In a surprising piece of information as per the data from the government, the Mamallapuram group of temples, a UNESCO site in Tamil Nadu's Mahabalipuram were more popular amongst the foreign visitors than even Taj Mahal at Agra.

Archaeological Survey of India’s report titled 'India Tourism Statistics 2022', which was released on World Tourism Day by Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar, revealed important info about India’s tourism industry. Among the statistics, was the list of the most visited monuments by foreign nationals in the country.

According to the report, the group of monuments in the coastal town of Mamallapuram had 1.45 lakh foreign visitors in the previous fiscal, accounting for 46 per cent of the total foreign visitors to the top 10 most popular centrally protected ticketed monuments.

Meanwhile Taj Mahal, the white-marble monument saw only 38,922 foreign visitors accounting for 12.21 per cent of total foreign tourist visitors.

The reason why Mamallapuram monuments had more foreign visitors than Taj Mahal was due to the changes in travel pattern and lack of access to the monuments due to Coronavirus pandemic that affected the foreign arrivals to India especially to northern parts. Mostly, tourists from Europe and USA visit Taj Mahal but during the Coronavirus pandemic the tourist flow did not resume till much later in 2021-22.

Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu had the highest numbers of foreign tourist visits with 1.26 million and 1.23 million, respectively. However, the report stated that the number of foreign tourist arrivals during 2021 de-grew by 45 per cent to 1.52 million from 2.74 million in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

On the other hand, domestic tourist visits grew more than 11 per cent to 677.63 million in 2021 against 610.22 million in 2020. The two states with the most domestic tourists visiting are Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, with 140.65 million and 86.12 million, respectively.