It’s house(boat)full till Aug in Kashmir,govt eyes 1.5 mn arrivals

“It is the first time that even low-grade houseboats in the Jhelum are filled to capacity,” says Abdul Rashid,a houseboat owner. “In some cases,more than three to four people are sharing a room.”

While the Valley tourism season starts from April 15 and lasts generally till end of June,this year the hotels and houseboats are fully booked till August.

As dusk falls,there is a buzz of tourists on the Boulevard road along the banks of the Dal Lake. The Gujarati and Punjabi dhabas overflow with them as in the land of Wazwan,the aroma of masala dosa,pao baji and Gujarati thali fills the air. A few of them have little time to sit down and eat as they frantically move from one hotel to another looking for accommodation.

The two consecutive peaceful summers in the Valley have helped,as has the heat in the plains and the unexpectedly cool weather that has stretched here this time to June.

It was also a smart move on the part of the J&K government to de-link tourism with normalcy in the Valley. As part of this,the state government and its tourism department don’t reveal the tourist figures officially,to avoid attracting unnecessary attention.

While the Valley has been seeing brisk arrivals in the first two months of the tourism season for the past seven years now,militant attacks,protests,shutdowns and curfews have played spoilsport. That changed in 2011,consequently taking the total tourist numbers for the first time past the one million mark. More than 13.5 lakh tourists are estimated to have visited the Valley in 2011 — almost double of the highest ever tourist figure of 7.22 lakh recorded before the inception of militancy in 1988. This year the government has set its eye on 1.5 million tourists.

“ The weather here is awesome. Kashmir really is a paradise,” says Rajiv Malhotra from New Delhi,who is here with his wife,son and a daughter. “I have been promising my children a tour of Kashmir for the past five years. I had myself come to Kashmir 35 years ago,when I was barely nine.”

The one problem remains lack of accommodation as more than 37 hotels in Srinagar are occupied by security forces or have been taken over by the government for its employees. “The time has come that the government gets these hotels vacated,” says Fayaz Ahmad Bakshi,president of the Kashmir Hotel and Restaurant Owners Federation.

The federation has been running a helpline to enable tourists to find accommodation in Srinagar.

The only spoilsport could be the Valley’s unpredictable political situation. And those in the trade are apprehensive of this,particularly when they expect the next wave of arrivals from West Bengal during the Puja holidays in September-October.

“ Let’s see how long this (calm) lasts,” says Ilyas Hussain,who sells handicrafts to tourists on the Boulevard road. “In the past also,we had witnessed a tremendous rush of tourists in the initial months,but then the situation suddenly changed. We hope that will not happen this year.”