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Kannadigas are the most traveled in India

The big myth about Bengalis and Gujaratis being the top travellers in the country is shattered. Their numbers aren’t insignificant, but Bengalis and Gujaratis together accounted for just about 5.4 million of a total of 33 million domestic tourists in 2002.

That might seem like a lot, but Karnataka alone had 6.1 million tourists, making Kannadigas, by far, the most travelled people in the country. Tourists from Tamil Nadu made up the next-biggest group with 3.7 million.

Maharashtrians and Bengalis were next in line with 2.9 million tourists each, while Gujaratis were just behind them at 2.8 million.

That’s the snapshot of domestic tourism in India from a first-of-its-kind survey conducted by the National Council of Applied Economic Research for the tourism ministry. With over 800,000 respondents, it is among the biggest surveys on tourism and is intended to give the ministry insights for policy.

Even though the "Bongs and Gujjus abound at all tourist places" theory was proven wrong by the survey results, several other widely held notions about domestic tourism seem to be right.

For instance, tourism as defined by leisure travel or holidaying, accounted for only 6 per cent of all travel out of town (or village) in the country.

Religious travel accounted for more than double that, at 13.8 per cent. The lion’s share of travelling belonged to "social travel", or the meeting friends and relatives category, which accounts for 10 times the number of tourists, at 58.9 per cent.

That, of course, would include travelling to attend weddings or death rites. The predominance of religious travel over holidaying means that when it came to the most popular destinations for religious or leisure travel in the country, eight of the top 10 were pilgrim centres.

Bangalore/ Mysore and Delhi were the only non-religious destinations in the top 10 and you could argue that Delhi serves as a gateway to several northern pilgrimages for travelers from other parts of the country. 

( www.daijiworld.com)

 
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