Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar:
The state’s luxury train, Deccan Odyssey, arrived in the city with four foreign tourists, today at 8.30 am. These guests, after deboarding the train at the local railway station, visited the world heritage Ellora Caves.
Meanwhile, the poor strength of tourists on board has raised eyebrows on the functioning of the custodian and the marketing strategy.
As reported earlier, after a gap of three years, the train for the first time reached the local station with 20 foreign tourists on October 6. The train of 16 coaches has capacity to accommodate 90 guests. Today, the foreign tourists boarding the train included two each from the United Kingdom and New Zealand. The guide Sandeep Gaikwad explained the caves to them. The Aurangabad Tourism Development Foundation (ATDF) president Jaswant Singh was also present on the occasion.
As per the itinerary the foreign tourists will be visiting world heritage Ajanta Caves on Tuesday. Hence the train left the local station with them in the evening.
We fulfilled our commitment
The Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC, Mumbai) General Manager, Chandrashekar Jaiswal said, “One group which was to board the Deccan Odyssey has cancelled their tour at the eleventh hour. However, to fulfill our commitment to tourism development, we preferred operating the train with four tourists.”