GUWAHATI: Now people can go cruising for fifty-five days through at least fifty tourist spots including some World Heritage sites. The world’s longest luxury river cruise from Varanasi to Dibrugarh via Bangladesh has been proposed by the Government of India.
The Ganga Vilas cruise is expected to be a fifty-day event. It will start sailing from Varanasi and cover a distance of 4,000 km. It will pass through Kolkata and Dhaka before reaching Bogibeel in the Dibrugarh district in Assam.
It will cover twenty-seven river systems and visit over fifty tourist sites including World Heritage Sites. This will be the single longest river journey by a single river ship in the world. It is expected to put both India and Bangladesh on the river cruise map of the world, media quoted Union Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, Sarbananda Sonowal.
Sonowal said that the development of coastal and river shipping, including cruise services, is one of the priorities of the Government. More services of this nature would be launched to tap the country’s enormous potential in this area.
Besides promoting passenger traffic on rivers, the development of inland waterway systems would also facilitate trade and cargo services and give a boost to tourism around the areas along its route, said the minister.
The Varanasi-Dibrugarh cruise is to be on run on a (Public Private Partnership) PPP model.
(With inputs from Mint)