The Ganga Vilas Cruise, the world’s longest luxury river cruise covering 4,000 kilometers, will set sail in January of next year, according to Union Minister of Ports, Shipping, and Waterways Sarbananda Sonowal.
The opening ceremony river voyage will begin on January 10, 2023, in the holy city of Varanasi in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and will end on March 1 in Dibrugarh, Assam, a northeastern state.
The minister stated that the cruise ship will also pass through Bangladesh, covering 1,100 kilometers en route to Assam, bringing the two countries closer together.
“The world’s longest river cruise will set sail in January of next year. Ganga Vilas will sail from sacred Varanasi to Dibrugarh via Bangladesh, covering 4,000 kilometers on India’s two greatest rivers, the Ganga and the Brahmaputra. Watch, “Sonowal tweeted.
The 50-day cruise ship trip will be the first of its kind, utilizing a public-private partnership (PPP) model. According to reports, Antara Luxury River Cruises and JM Baxi River Cruises will collaborate on the project with the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI), a government body.
The cost of boarding the cruise ship has not yet been announced, but according to reports, the central government will not intervene in the price-setting process. The price will be determined by the operators on a cost-plus basis.
The cruise trip’s highlights will include witnessing the hypnotic ‘Ganga Aarti,’ traversing the Sundarban (the world’s largest mangrove forest), and visiting Mayong, India’s cradle of ‘black magic.’
The ship will transit three major waterways: the Ganga-Bhagirathi-Hooghly river system, the Indo-Bangla Protocol Route (Kolkata-Dhubri), and National Waterway 2 across the Brahmaputra.
Sonowal added that “the development of inland waterway systems would expedite trade and cargo services and attract tourists along its route” in addition to promoting river passenger traffic.
