Tour programmes

July 18, 2007

Dear all:

Kindly see Sri Rajagopalan Narayanana's mail on the subject.

I agree with Sri Rajagoplan Narayanan that one cannot expect luxurious travel, boarding and lodging while on pilgrimage tours.

If with all modern facilities, choppers, flights etc. we find it so difficult, imagine what amount of travails the great Azhwars (especially Kaliyan) would have gone through the narrow paths (Otrai aDip paadai) bristling with stones and thorns in biting cold and sweltering heat when they traversed the whole of India to visit the 106 Divyadesams. The only food they could get was Prasadam in the temples, no eateries, no hotels, no cafeterias!

Most of the tour operators are running tours not solely for helping pilgrims but with unalloyed and unabashed profit motive. It is not correct to say that "the profit margin is low". They try to make the best out of this as a business proposition. We have to be wary about spurious organizers who rip off. We are constantly receiving reports on how tourists have been beguiled into shelling out money with no commensurate returns.

We should choose only those who have proved to be genuine.

That is why; in "Sri Ranga Sri" we do not encourage Tour programme advertisements, unless members with experience attest to the genuine nature of their transactions with them.

Dasoham

Anbil Ramaswamy