First I fumed, whined and I wondered, then threw open this question to a few non-Indian friends and readers.
After 26/11 why should one still travel to India ?
And the response I got was overwhelming. None of them was scared to travel to India. I somehow knew the answer but felt relieved when they said so.
Here are a few reasons which were deciding factors for them to reach this conclusion.
1) India is large. Geographically India is very large and is considered a match to Europe. The chances of something happening to them are minimum. They don’t care if something happens in a remote corner of the country. Can you imagine canceling your trip to one of the countries in Europe because some other country faces a crisis ?
2) The itinerary has already been fixed. People have already planned their trips, booked their tickets and hotels for next year and because of one incident they do not want to cancel their trips.
Only one Australian said they are postponing it by a year since his daughter is expecting twins and he does not want to give her any stress back home. With millions of travelers every year, I think India is still very much a safe destination.
3) India is recovering very fast. The people of India have shown great strength to cope with this tragedy. The Indian government is also working hard to encourage and boost tourism and visits by other nationals. The current England cricket team’s decision to come back for two match series says it all.
4) This is the best time. Whenever such tragedy happens anywhere in the world, invariably the prices drop off. This means that costs of air-tickets and hotel accommodations are often slashed to lure the tourists and to make the deal attractive.
However, I personally do not see any reductions or change, but this is what generally happens in tourism industry.
As far as I know the flights are still very much full and people are on waitlist probably because of approaching Christmas holidays.
I can say, despite these attacks India is still very beautiful, inviting and full of warmth. So, come and be our guest.
I’m so glad you put up this post. I cant tell you how many people have asked me the same question over the past month. And I tell them, India post 26/11 is just as safe as the USA was post 9/11.
Dont know about the low ticket prices though. A friend who is traveling from the USA to India late December complains that the ticket prices are just as high as they typically are during the holiday season. No reductions at this end.
Vagabond,
Yes, India is as much safe as USA was.
As I have also mentioned, personally I do not see any reductions in fares or traffic coming to India. The flights are jam-packed.
The above view was of some foreigners who felt their airlines were ready to give discounts (of course not during X’mas holidays).
If I see a post from your feed that I cant read completely in my feed reader the next time – I am unsubscribing,
Because, either your writing quality is not worth the hassle of opening a new tab, or,,,
Either improve your quality of writing, or make it RSS convenient or be prepared to lose readers like me ( who may not be a lot by all means)
Cuckoo, I agree completely. I was in CP, the other day when there was the bomb hoax, but we never felt threatened. Yes, there were a lot of foreigners roaming around as well fearlessly
gr8 to see that post coming from u. since there are a lot of foreign readers on ur blog, i think ur post will b a good word-of-mouth publicity for india.
I agree abhi. i can still find many excited foreigners thronging different parts of delhi, lal quila being one of them.
a very good post and well articulated..the need of the hour is such positive posts..true, a lot of foreigners and indians are not deterred by the attacks ..
A very nice post Cuckoo!!
There is no reason why should the visitors cancel their trips to India. Because as you said Our country is a vast one and the another reason this is the only time our intelligence services will work to their name 😉
England cricketers has shown that there is not much threat here. We must thank them because if they have cancelled their tour means it would become a huge question over the security in our country.
I think there are many reasons to travel to India, if I only could, right now I do not have time… what happened last month would not be a reason not to go, but unfortunattely there are more personal ones 🙁
These are good and important factors for deciding to visit India. Thanks for sharing.
That’s a very nice post 🙂 . I’m sure the visit of tourists to India would always increase .
Lovely blog you’ve got ..I’m blogrolling you 🙂
Hi Cuckoo,
Its been a while reading your blog.This is a well said article !!! You have answered to the point. Like the way u have presented it!!
In the months following September 11th I really appreciated the tourists who come to the city. Many were from other parts of the U.S. and came as a show of solidarity. My husband and I hope to travel to India next year.
I lived and worked in Paris some (many) years ago, when there were a lot of bombs and attacks, and several deaths as well, but when you do, you can’t stop living and working. You just must go on, and try not to think about it. And I guess, most of us never thought it could happen to us. It would have been too hard to go on if we had.
Terrorism and being injured or killed in an attack is *extremely* rare. We are currently living in the safest time now than ever before in human history.
Unless a threat is immediate (like full scale war) or in progress changing any travel plans to anywhere is pointless. You simply cannot plan against random events.
Well besides a lil more security measures at the airport (which is a good thing, even though it might be annoyin) i dont think there are any changes in terms of the charm of the places to visit in india!
Come visit us, we’d love to welcome you 🙂