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Getting to smaller cities in India used to be a nightmare -- literally, because so many flights to New Delhi and Mumbai arrive and depart in the middle of the night. To get to a smaller Indian city, you'd have to spend the remainder of the night at an airport hotel, then brave the packed airport with its interminable lines once again in the morning. But progressively, over the past three years, as aircraft have become available, several foreign airlines have launched nonstop flights from Bangkok, Singapore, Dubai and other places to more than a dozen second-tier cities and other destinations in India. This means a tourist or traveler on business can now take a quick flight from these hubs and spend a long weekend in some of the country's most fascinating places, from the holy city of Varanasi, where the Ganges River flows, to southern Kochi, home of traditional Ayurvedic treatments, to Hyderabad, one of the centers of India's booming technology industry.
These foreign airlines -- led by Thai Airways International, Singapore Airlines, its subsidiary Silk Air, and Emirates -- are taking advantage of a new policy of the Indian government that has opened 18 destinations to direct overseas flights. Foreign airlines have only been allowed into these smaller destinations in the past three years, the result of the government designating a number of second-tier airports as international in an effort to meet the increased demand from both tourists and business travelers that local airlines haven't been able to keep up with. The number of foreign tourists to India has doubled in the past decade to four million a year.
"There's growing recognition that India is much more likely to get inbound tourism if people can fly directly there," says Binit Somaia, regional director for India of the Sydney-based Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, a consulting firm. "The Indian carriers don't have the fleets to start (international) services from smaller cities," he notes. "The government realizes that opening the second-tier cities is good for the economy, so if the Indian carriers aren't going to operate them, they'll let foreign airlines do it."
I flew directly to Varanasi from Bangkok with Thai Airways, a three-hour flight that was launched in October. It was quite a difference from the old system, which took me through Mumbai to change planes more often than I want to remember. All seven airlines with flights from Mumbai to Bangkok, for instance, leave between 11:50 p.m. and 5:20 a.m. The one exception is an Air India afternoon flight, but it goes only two days a week, stops in New Delhi, and doesn't arrive in Bangkok until almost midnight. The last time I flew from Mumbai to Bangkok, I left my hotel at 1 a.m. and arrived at the airport at 2. But the lines for check-in and immigration were so long that I boarded my 4:50 a.m. Cathay Pacific Airlines flight with only a few minutes to spare. This time, my direct return flight from Varanasi to Bangkok left at a far more reasonable 2:30 p.m.
It's a well-kept secret that Varanasi, India's holiest city -- where much activity, including the cremation of bodies, takes place on the banks of the sacred Ganges River -- can be reached quickly from outside the country. My daytime flight here was a breeze. Because the Thai Airways plane was the only one at the little-used airport, we got through immigration, received our luggage and were in a taxi in 20 minutes. Most of the passengers had gotten off at Gaya, the flight's first stop and a favorite pilgrimage destination for Thai Buddhists, who visit nearby Bodhgaya, the place where the Buddha attained enlightenment.
Of the 30-odd passengers who flew on to Varanasi, only two besides myself were Westerners. "The only reason I came here was because of this flight," said Avi David, an electronics salesman from Haifa, Israel, who was taking a three-day detour to Varanasi on his way to New Delhi for business. "I discovered it by coincidence on the Thai Airways Web site," he added. "I found I could fly to Bangkok and Varanasi for the same price as going from Tel Aviv to New Delhi."
These foreign airlines -- led by Thai Airways International, Singapore Airlines, its subsidiary Silk Air, and Emirates -- are taking advantage of a new policy of the Indian government that has opened 18 destinations to direct overseas flights. Foreign airlines have only been allowed into these smaller destinations in the past three years, the result of the government designating a number of second-tier airports as international in an effort to meet the increased demand from both tourists and business travelers that local airlines haven't been able to keep up with. The number of foreign tourists to India has doubled in the past decade to four million a year.
"There's growing recognition that India is much more likely to get inbound tourism if people can fly directly there," says Binit Somaia, regional director for India of the Sydney-based Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, a consulting firm. "The Indian carriers don't have the fleets to start (international) services from smaller cities," he notes. "The government realizes that opening the second-tier cities is good for the economy, so if the Indian carriers aren't going to operate them, they'll let foreign airlines do it."
