PLEASURE DOMES
diplomacy forum designed to bring people from
the two provinces closer. The typical tour itin
erary has half a day earmarked for shopping in
each city. The China tourpackages are attract
ing Bengalis more as they find it safe; besides,
Calcutta has India’s largest and oldest Chinese
diaspora in Chinatown, who have delighted
Bengalis with their cuisine and festivals for
generations, cementing an ageold connect bet
ween the city and China.
Actually, the other Southeast Asian tourism
hotspots, including Thailand and Singapore,
have benefited from this surge. Punjabi says,
“Both Thai Airlines and Singapore Airlines have
started offering competitive fares to cash in on
the increasing flow of tourist and business
travellers to the Chinese mainland. They are
offering competitive fares on connecting flight
to China via Bangkok and Singapore.”H
OWEVER, the Kunming effect has travelled
beyond Calcutta. Neeraj Bhalla from Navi
Mumbai, a frequent business traveller to
China who used to take the more expensive
and circuitous route to China on the Mumbai
BangkokX’ian route, now takes the Calcutta
Kunming flight. “The connecting flight from
Calcutta to Kunming not only saves travel time,
it works out cheaper too. Over the last couple of
years that I have taken the flight, I have noted a
steady increase in the number of tourists from
Calcutta,” says Bhalla, who travels to China once
every two months and who is planning a family
holiday there.
As China is too big and diverse for tourists to
visit in ‘onesizefits all’ trip, there is an inc
rease in numbers of repeat visitors among
Bengalis for further exploration, says Punjabi.
“In the last year, tourist traffic from Calcutta to
China has gone up by 12 to 15 per cent.
Passenger volumes increase during the Easter
weekend, summer holidays and the Durga
Puja vacation. We get a lot of enquiries from
people who had earlier planned to travel to Sri
Lanka, but now want to visit China,” he says.
Besides Kunming being the gateway to China,
people who want to visit Hong Kong and
Macau also want to include mainland China
into their itinerary.
“Bengalis prefer a structured holiday—a
seven or fiveday trip with all activity and
routes clearly chalked out, in contrast to
more developed markets where people dir
ectly search pointsofinterests. Indians also
have to deal with with cultural and language
barriers, so they want a wellprepared itiner
ary,” says a travel agent. Some enterprising
Ben galis use the trips to explore business
opportunities too, says Bhaumik.
Then there’s the spiritual connect. A millennia back, Bengal was a major centre of Bud
dhism, and sent scores of scholaremissaries to
Tibet and China, most notably Atisa Dipankar
Srigyan (9821054 AD), the venerated philoso
pher. “There has been an increasing conscious
ness about Buddhism in China and an
inclination to revive links with Buddhist cir
cuits in India and Nepal. China, therefore, is
showcasing its ancient history by including
ancient towns and pilgrimage centres in struc
tured tour itineraries. It is also monetising old
European heritage sites in Shanghai (the
French Concession, for example), which
Bengalis love as part of the centuriesold
CalcuttaShanghai connect,” says Punjabi.
The three most popular Chinese circuits for
Bengalis include the 11day BeijingXi’an
Guilin/Yang zhouShanghai trip, the eightday
‘Golden Tri angle’ BeijingXi’anShanghai trip
and the 13day Giant Pandas trip (BeijingXi’an
Chen gduChongqingYichangShanghai). All
tours start and end at Kunming.
The past two decades were full of debates
about the immense trade opportunities of
India’s Northeast by unlocking their passage
north to China and to Southeast Asia. Leisure
loving Bengalis seem to have taken a determined
lunge in that direction. OAncient
centres of
Buddhism in
China are a
big draw. Then
there is the
old Calcutta-
Shanghai
connect.CHINESE LANTERN
Kishore Choithramani
travelled with his
family to Kunming
and Canton58 OUTLOOK 8 July 2019
TAFI/EASTERN INDIA