Highlights
- India is the eighth most popular overseas destination for Australian travellers.
- Australians took more than 11.3 million trips overseas in 2019. The average duration away for Australians was 14 days.
- Of the top 10 destination countries, those travelling to the UK stayed away the longest (24 days on average), followed by those travelling to India (23 days).
But how can one let go off the opportunity to visit the iconic Wonder of the World, the Taj Mahal, when you are so close to it.
“I went for work but reached a few days early so that I could visit Agra. I went and saw the Taj Mahal, the Agra Fort and visited the local cottage industries and a market in the town,” Mr Riddell tells SBS Hindi.
But it was the quintessential Indian hospital that impressed him the most.
“How do I describe it? Let’s call it the organised chaos. But the way I was welcomed by everybody there, right from the doorman at the hotel I was staying to the President of the University, whom I was working with, I felt really welcomed,” he says.
“It felt like people were happy to have me there,” he adds.
It was his consultancy work that took Mr Riddell to India but he says he would love to go again.
“I would love to visit again. Almost everyone I spoke to, recommended I visit Mumbai. And I would also like to go a bit further South – Goa and Kerala,” he says.
Mr Riddell is among hundreds of thousands of Australian travellers who visited India in 2019, making it one of the top tourist destination for Australian travellers.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, India features among the top ten most popular destinations for Australian travellers along with New Zealand, Indonesia, Thailand and Fiji among others.
ABS Director of Migration Statistics, Jenny Dobak, said that the record annual 11.3 million trips Australians made overseas in 2019 was almost double that of 10 years ago.
“There has been a strong increase of Australian residents travelling overseas over recent years,” she said.
New Zealand topped the list with nearly 1.5 million Australians travelling to the country and Indonesia came in a close second with 1.4 million travellers.
More than 426,000 Australians travelled to India in 2019, up by more than 8% compared to 2018.
Holiday was the main reason for travel for 57 per cent of Aussies returning home from a short-term trip overseas. Visiting friends and relatives was next at 26 per cent.
While those travelling for work stayed away the longest (24 days), the shortest trip overseas was registered by business travellers (7 days).
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