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MYSORE GUIDE

Mysore, the capital city of the Wodeyars has always enchanted its admirers with its quaint charm, rich heritage, magnificent palaces, beautifully laid-out gardens, imposing buildings, broad shady avenues and sacred temples. There's an old world charm about the city that reaches out and leaves no one untouched.

Forex inflow cheers up tourism sector

NEW DELHI: Tourism in India may well be out of the woods if latest data is anything to go by. While the number of foreign tourist arrivals is still less than April last year, significantly, foreign exchange earnings have gone up.

The number of foreign tourists who arrived in India — excluding NRIs — in April 2009 is 3.71 lakh as opposed to 3.84 lakh in April 2008, closing the gap substantially to 3.5%. Foreign exchange earnings, on the other hand, increased as compared to last year. FEEs were Rs 4,061 crore for April 2009, up from last year’s Rs 3,773 crore.

“The data is certainly encouraging. After a spell of negative growth, the fact that only 13,000 fewer visitors came to India in April this year as compared to last year could mean that tourist arrivals could show positive growth by October,” Leena Nandan, tourism joint secretary said.

The last quarter of 2008 spelt bad news for leisure travel and India suffered the combined impact of economic recession and Mumbai terror attacks. Growth rate dropped to 18% in January and the first three months of 2009 have been difficult for the industry.

The tourism ministry, along with the industry, has incentivised travel under the Visit India 2009 programme promoting discounts on travel, stay and sightseeing.

While growth of foreign tourist arrivals to India dropped from a high of 14% in 2007 to 5.6% in 2008, world tourism growth has come down from 6.6% in 2007 to 1.8 in 2008. According to UNWTO, world growth in 2009 is expected to be stagnant.

Industry experts say that leisure travel may be picking up slowly and India could well be on its way to recovery by year-end. India has benefited from the fact that it has so far remained unscathed by the Influenza A (H1N1) virus that has gripped Mexico and parts of Europe, US and south Asia.

Border politics

Political borders have a variety of meanings for those whom they affect. Many borders in the world have checkpoints where border control agents inspect those crossing the boundary.
In much of Europe, such controls were abolished by the Schengen Agreement and subsequent European Union legislation. Since the Treaty of Amsterdam, the competence to pass laws on crossing internal and external boders within the European Union and the associated Schengen States (Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein) lies exclusively within the jurisdiction of the European Union, except where states have used a specific right to opt-out (United Kingdom and Ireland, which maintain a common travel area amongst themselves). For details, see Schengen Area.
The United States has notably increased measures taken in border control on the Canada–United States border and the United States–Mexico border during its War on Terrorism (See Shantz 2010). One American writer has said that the 3600-km (2000-mile) US-Mexico border is probably "the world's longest boundary between a First World and Third World country."[1]
Historic borders such as the Great Wall of China, the Maginot Line, and Hadrian's Wall have played a great many roles and been marked in different ways. While the stone walls, the Great Wall of China and the Roman Hadrian's Wall in Britain had military functions, the entirety of the Roman borders were very porous, a policy which encouraged Roman economic activity with its neighbors[2]. On the other hand, a border like the Maginot Line was entirely military and was meant to prevent any access in what was to be World War II to France by its neighbor, Germany. Germany ended up going around the Maginot Line through Belgium just as it had done in World War I.

Natural borders

Natural borders are geographical features that present natural obstacles to communication and transport. Existing political borders are often a formalization of these historical, natural obstacles.
Some geographical features that often constitute natural borders are:
Oceans: oceans create very costly natural borders. Very few nation states span more than one continent. Only very large and resource-rich states are able to sustain the costs of governance across oceans for longer periods of time.
Rivers: some political borders have been formalized along natural borders formed by rivers. Some examples are; the Rio Grande border (Mexico-USA), the Rhine border (France-Germany), and the Mekong border (Thailand-Laos)
Lakes: larger lakes create natural borders. One example is the natural border created by Lake Tanganyika (Congo-Burundi-Tanzania-Zambia)
Forests: denser jungles or forests can create strong natural borders. One example of a natural forest border is the Amazon rain forest (Colombia-Venezuela-Guyana-Brazil-Bolivia-Peru)
Mountain ranges: research on borders suggests that mountains have especially strong effects as natural borders. Many nations in Europe and Asia have had their political borders defined along mountain ranges.
Throughout history, technological advances have reduced the costs of transport and communication across these natural borders. This has reduced the significance of natural borders over time. As a result, political borders that have been formalized more recently — such as those in Africa or Americas — typically conform less to natural borders than very old borders — such as those in Europe or Asia — do. States whose borders conform to natural borders are, for similar reasons, more likely to be strong nation-states.