For many years Buddhist travelers visiting New Delhi were rather passive. According to the latest statistics, Buddhist travelers made around 10-12 percent of the total of 4.63 million tourists who visited India in 2006-7.
Interest in Buddhist tourists, however, is growing as more and more pilgrims from Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Korea and already from Mainland China as well as the US chose India as a popular travel destination. There are even special Buddhist tours packages offered albeit with little interest. Less than 25,000 Buddhist tours packages are being sold each year.
As it turns out, Buddhist tour packages are more of interest to Japanese pilgrims. E Turbo News provides more details.
A handful of travel companies sell packaged Buddhist tours in the international market. Lajpat Rai of Lotus Trans Travels set up his business on a monk’s suggestion.
“I was staying with him in a temple in Naha, Okinawa, Japan. He suggested setting up a business to help the Japanese get better access to the Buddhist circuit in India. In fact, my first Buddhist group from Japan was from this temple,” says Rai.
While traveling to India, a traveler, Michaela y Len shares her warm impression of Buddhists in len belle more blog.
“We also met some really interesting people at Shanti, including Nyamgal. One wouldn’t expect an Aussie to have a name like Nyamgal. This amazing man was a Tibetan Buddhist. He had the most incredible energy around him. He treated all of us as if we were long-lost friends. We spent many hours with him and other people having philosophical conversations about India, spirituality, life and all the other things that are ok to talk about while travelling, but seem to be avoided at home. During the evening, the drums came out. As it the sitar, which one traveller was bravely lugging around with him. We had a wonderful time, and felt that we could have stayed in “Horizontal Hampi” forever.”
Photo:© abrinsky
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