Bang in the middle of the country, Madhya Pradesh offers a wide variety of choices for holidaying in the forthcoming festival season and beyond. It is not only known as the ‘Tiger State’ of India — having nine national parks and 25 wild life sanctuaries — there are also heritage sites, ancient temples and the State has also been hosting the vibrant water festival or ‘Jal Mahatsov’ in the last few years.
“While our State is well connected with airports and railways, being a landlocked State and surrounded by five States Madhya Pradesh has national highways criss-crossing, which also means many visitors take the road to holiday. So we have concentrated on developing wayside amenities,” said Additional Managing Director, MP Tourism Board Srikant Pandey and ED Om Vijay Choudhary at a media briefing on Wednesday.
The duo were in the city as part of the multi-city road tour to promote tourist places of interest to the discerning traveller. While Bandhavgarh, Kanha, Pench, Satpura wildlife spots are well known, MP has pilgrimage places like Ujjain, Omkeswara, Maheswar, Chitrakoot; heritage sites like Khajuraho, Gwalior, Sanchi plus hill station of Panchmarhi, and so on.
Considering that several tourists are hitting the road, the Tourism Board had begun to develop wayside amenities for every 40-50 kms and of the 320 sites, 170 started to function. “We have unveiled an investor-friendly tourism policy where subsidies disbursal is quicker and a host of facilities in wildlife, heritage, culture are open for public, private partnerships,” said Dr. Pandey.
In the last four years, MPTB has been promoting the ‘Jal Mahotsav’ and this year it is going to run for almost 80 days starting from October 15 to January 2 where a host of activities will be on offer for the tourists like para-gliding, boating, cultural programmes, sports, cruises, etc. “We do not have the sea but our huge Indirasagar reservoir built across Narmada river in Khandwa is home to such events,” they said.
