AIR Spotlight: Ganga Vilas

AIR Spotlight is an insightful program featured daily on the All India Radio News on air. In this program, many eminent panellists discuss issues of importance which can be quite helpful in IAS exam preparation.

This article is about the discussion on Ganga Vilas, the world’s longest river cruise.

Participants:

1. Anita Anand, AIR Correspondent
2. Sanjay Bandhopadhyay, Chairman, Inland Waterways Authority of India

What is Ganga Vilas?

Image source: https://zeenews.india.com/

• It is one of the world’s longest river cruises to be undertaken on a 51-day journey.
• The Ganga Vilas luxury cruise, left Kolkata to reach Ramnagar Port in Varanasi.
• The Ganga Vilas cruise has been “built with a unique design and a futuristic vision”. It will cover “prominent destinations that lie along Kolkata’s River Hooghly to Varanasi’s River Ganges.”
• The luxury triple-deck cruise will travel on the world’s longest waterway from Varanasi to Dibrugarh in Assam.
  • The cruise will have a capacity of 80 passengers with 18 suites.
  • The vessel is 62 metres in length, and 12 metres in width and comfortably sails with a draft of 1.4 metres.
• This cruise is designed and built in Kolkata, India, thus giving thrust to the Make in India policy.
• This cruise would popularise India’s waterways system.

Area covered: 

• This cruise will go on an adventurous journey for 51 days and pass through Bangladesh for 15 days. Following this, it will go to Dibrugarh through the Brahmaputra river in Assam.
• The luxury cruise will cover a distance of more than 3,200 km and pass through 5 states in India, and Bangladesh.
  • This cruise will pass through a total of 27 river systems of UP, Bihar, West Bengal, Bangladesh, and Assam.
• The 51 days cruise is planned with visits to 50 tourist spots including World Heritage Sights, National Parks, river Ghats, and major cities like Patna in Bihar, Sahibganj in Jharkhand, Kolkata in West Bengal, Dhaka in Bangladesh and Guwahati in Assam.
  • From the famous “Ganga Arti ” in Varanasi, the ship will stop at Sarnath, a place of great reverence for Buddhism.
  • It will also cover Mayong, known for its Tantric craft, and Majuli, the largest river island and hub of Vaishnavite culture in Assam.
  • The travellers will also visit the Bihar School of Yoga and Vikramshila University, giving the travellers an experience of the rich Indian heritage in spirituality and knowledge.
  • Travelling through the biodiversity-rich World Heritage Sites of Sunderbans in the Bay of Bengal delta, the passengers would be able to see the famous Royal Bengal Tigers and also the famous one-horn rhino while travelling through the Kaziranga National Park.

Read previous AIR Spotlight articles in the link.

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