Snow lies knee-deep in the pastoral town of Gulmarg, or “meadow of flowers,” on Indian-controlled Kashmir’s high plateau.
With its blanket of white, the idyllic hill station is seeing tourists again fill its hotels, and ski, sledge and hike its Himalayan landscape.
The heavy influx of tourists is a dramatic change for the tourism industry in disputed Kashmir, which faced the double whammy of the COVID-19 pandemic and harsh curbs on civil rights that India imposed on the region in August 2019.
Photo: AP
Gulmarg was developed as a resort by the British nearly a century ago. In summer, tourists meander through meadows, ravines and valleys of evergreen forests. In winter, they snowboard and hike on Asia’s largest ski terrain.
The 2019 end of Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status and an unprecedented security clampdown morphed Gulmarg into a ghost town.
The Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industries pegged the economic losses in the region at US$5.3 billion and about half-a-million jobs lost for the year ending in August last year.
Authorities in March last year enforced a harsh lockdown to combat COVID-19, nearly halting foreign travel, but it made Indians reconsider their own vacations.
Once snow coated the hill station last month, they decided to travel to Gulmarg and for the first time in 15 months, hotels are sold out until the end of next month.
“Nobody is worried about the virus. Everybody is feeling free,” said Meenu Nanda, 38, an Indian tourist.
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