28/12/2012
Mahaparinirvana Express to cover Buddhist sites in Odisha from January 20 next year !
The Buddhist Tourism circuit in India is getting a new fillip with the luxury tourist shuttle, the Mahaparinirvana Express, expanding its run to touch Buddhist sites in Odisha from January 20, 2013, besides those in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The move is to meet the growing demand by pilgrims, especially from countries like Sri Lanka in South Asia as well East and South East Asia, to visit more places associated with the Buddha - Bhubaneswar, Lalitagiri, Khandagiri and Udayagiri, according to an IANS report.
"The train that begins from Safdarjung in the capital now goes to Bodh Gaya, Rajgir, Nalanda, Varanasi, Sarnath, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Lumbini and Sravasti in a seven-night, eight-day odyssey," Harshvardhan Singh Rawat, an official from the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), said. The train, which was introduced in 2007, has tariffs ranging from Rs 7,500-34,000.
Speaking on the margins of the Confederation of India Industry (CII) Round Table on Indian Tourism, the IRCTC official said the government was reconsidering resuming the Chennai Buddhist shuttle that stopped in March this year. "We will soon put the train from Chennai back on track to cater to the surge of Buddhist pilgrims from Sri Lanka. We are working out the cost of the 21-day, 20-night trip that covers many more places than the Delhi train," the official said.
The Mahaparinirvana Express, on an average, clocks 60 per cent occupancy with the bulk of tourists from China, Thailand, Taiwan and other countries in the region. The official said tourists from at least 30 countries opt for Train Tourism in the Buddhist circuits. The corporation has tied up with luxury hotels at Bodh Gaya, Kushinagar, Gorakhpur and Lumbini (Nepal) to host the tourists overnight. Now the spotlight is on Odisha, where Buddhist sites had been in the shadow of the popular Puri-Konark Hindu Pilgrimage Tourism.
