The central government has revealed its plans to launch the world’s longest luxury river cruise. The river cruise will aim to boost inland water tourism in India. The 50-day-long cruise will take travellers from the heart of Uttar Pradesh to the remote corners of Assam, while also traversing through Bangladesh. The cruise will set sail from Varanasi on January 10 and will traverse a total distance of 4,000 km. The Ganga Vilas cruise will pass through prominent cities like Kolkata and Dhaka before reaching Bogibeel in Dibrugarh district of Assam on March 1. The new cruise will be covering 27 different river systems with visits to over 50 tourist sites, including some World Heritage sites.

“This will be the single largest river journey by a single river ship in the world and would put both India and Bangladesh on the river cruise map of the world,” Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, Sarbananda Sonowal told the Mint in an interview.

The minister added that the development of coastal and river shipping, including cruise services, is one of the top priorities of the government. Such services can tap into India’s enormous potential as a waterway tourism hub. Sonowal also said that the development of inland waterways can also benefit India’s logistics systems with the facilitation of trade and cargo movement.

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The Ganga Vilas cruise will be the first-of-its-kind cruise service as it will be running on a public-private partnership (PPP) model. The cruise will be operated by private players Antara Luxury River Cruises and JM Baxi River Cruises along with the governmental partnership from the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI).

The operators of the cruise will set the ticket price based on a cost-plus basis with no intervention from the central government. It is worth mentioning that river cruises are already being operated on National Waterway 1 (NW-1) (Ganga-Bhagirathi-Hoogly), NW-2 (Brahmaputra) and NW-3 (West Coast Canal).

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