Why so many Indians at Niagara Falls?

Interesting theory, hadjiboy. I was told by a devout Hindu in India that Ayers Rock (Uluru) in the centre of Australia is actually just a large Shivalingam, evidence of a past age where Shiva was worshipped all over the world, so perhaps the Niagara Falls and the Whatever River have their place in the sacred river system of some Indians?

And if your comment was in regards to this: and just as a control, there was nowhere else on my tour of the States where Indians were a noticeable minority group Then I guess I'd go with the other commenters who have mentioned the GTA's large South Asian population. Try Brampton or Gerrard St. http://www3.thestar.com/static/PDF/20071230_ID06.pdf. Note the large concentration of Punjabi speakers in Brampton, which is only an hour from the Falls. Plus the smaller concentrations of Urdu and Tamil. Once you go to the Falls, you may as well go over the border. The view is nice and in the old days you used to buy stuff cheaper. Now you just go for the view.

Please see my first comment in the thread. And there were (almost) no Sikhs, GuyZero. I'm not sure I see how your first comment indicates that this isn't observation bias, but sure, OK. And if there were not that many Sikhs, OK. To be less politically correct, what you saw were brown people. I assume you didn't actually ask whether they were Indian or Pakistani or from Banglore (or Brampton) or where ever. And again, how do you know that there weren't even more people there from France? It still may be observation bias in that brown people are visually identifiable whereas you would be unlikely to notice several busloads of Dutch tourists unless there were all wearing orange football jerseys or you heard them speaking Dutch. The people at Niagara Falls are nearly all international tourists compared to any other nearby place. I really cannot think of another North American place that has such a huge international draw. What you observed was that 10% (or 90%) of these people have a visibly different skin colour. But I'm pretty sure that the rest of the people there were not all locals. They probably came from far away too. A desire to see Niagara Falls is not unique to Indian people. People in Australia asked me about it. It is the singlemost iconic geographic feature of the entire continent. (There may be some debate here, but it's up there). Chinese and Japanese people are bussed there by the thousands every year. Ever foreign sales person I have ever worked with has gone there when on one of their first business trips to head office in Toronto. Indians go there in large numbers by virtue of being a subset of the part of the Earth's population that doesn't live in North America. The desire to see it was so strong that they thought nothing of the 7 hour drive to get to the falls from here. After a 20+ hour plane flight, of course. If you were on your first visit to India purely for sightseeing reasons, would you take a 7+ hour drive to see the Taj Mahal? Of course you would - that's what you came there to do: see the sights. besides, have you ever had to have a long visit with overseas relatives? God, ANYTHING to get out of the house. Even that stupid butterfly conservatory.

Its a "must visit" spot for tourists period. I mean, how do you know 10-15% of the visitors weren't from France or Poland? You wouldn't I suppose. JohnnyGunn has the best answer. I don't want to call this question stupid, but...

GuyZero, that's an awesome map. I can't say I'm surprised that I'm sitting in one of the areas shown as having Cantonese as the largest mother tongue.

I lived in Niagara Falls for 18 of my 21 years, and there were almost no Indian people at my school of 1500. I'd say they're tourists, not locals.

OK, so it seems to be mostly #2, with a bit of #3 as well... but sadly for me, a more generalized #3, in that foreigners generally want / expect to see Niagara Falls. I was really hoping that it would be something much more interesting, but such is life.

Hey Meatbomb! Good question. I’d be pretty interested to know the answer to this one too. Let’s see, if I were coming to the States, my most likely port of entry would be NY (right?), and if that were the case, then I’d probably want to see the Statue of Liberty first, after which, the closest and most sought after place would obviously be the Niagara Falls. But, speaking of Indians specifically, I’m just curious how much credence your third possibility might hold; India is after all the http://www.kamat.com/indica/rivers/ (the Ganges, the Yamuna, the Brhamaputra are all considered very sacred to the Indian people), so that might be a reason why it draws in such a large number of tourists from this part of the world. (just my two cents)

I work in Brampton (at most a two hour drive away), and yep, HUGE southeast Asian population (last estimate I got from City of Brampton six months ago was 60% but even that seems low to me) and pretty much all of them have been to Niagara Falls several times (I've been there at least a thousand times myself). Southeast Asians have been in Canada for over 100 years but their population has exploded over the past ten years or so because Canada wants well-educated english-speaking immigrants and so many Southeast Asians tend to fit the bill perfectly. All my friends of Southeast decent, regardless of whether they are born in Canada or abroad, wear Sari's etc because there is not much of a stigma against it here. Heck, ~I~ wear Saris to work and out and about and I'm white. Actually I wore a Sari last summer when I was at Niagara Falls, are you sure you didn't see me? It was a beautiful pink/purple one. As to the big family groups, well, that is a big part of the culture. An interesting development in Brampton is that because families like to live together (mother and father with maybe two or so grown-up sons and their wives and their children and maybe grandma too if she is still around) all in houses that were originally meant for a single nuclear family. Which as you know tend to be too big for four people anyways. So that most of the new housing developments are throwing up huge five/six bedroom houses with entire apartments in the basements so families can live together but still have a bit of space on their own. Talking to children they often tell me they have eight or so cousins/brothers/sisters all living in the same house. So of course they travel together and go see Niagara Falls. Just out of curiosity were you in Canada or the US? I am surprised you did not see many Sikhs, (well, ones that dress traditionally) because there are certainly lots of them around too.