India is planning to launch the world’s longest river cruise between Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and Dibrugarh in Assam this January in order to promote inland waterways. The “Ganga Vilas” cruise will travel 4,000 kilometres and pass through Bangladesh during its 50-day journey.
The journey will begin on January 10 and end on March 1 in Dibrugarh after stops in Kolkata and Dhaka. The cruise is expected to operate on a PPP basis. The Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Antara Luxury River Cruises and JM Baxi River Cruises for this purpose. According to the report, the ticket price would be determined by the operators without the intervention of the Centre.
The cruise will arrive in Patna on the eighth day after departing from Varanasi. It will arrive in Kolkata on the 20th day from there. After a day’s rest, it will set sail for Bangladesh, where it will spend 15 days before returning to India and arriving in Bogibeel (Dibrugarh).
“Ganga Vilas cruise will sail from Varanasi to Dibrugarh in a longest river journey of 50 days covering 27 river systems and visit over 50 tourist sites including world heritage sites. This will be the single largest river journey by a single river ship in the world and would put both India and Bangladesh on the river cruise map of the world,” Sarbananda Sonowal, minister of ports, shipping, and waterways, told in an interview.
“The service will facilitate all kinds of tourists. Moreover, with the amendment to Indian Vessel Act, cruise lines would have national permits to move seamlessly across states,” Sonowal added.
The government prioritises coastal and river shipping, including cruise services, in order to reduce the cost of freight transport in the country.
The Indo-Bangladesh Protocol Route will ease the cruise’s 1,100-kilometre journey through the neighbouring country. This route, which connects the Ganga and Brahmaputra rivers, has already established trade and transit links between the two countries.