Outlook – July 06, 2019

ON THE ROAD

TO XANADU

by Probir Pramanik in Calcutta

F

ROM afar they’d look like a patchwork

quilt—a moving mass of coats, jackets,

caps, scarves, sarees where every shade

of the colour palette gets a fair rep-

resentation. When within range, the

group reveals, amidst an inevitably

unruly din, an animated bunch of men and

women of all ages, with a gaggle of gurgling

children in tow: the unmistakable sight of

Bengali travellers. After having scoured and

ploughed through the sub-continent for gen-

erations (resulting in, among other things, an

admirable body of travel literature that goes

back 150 years), the inveterate Bengali tour-

ist, middle class in origin, behaviour and pur-

chasing power, has been looking further

afield—to Bangkok, Singapore and Malaysia.

Now, they have dared to peer round the cor-

ner and look farther east. It is China that has

swum into their ken.

Travellers from Calcutta are taking the hop to Kunming and

thence to the Chinese showpieces of Xi’an, Shanghai and Beijing

From posing for a family selfie with the

Terracotta soldiers in their underground mau­

soleum in Xi’an, a day spent ogling glitzy

Shanghai, or tucking into a succulently tender

Peking Duck in Beijing, even a Chinese New

Year’s feast in Kunming—the Middle Kingdom

is the new siren enticing a group forever stricken

with wanderlust.

For decades, when the summer heat got

unbearable in the plains, Darjeeling was the

cool mountain eyrie closest home (of course,

the northern Himalayas and Sikkim remain

perennial favourites) that Bengalis would repair

to. Now, vromon premis—travel lovers—with

more disposable income have the land of drag­

ons in their sight.

The past three years have seen a big surge in

traffic from Bengal and the Northeast to neigh­

bouring China, with the tourist demographic

ranging from honeymooners to senior citizens,

says Anil Punjabi, chairman, Travel Agents

Federation of India (TAFI), eastern region.

PLEASURE DOMES

CALCUTTA

INDIA

56 OUTLOOK 8 July 2019