Kaziranga National Park (KNP) in Assam receives more domestic tourists than normal

Saturday, December 11, 2021

As a silver lining to the pandemic-hit tourism sector, the UNESCO world heritage site, Kaziranga National Park (KNP) in Assam has received more domestic tourists than normal in three months this tourist season starting October 1.

With almost 78,000 domestic tourists visiting the park this season, the Covid scare has significantly reduced the overseas tourist flow with just 250 visiting the park during this period. Nevertheless, KNP director P Sivkumar termed it as a big leap in during these pandemic times. Despite the Omicron scare, the state health department said that it will encourage more tourists to visit the state.

Although the Omicron panicmight spoil the travel plans of tourists from several European countries where experts are apprehensive that the variant could become dominant in the months to come, state health officials are of the opinion that tourists from the US and Canada, who are not thought to be ‘at risk’ by India, might still visit the state.

P Sivkumarsaid, “It’s obvious that due to the suspension of international flights, the number of foreign arrivals may go down. But the domestic flow is more than normal. Since October 1 the arrival of 78,000 tourists in Kaziranga is very encouraging. The domestic passenger flow is more than what we had targeted.”

He said that before the pandemic, around 11,000 foreign tourists would visit KNP, but due to Covidlast year, only 500 overseas tourists visited the park.

In the last season, tourists mostly from the northeast visitedKaziranga. However, this year, tourists are coming from almost all the states. On an average, KNP authorities handle between 1.5 lakh to 1.75 lakh tourists in a season.
Assam National Health Mission director Dr.Lakshmanan S urged tourists to get vaccinated with both doses of the vaccine before entering the state.

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