Sri Lanka beckons Indians to its Ramayana sites
With close to four lakh Indians having visited Sri Lanka in 2017 alone, the island nation is hoping to double this number by educating its biggest tourism market about its connection with the epic Ramayana.
On Saturday, the official website of the ‘Ramayana Yatra’ was launched at the second day of the 106th edition of the ‘India International Travel Mart’ (IITM) here.
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The Indian Railways is planning to launch a tourist train service covering locations linked with the epicRamayana in a 16-day journey, theHindustan Times reported on Sunday. Passengers may also choose to take their journey to Colombo in Sri Lanka, where Ram’s army is said to have fought Ravana in the Indian epic.
The train will be called Sri Ramayana Express, an unidentified official of the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation said.
“We see good revenue on this circuit,” Rajni Hasija, tourism director at IRCTC, told the newspaper. “Right now, the date of first train has been announced, and after seeing the response, we will decide whether to run the train once or twice in a year.”
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A pro-Left outfit in Kerala has announced plans to hold a series of seminars on the Ramayana, sparking criticism which forced the CPI(M) to deny it was an attempt to get on to the Hindu platform edgeways.
Samskritha Sangham, an organisation of pro-Left scholars, academicians and Left sympathisers, are set to hold these programmes during the Malayalam month of 'Karkitakam', saying it is a counter to "attempts by Sangh Parivar to misinterpret ancient texts".
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