I flew directly to Varanasi from Bangkok with Thai Airways, a three-hour flight that was launched in October. It was quite a difference from the old system, which took me through Mumbai to change planes more often than I want to remember. All seven airlines with flights from Mumbai to Bangkok, for instance, leave between 11:50 p.m. and 5:20 a.m. The one exception is an Air India afternoon flight, but it goes only two days a week, stops in New Delhi, and doesn't arrive in Bangkok until almost midnight. The last time I flew from Mumbai to Bangkok, I left my hotel at 1 a.m. and arrived at the airport at 2. But the lines for check-in and immigration were so long that I boarded my 4:50 a.m. Cathay Pacific Airlines flight with only a few minutes to spare. This time, my direct return flight from Varanasi to Bangkok left at a far more reasonable 2:30 p.m.
It's a well-kept secret that Varanasi, India's holiest city -- where much activity, including the cremation of bodies, takes place on the banks of the sacred Ganges River -- can be reached quickly from outside the country. My daytime flight here was a breeze. Because the Thai Airways plane was the only one at the little-used airport, we got through immigration, received our luggage and were in a taxi in 20 minutes. Most of the passengers had gotten off at Gaya, the flight's first stop and a favorite pilgrimage destination for Thai Buddhists, who visit nearby Bodhgaya, the place where the Buddha attained enlightenment.
Of the 30-odd passengers who flew on to Varanasi, only two besides myself were Westerners. "The only reason I came here was because of this flight," said Avi David, an electronics salesman from Haifa, Israel, who was taking a three-day detour to Varanasi on his way to New Delhi for business. "I discovered it by coincidence on the Thai Airways Web site," he added. "I found I could fly to Bangkok and Varanasi for the same price as going from Tel Aviv to New Delhi."
WSJ
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But many appealing destinations are already open. From Singapore, you can fly Silk Air to Thiruvananthapuram (also known as Trivandrum) and Kochi (Cochin) in Kerala state on the southwest coast. The former offers access to hill resorts and beaches, while the latter is the gateway to the resorts of the backwater lagoons. On Singapore Airlines, you can go to Amritsar in Punjab in the far northwest, the center of the Sikh religion with its famed Golden Temple and, a bit north of Mumbai, Ahmedabad, the bustling capital of Gujarat, known for its handicrafts, museums and 15th-century mosques. From Bangkok, Thai Airways will take you to Hyderabad in the south-center of the country, where gleaming high-tech campuses on the outskirts coexist with a historic central city.
And then there's Varanasi, in the northeast. Thai Airways began flying here at the end of October and the flights continue until March 24, when the tourist season ends with the coming of the intense summer heat and then the monsoon. Except for people talking on mobile phones, I found Varanasi to be the old India unchanged, free of even a trace of the globalization that's reducing formerly distinctive Asian locations to a common denominator. The streets are still a chaotic fight for space among old Ambassador cars, bicycle rickshaws, pedestrians, cows and water buffaloes. There are no gleaming new hotels, but a couple of lovely old renovated ones. There's no fusion cuisine. In fact, in this city that's so sacred to Hindus, almost every restaurant serves vegetarian cuisine exclusively, and no alcohol. (The vegetarian food is so good and so varied that I didn't miss meat.)
From Varanasi, an essential second city to see is Khajuraho, home to a group of magnificent 10th-century temples, decorated by astonishing sculptures, many of them erotic. To my mind, Khajuraho offers a collection of temples second only in their grandeur to the famed Angkor temples of Cambodia -- but minus the crowds and the commercialization. Although one of the 18 places on the list, Khajuraho still doesn't have any international flights, but it's just a 40-minute hop from Varanasi on Jet Airways, a reliable Indian airline.
And then there's Varanasi, in the northeast. Thai Airways began flying here at the end of October and the flights continue until March 24, when the tourist season ends with the coming of the intense summer heat and then the monsoon. Except for people talking on mobile phones, I found Varanasi to be the old India unchanged, free of even a trace of the globalization that's reducing formerly distinctive Asian locations to a common denominator. The streets are still a chaotic fight for space among old Ambassador cars, bicycle rickshaws, pedestrians, cows and water buffaloes. There are no gleaming new hotels, but a couple of lovely old renovated ones. There's no fusion cuisine. In fact, in this city that's so sacred to Hindus, almost every restaurant serves vegetarian cuisine exclusively, and no alcohol. (The vegetarian food is so good and so varied that I didn't miss meat.)
From Varanasi, an essential second city to see is Khajuraho, home to a group of magnificent 10th-century temples, decorated by astonishing sculptures, many of them erotic. To my mind, Khajuraho offers a collection of temples second only in their grandeur to the famed Angkor temples of Cambodia -- but minus the crowds and the commercialization. Although one of the 18 places on the list, Khajuraho still doesn't have any international flights, but it's just a 40-minute hop from Varanasi on Jet Airways, a reliable Indian airline.
