Transport Connectivity in Rajasthan
Recognized as one of the renowned tourist destination, Rajasthan has now emerged as one of the rapidly developing state of India forwarding its steps to put in shoe of metro cities like Mumbai, Kolkatta or Bangalore. Attachment of Delhi as its neighbor state has benefited more to Rajasthan in its infrastructural development. Being close to national Capital Delhi, Rajasthan is well connected by all three means of transport i.e., air, road and railways. Thus, connectivity by all modes is quite satisfactory and impressive in Rajasthan.
Air: With an objective of attracting more foreign tourists to Rajasthan. The Government of Rajasthan is continuously endeavoring to improve its connectivity with Airways. At present state has number of air strips and helipads spread in different parts of the state and continuous efforts are made to improve the facilities at these airports. The three major airports in Rajasthan are located at Jaipur, Jodhpur and Udaipur. The Jaipur airport is operating both national and international flights. Moreover, being close to Delhi, the flights are diverted to Jaipur from Delhi in case of air traffic. The first international flight from Jaipur was to Dubai, which took off on February 7, 2002 and since February 12, the daily service started between both the cities. This made Jaipur the 15th city in India to be connected by the gulf.
Along with Indian Airlines, private airlines like jet airways, air sahara, kingfisher, spicejet also operate their flights to major cities from Jaipur airport. Soon Kota and Jaisalmer districts will also be connected with airways.
Roadways: The major road transport service provider in Rajasthan is Rajasthan State Road Transport Development Corporation (RSRTDC) operating since October 1, 1964. Owing the huge number of buses in its fleet, RSRTDC has its connectivity to all the adjoining States of Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. The corporation also provides regular air conditioned and super deluxe bus service to Delhi. With good road conditions maintained by the road development authority one can visit the inner portion of cities also by local buses.
Rajasthan has the network of 1, 50,876 kilometers of roadways connecting the different places. The national highways has the network of 5585 kilometers. The most used and famous highway is NH-8 that interconnects the cities of Jaipur, Ajmer, Chittorgarh and Udaipur. The total length of highway in the state is 688 kilotmeters.
The road transport is mostly useful for the visitors who are interested to explore their knowledge about the history of Rajasthan.
Railways: Rajasthan has a wide network of railways connecting with all the major cities like New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. With this, the state has all its cities interconnected with each other by means of railways.
With an objective of providing the taste of royal glimpses of Rajasthan to the foreign tourists a special train “Palace on Wheels” is run from Delhi covering all the historic places of Rajasthan from the forts to sand dunes in desert.
The other major train which provides the heritage experience of Rajasthan is “Heritage on Wheels” which is run by the joint venture of Tourism corporation of Gujarat and Indian railways.