Whirlwind visits: How President Kovind takes a leaf out of Modi's book

ram-nath-kovind-president President Ram Nath Kovind | PTI

Prime Minister Narendra Modi may be India's best known frequent flier, but President Ram Nath Kovind too is a great traveller. In his first year as president, besides visiting 10 countries, he covered 27 out of 29 Indian states.

Admittedly, his overseas visits were to smaller nations, but he scored by being the first Indian president to ever visit Djibouti, Madagascar, Equatorial Guinea, Swaziland, Suriname and Cuba. He was also the first Indian president to visit Ethiopia since 1972, Zambia since 1989 and Greece since 2007.

Kovind made a record 53 domestic visits in 52 weeks, starting with his first out of Delhi tour to Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. November 2017 was a hectic month—he visited 12 states in that month alone. He has also visited six of the eight Northeastern states, only Mizorama and Sikkim are yet to have a visit from him.

He visited Uttar Pradesh the most number of times (nine), followed by Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh (five) and Gujarat (four). These are some of the interesting figures that Rashtrapati Bhavan has compiled.