Andhra Pradesh attracts the maximum number of domestic tourists while national capital Delhi gets the most foreign travellers, say official figures.

In 2006, while 111.7 million Indian travellers visited Andhra Pradesh, famed for its temples - especially the Tirumala Tirupati shrine, 1.9 million foreign tourists came to Delhi.

These findings were put out by the Ministry of Tourism's annual publication India Tourism Statistics and were based on statistics collected from hotels and other accommodation.

Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Rajasthan were the top five destinations for domestic tourists in India in 2006. For foreigners, they were Delhi, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan, the report said.

"The five states accounted for about 73 percent of the total domestic tourist visits in the country," the report said.

"In respect of foreign tourist visits in 2006, the top five states are Delhi, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan, with the total share of these states being 64.31 percent," the report said.

In 2006, Uttar Pradesh attracted 105.5 million domestic tourists, Tamil Nadu 58.3 million, Karnataka 36.1 million and Rajasthan 23.4 million.

In the same year, the number of foreigners visiting Maharashtra was 1.7 million, Uttar Pradesh 1.33 million, Tamil Nadu 1.32 million and Rajasthan 1.2 million.

The report said the year 2006 witnessed a growth of 17.8 percent in domestic tourist visits over the previous year, which was considerably higher than the growth of seven percent in the year 2005 over 2004.

During 2006, the visits by foreign tourists showed an increase of 18.1 percent over 2005 as compared to an increase of 19 percent in 2005 over 2004, it said.

The report showed that very few tourists - both domestic and foreign - visit the northeast states.

In 2006, 80,137 domestic tourists visited Arunachal Pradesh, while only 607 foreigners could travel to this state. Similarly, Manipur attracted 116,984 domestic tourists as compared to 295 foreign ones, while Meghalaya had 401,529 domestic tourists and 4,287 international travellers.

Mizoram got 50,987 domestic travellers and 436 foreigners, while 15,850 domestic tourists and 426 foreigners visited in Nagaland. Sikkim got about 292,486 domestic visitors and 18,026 foreigners in 2006.

Assam was the only state that attracted both domestic and international tourists in 2006 in sizeable numbers. While 2.7 million domestic tourists went to the state, about 10,374 foreigners visited it, the report said.