New flight to link Kolkata with Cambodia temple town Siem Reap
Times of India | 28 January 2025
123 Kolkata: IndiGo is set to announce a flight from Kolkata to the Cambodian temple town of Siem Reap. The proposed flight will link Kolkata with Cambodia's second-largest city, which is famous for Angkor Wat, the world's largest religious structure spread across 402 acres.
Sources in the airline said the flight to Siem Reap would start sometime in Feb or March. The flight time is expected to be two-and-a-half hours. It isn't clear if the flight will be a daily service or three times a week. The decision was made to introduce a flight to Siem Reap instead of the capital city Phnom Penh due to the religious and cultural connection with the city and its temples.
This will be IndiGo's seventh international destination from Kolkata. It currently has twice-daily flights to Bangkok and Dhaka, daily flights to Singapore, Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh, and six-days-a-week flights to Phuket.
Apart from Angkor Wat, a temple dedicated to the Hindu deity Vishnu that was later converted into a Buddhist shrine, Siem Reap has Angkor Thom, a 9 sq km area with 10 temples and monuments, including the Bayon and Baphuon Temple; Banteay Srei, which is dedicated to Shiva and Parvati; and Ta Prohm temple, which was used as the backdrop for the filming of the Lara Croft movie ‘Tomb Raider'. The Archaeological Survey of India has played a key role in the conservation of the temples in Siem Reap.
"We are very excited about the connectivity to Siem Reap that will open up a tourist destination for Kolkatans," said Travel Agents' Association of India managing committee member and TAAI Tourism Council chairman Manav Soni.