Top Travel Leads

Druk Air recently updated airfare rates for their High Season Flight Schedule, in effect for March, April, May, September, October & November. The Bhutanese national carrier retains monopoly on flights to Bhutan and offers discounts for individual travelers as well as group bookings in the off season, the so called Low Season, currently in effect from 15th May - 31st August, 2009.

Bangkok continues to be the most frequented point of access to Paro for North American travelers with flights daily. New Delhi to Paro flights operate generally three-time per week and are favored by European tourists. With the Delhi - Paro customary brief flight stopover in Kathmandu, the sector Kathmandu to Paro offers the best views of the principal chain of the high Himalayas, with Mount Everest massif, Makalu and Kanchenjunga as the highlights if you happen to sit on the left-side of the plane.

Tourist arrivals with pre-booked tours in Bhutan can also access Bhutan on Druk Air flights by boarding in Kolkata and Dhaka. Relatively still new are access flights from Gaya near Patna, India, which Druk Airways created most of all to serve the need of Buddhist pilgrims visiting sites auspicious to Buddhism, including Sarnath, with Gaya being the place where Buddha preached his first sermon and Bodh Gaya, only some 16 km from Gaya, where Buddha attained enlightenment. Boarding flights in Gaya thus constitutes another opportunity for tourists to combine trips to Bhutan with travel to India and visit of greater Ganges region and the ancient cultures and temples of Varanasi, Khajuraho and Gwalior.

Most recent addition to Druk air sectors has been the establishment of flights from/to Bagdogra in West Bengal. These flights offer the Bhutan visiting tourist an option to add a tour extension to visit Darjeeling and Sikkim, and with ample time available to combine their Bhutan journey with a trip to Kathmandu and Nepal.

Click here for the current Druk airfares and Bhutan Travel information.

As of the present there is only one international flight per week (on Wednesdays) between Bangkok and Guwahati in northeast India. The flight can be used by those that book tours in Bhutan that originate from Paro, the capital of Bhutan, traverse the entire country to Eastern Bhutan, to Mongar and Trashigang on its only road, and rather than backtracking to Paro again, the tourists can continue to exit Bhutan via Samdrup Jongkhar in southeastern corner of Bhutan to Guwahati in Assam province of India. Guwahati offers also a convenient flight access to Kolkata and Delhi, as well as serves as a starting point for adding a cruise tour extension on the Brahmaputra River or visiting the Kaziranga National Park and elsewhere in Assam - Meghalaya region. The Indian government now considers introduction of new direct international flights from Guwahati to not only Thailand but also to Myanmar, Bangladesh, China and Malaysia. These connections would further improve the travel logistics in the India subcontinent, to and from China and southeast Asia.

Second significant addition to travel access to India has been recent introduction of new daily flights by Air India from Chicago via Frankfurt to New Delhi and onwards to Hyderbad or elsewhere in South Asia.

With the skies opening up, airports in India are literally bursting at the seams. Endless queues, inadequate baggage handling, lounge and toilet facilities have come up for criticism time and again.

The good news is that domestic and international terminals at Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore have gone in for major expansion and modernisation which means more immigration counters and baggage reclaim, more runways, world class lounge and duty free, better shuttle service, passenger services, more parking, Medicare etc. In fact the Hyderabad airport is slated to be among the best airports in the world.

Mumbai will get a second international airport by 2012. Hyderabad and Bangalore airports opened recently while the airports in the capital are in various stages of construction and refurbishment. At the Indira Gandhi International airport in Delhi, work is on at a frenetic pace. It is also planned to take the metro up to the airport. Inconvenience and confusion that you experience just now will soon be a thing of the past!

Airline Update:
• Air Deccan launches flights between Bangalore and Indore, Bangalore and Trichy and also from Kolkatta to Jorhat via Guwahati.
• Jet Airways complete 15 years in May 2008. One of India’s leading domestic private airlines Jet Airways begins operations in the Bhopal-Raipur, Raipur – Hyderabad and Indore- Hyderabad sectors.
• Kingfisher Airlines begins services from Chennai to Trichy and Coimbatore. Also launches flights on the Delhi-Chandigarh-Mumbai sector.
• Air Mauritius launches weekly flights to Bangalore.
• Jet Airways deploys its new Airbus 330-200 on its daily connection from Mumbai to Hong Kong. More international connections from Jet Airways include Delhi to Abu Dhabi and the much-awaited Mumbai to San Francisco via Shanghai.
• Look out for Kingfisher’s International Operations to commence in August 2008