Next vacation, dine with a bandit!

Jaipur: Fancy the morning cuppa with a bandit on the banks of the Chambal River, or dinner with a dreaded dacoit in the jungle?

It's possible - and without any risk to your life!

Next time you come visiting India, you could well plan your itinerary in the vast, crumbling maze of eroded earth and rock - the monumental anthills in the Chambal River Valley are getting ready to host you.

The Tourism Department in Rajasthan, India's western desert state, is mulling a proposal to allow tourists to interact with former dacoits.

This is part of a plan to open the jungle and the ravines in the Chambal river valley to tourism. This move, the Government feels, would help improve the area and also offer tourists a new adventure.

The combinations of cliffs and mud banks, camel thorn and elephant grass, tangled roots and passageways, that suggested an immense beige, brown, and yellow patchwork quilt, has always been a troubling area for the police, forget the civilians.

It is full of the lore about the dacoits.

If the Government has its way, tourists would get a chance to listen to the lore from the dacoits themselves. The proposal has come up from the Dang Area Development Board (DADB), a government body which was formed to improve six districts in the Dang area.

DADB chairman Krishna Chandra Pal says: "We have sent a proposal to the Tourism Department to put the dacoit trail on the tourism circuit. This will be an added attraction to visitors to Rajasthan."

Dozens of dreaded dacoits, whose names once spelt terror in the Chambal valley that runs into the rough wild country of the northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have from time to time laid down their arms and are now leading a normal life. Pal feels offering packages to tourists interested in spending time with them would turn the area into a major attraction. DADB chief is optimistic the area's notoriety could now well become its USP.

The area, with its terrain, wildlife and culture, has a lot of tourism potential but it could not earlier be developed as a tourist attraction because of its dacoit connection.

Tour operators are already excited about this proposition.

"The Government will only need to make proper security arrangements for the visitors and the scheme will click," says Fateh Singh Rajawat, who runs a heritage hotel in Dang area.

Former dacoits like Roop Singh, Madho Singh, Bhanwar Singh and bandit queen Surjo are happy this would further bring them into mainstream.

Avtar Gujjar, the most dreaded man in his time, says he's fascinated by the idea. "If by meeting us the tourists can help improve the area, who are we to complain?" he asks.

So, the next time you want to enjoy the hospitality of highwaymen of old, whom villagers admired as daring buccaneers and movies portrayed as misunderstood rebels with a cause, you know where to head.