Can any one tell me how to get a visitors permit for AGATTI island Lakshadweep on line i have tried but get no reply it seems you can only get it in person from Kochi on main land India but that means you cant book a flight in advance and i dont want a local cruise just fly in stay a couple of nights then fly out i have a Indian visa but you need a permit its almost as if they dont want you to go ! I am English Thank
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The place to contact online is ''SPORTS LAKSHADWEEP.'' In other words ''Society of promotion of Nature Tourism. No, the words to initials don't match yet that's that. They'll get you the permit, arrange cruises to the islands, or anything regarding land packages to Lakshadweep is all within this company. You'll need a physical ''Indian Tourist Visa'' placed in your passport in order to validate a permit. It's best to get that before leaving home. Other then that, how are things with you Anthony????
I call the Laccadives “The Strangled Paradise.” I was there in February 2016.
The Laccadive Islands – laquedives, glossy or laquer islands for the calm turquoise sheen of the water – were renamed “Lakshadweep,” a made-up term meaning “100,000 islands” in Sanskrit – albeit that there are only 37 islands and islets, only 10 being inhabited. This in keeping with the silly India practice of changing historical names into phony names (Bombay to Mumbai, Calcutta to Kolkata, et al).
There’s only one airport, on Agatti, and flights only from Kochi on the mainland. Tourists are not allowed to stay there, however, even though the Agatti beaches are gorgeous. You’re only allowed to visit Bangaram, Kadmat, and Amini. All the other islands are closed. Most any travel agency in Kochi can get you a permit.
The Laccadives are a “Union Territory,” meaning it’s owned and operated directly by the national bureaucracy in New Delhi. Nine years ago, the Delhi bureaucrats who control the islands got a puritanical hair up their nose and declared them “dry” – no alcohol of any kind, even beer, is allowed.
The Indian hotel resort company CGH Earth had built a beautiful facility on Bangaram’s idyllic beach to which tourists were flocking – until the booze ban. Now it’s weed-strewn, padlocked and abandoned. Today, instead of a luxury air-conditioned cabin, you stay in a tent so stifling it’s like living and sleeping in a mosquito-infested sauna. You don’t want to know how disgusting the toilet is. There are well-appointed air-con bungalows – for the exclusive use of visiting government officials from Delhi.
The beauty here in the Laccadives can be so astonishing that it seems surreal – like when the ocean and sky merge into one like a Matisse impressionist painting.
It takes your breath away. It takes your breath away what a paradise this could be, what all India could be, without government strangling it.
Jack Wheeler - Diamond (300)