Indians top tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka, the country’s tourism authority says. (See Xinhua’s report here)
68,830 Indians visited Sri Lanka between January and May this year – up 54% from the same period last year.
British tourists came second, with 41,474 arrivals – up 7% from the same period last year. A large number of these are Tamil and Sinhala expatriates with UK citizenship.
The number of Pakistani tourists in Jan-May 2011 doubled from last year – to 6,027.
Last year Sri Lanka reported a total of 600,000 foreign tourists, with Indians and Britons leading.
By way of comparison, in 2010 over 2.8 million tourists visited Tamil Nadu, the highest amongst the Indian states. (See The Hindu’s report here)