India’s state of Odisha is looking to Thailand and Malaysia for to boost its Buddhist tourism, with 70,000 people visiting the state last year.

Odisha has many significant sites for Buddhists like the big Buddhist temple Ratnagiri.

The Odisha Tourism Board is going to organise roadshows to take advantage or burgeoning tourism to the Indian subcontinent and allocate more money to developing social infrastructure, such as hotels and roads.

"Our tourism budget was Rs700 million (US$11.5 million), which we have increased to Rs3.6 billion (US$59.2 million) for the financial year 2014-2015,” Government of Odisha’s Director of Tourism, Mr Patnaik said.

The Tourism Board has set itself a target of 100,000 international arrivals per year and focusing mainly on South East Asia to provide this number.