It is indeed very heartening news that Guwahati would soon have a visa facilitation centre, a development which marks a significant step forward in improving access to international travel services for the Northeastern region. Assam Chief Minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma, at whose initiative VFS Global – an organisation which manages visa application processes for several governments across the world – has agreed in principle to open a visa facilitation centre in Guwahati. For decades, people from the region have been compelled to travel to Kolkata or New Delhi and other metro cities to submit biometric data for obtaining a visa, which, besides being a time-consuming process, also leads to a lot of extra expenditure which people of the other regions of the country do not have to undergo. Once the Guwahati centre starts operating, it will not only streamline the visa application process but also provide a big boost to encourage educational, professional and tourism-related travel from the Northeast to the outside world. As stated by Chief Minister Dr Sarma, the upcoming centre will serve as a facilitation centre for more than 60 countries. At the moment, a visa is available in Guwahati only for travel to Bangladesh. In fact, the Bangladesh government has visa facilitation or assistance centres at Agartala, Bongaigaon and Silchar too. Every passing year, more and more people from the Northeast are travelling to various countries for higher studies, training, excursions, and conferences, as well as simply for tourism. The upcoming visa facilitation centre will thus come as a major relief for residents of Assam and other states of the Northeastern region. There are, however, no official or unofficial statistics for knowing the exact number of people from the Northeastern region travelling to foreign countries. An informal survey, however, will definitely reveal that the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, China, and different European countries like Germany, Italy and France are some of the most popular destinations for people of the region. While the majority of people from the Northeast travel abroad for academic purposes, a sizable number also travel abroad as tourists and pilgrims.