers to the hill state during the autumn festival holidays.

"Over half the accommodation in our hotels located in popular destinations of Shimla, Manali and Dharamsala have already been booked so far," said R.C. Gupta, a Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation (HPTDC) official.

"We have also made special arrangements to provide vegetarian fare and meals consisting of fruits to tourists observing a fast during the Navratri in our hotels," said Gupta.

The HPTDC, with over 50 properties, has hotels located in some of the most scenic locations of the state. Some of the properties are heritage buildings - an added tourist attraction.

The state tourism body started online bookings for travellers earlier this year.

Private hotels, which bag the bulk of the tourist traffic, are also gearing up for the festival season. Many of the large hotels have reported advance bookings in large numbers through travel agents. The budget hotels look forward to walk-in travellers during the tourist rush season.

"The festival season definitely attracts a huge number of visitors, after the lean monsoon season," said Rajiv Madan, general manager, Shimla Hotel and Restaurants Association.

Tourist arrivals in the state till the end of August stood at 5 million domestic and 145,000 foreign tourists, which is higher than the number last year during the same period, say state tourism officials.

Officials have warned hotels to stick to the fixed tariffs and not over charge during this peak festival season.
 
Dussehra is being celebrated this year on Oct 2.

 
Chhattisgarh wooing visitors from China
By Sujeet Kumar,

Raipur, Sep 18  Tour operators in China have promised to send their tourists to visit sites of historical importance in Chhattisgarh, especially Bastar, say top officials of the Indian state visiting China.

A four-member delegation led by Revenue and Tourism Minister Brijmohan Agrawal held talks with tour operators and private investors in Shanghai and Beijing to help promote the hilly state as a dream tourist destination.

Agrawal, in his five-day trip to China from Sep 14, showcased the natural beauty of the state and the eco-tourism sites.

"I have held meetings with private tour operators and told them about the tourism potential of Chhattisgarh. They will now arrange regular trips of Chinese tourists to the state," Agrawal told IANS Monday over telephone from Beijing.

"We made presentations at Shanghai on Sep 15 and at Beijing the next day about the many key tourists sites in Bastar, besides other historical and well-known Buddhist religious places," Agrawal said.

Among the Buddhist sites mentioned was Sirpur, 75 km from capital Raipur, where 7th century Chinese scholar Hiuen Tsang had visited.

According to Agrawal, the Chinese officials appreciated the sites of historical importance and scenic beauty in Bastar as well as eco-tourism locations.

"We held discussion on how to create the world's best quality facilities around the tourism sites and maintenance of historical monuments," said Rakesh Chaturvedi, Chhattisgarh Tourism Board (CTB) managing director.

Agrawal invited Chinese private investors to bring money into the state's tourism sector and promised to provide special concessions on commercial tax, sales tax and stamp duty.

Apart from Agrawal, the team also consisted of state principal secretary T. Radhakrishnan, Rakesh Chaturvedi and senior CTB official Sanjay Singh.

The Bastar region, spread over 40,000-sq-km, is full of picturesque hills, valleys and waterfalls. The Kutumbsar caves, among the oldest existing caves of the world, and Chitrakot, one of the largest waterfalls in Asia, are located in the region. Some of the rocks in Bastar are said to be 3,000 to 3,300 million years old.

Chhattisgarh has vast potential for eco-tourism with 44 percent of the state under forest cover - a dream for tourists and trekkers. The state government has drawn up a package to develop infrastructure facilities at its 105 tourism sites.

Agra laser show to bring alive Mughal grandeur
Agra, Sep 18  Tourists coming to the Taj Mahal city will soon be able to enjoy an audio-visual extravaganza and a laser show on the historical monument and Shah Jehan, the Mughal ruler who built it.

A private initiative by the Oswal Tourism and Travel Group here, the tourist attraction would be at a new auditorium being built near the Shilpagram, a crafts village on the eastern side of the Taj.

The initiative, which will unfold the love story of Shah Jehan and his wife Mumtaz Mahal, will definitely be a reason for visitors to stay back in the city for the night, said Ashok Kumar Jain of Oswal Tourism while announcing the project.

The show is scheduled to begin in January 2007.

The one-and-a-half-hour programme will be complete with cultural, architectural and historical highlights. It would centre on a 12-foot-long marble model of the Taj, which will dazzle in different shades of light and colour through laser beams.

The audiences will have the choice of listening to the programme in 12 different languages.

A promo of the programme, aptly titled "Mohabbat - the Taj", was shown at the recently held Indian Tourism conference in Jaipur.

Apart from Shah Jehan's story, audiences will also get glimpses of the culture of the Braj region and the colourful Indian festival of Holi.

Jain added that he is currently preparing a set of 24 promotional films for tourists. "Monuments alone cannot keep their interest alive, they need some good engagements for the evening also," he said.

Meanwhile, the tourism industry here is looking forward to the coming tourist season beginning Sep 27 - World Tourism Day. Hotels have already registered a decent number of bookings and a number of conferences are on the tourist calendar.

Civic authorities, on their part, are gearing up to upgrade the infrastructural facilities the city has to offer.

The Fatehabad Road leading to the Taj is being widened and a number of malls have also opened on this vital stretch to lure customers.


First female space tourist blasts into space
DPA

Moscow, Sep 18 (DPA) A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off Monday with the first female space tourist on board, heading for a mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

Anousheh Ansari, 40, an Iranian-American telecommunications entrepreneur, left Earth with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and American astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria at 6:08 a.m. (0408 GMT) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the mission-control centre said.

Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria are to remain for six months as the new crew for the station while Ansari is due to return to earth in 10 days with the station's departing crew.
 

IANS

India's fastest train makes a dream run
New Delhi, India's fastest train, the Delhi-Bhopal Shatabdi Express, had its inaugural run Wednesday, reaching the Taj Mahal city of Agra in just one hour and 56 minutes.Railway Minister Lalu Prasad flagged off the train at the New Delhi railway station. After covering the 199 km run between New Delhi and Agra at a speed of 150 km an hour, it ran at 120 km per hour on its way to Bhopal."Feb 15 will mark the beginning of a new chapter in the history of Indian Railways," the minister said. "We have started this train as an experiment. We will study the performance of this line and may go for 150-km-an-hour trains on the Delhi-Howrah and Delhi-Mumbai routes also," Lalu Prasad told IANS. The New Delhi-Bhopal Shatabdi has sparklingly new eight Chair Car compartments with 78 seats each as against 67 seats earlier, an executive coach of 56 seats and two power cars. ( Read full news )

  
Rajasthan goes big on adventure tourism
New Delhi, Move over camel safaris. Exciting new adventure sports like hot air ballooning, desert skiing and water scootering are set to hit Rajasthan.This drive by the Rajasthan government will be initiated with an eye to further consolidate its position as the numero uno destination for foreign tourists in the country. "Rajasthan has been the destination of choice for both foreign and domestic tourists and by offering them more choices on how to spend their getaways, we hope to further increase the inflow of tourists to our beautiful state," Rajasthan government tourism secretary Vinod Zutshi told IANS. "All this while, people have been coming to visit Rajasthan to see its heritage - from its beautiful palaces to its haunting forts - but now we will give them another reason to come and that will be as the destination of choice for adventure tourism in India." This initiative by the Rajasthan government began here with the announcement of a 12-day long hot air ballooning fiesta in which 50 balloonists from 11 countries will take part with 20 balloons. ( Read full news ) 

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