The festive season of Christmas and New Year has brought smiles to the faces of tourism stakeholders in north Bengal and Sikkim with a steady footfall of visitors every day.
The count of visitors at different tourist destinations reaffirmed that people were pouring into the region to enjoy the chill and spend the year-end as well as the beginning of the New Year.
Priyanshu, the director of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR), said 632 passengers had boarded toy trains and enjoyed different rides on Christmas day on Wednesday.
“We earned ₹7.60 lakh in one day. It was a huge response. Till January 1, tickets for all rides of the toy train have been booked,” he said.
In the Darjeeling hills, the DHR, which is a Unesco-recognised mountain railway, draws hundreds of tourists. Every day, it runs a pair of trains between New Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling and 12 joy rides between Darjeeling and Ghoom.
Similarly, tourists are flocking to the Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park (PNHZP) in Darjeeling and the Bengal Safari Park, on the outskirts of Siliguri.
On Wednesday, 4,000 people visited the Darjeeling zoo, which led to an earning of ₹2.8 lakh. “Even today (on Thursday), there were hundreds of visitors at the zoo,” said Basavraj Holeyachi, director of the zoo.
At the Bengal Safari Park, the total number of visitors on Wednesday was 5,731 while the revenue was ₹8.74 lakh, said Vijaykumar E, the park’s director.
The inflow of tourists has brought some relief to the stakeholders of the tourism industry, said Debasish Chakraborty, the general secretary of the Eastern Himalaya Travel & Tour Operators Association.
He said the arrival of tourists was less during the Durga Puja and Diwali holidays, particularly because of the frequent disruptions in traffic on NH10 that connects Sikkim and Kalimpong.
“We hope the trend will continue throughout January. This will compensate the loss we had anticipated because of the non-arrival of Bangladeshi tourists in the past three to four months,” said Chakraborty.
Tourists are flocking to Sikkim also, especially in the northern parts of the Himalayan state to enjoy snowfall and ice.
On December 23, 2,628 tourists reached north Sikkim, which is the highest footfall in a single day.
“Such records hint at the growing popularity of north Sikkim as a prime tourist destination. It is a good sign for the industry,” said Samrat Sanyal, general secretary of Himalayan Hospitality & Tourism Development Network.