Asia’s largest Tulip garden in Srinagar, which will be closed from Friday, broke all arrival records this year with 3.65 lakh tourists visiting the garden since its opening on March 19.
Officials said over 3.65 lakh tourists, including domestic as well as locals, visited the garden in over one month. Last year, the garden had recorded the then high of 3.6 lakh arrivals.
“The visitors this year included over three lakh domestic and more than 3,000 foreigners tourists while the rest were locals,” deputy director floriculture Shayiq Rasool said and added that despite Ramazan and poor weather, the arrivals were the highest.
He said the domestic tourist number had almost doubled to three lakh from last year’s highest of 1.6 lakh while only 159 foreigners had visited the garden in 2022 and this year the number rose to 3,154.
The garden played an important part in wooing tourists during the 2022 spring, particularly after the Covid disruptions in 2020 and 2021.
Situated at an altitude of 5,600 feet and ensconced between the famous Dal Lake and Zabarwan Hills, the garden this year with 1.6 million tulip bulbs of different hues and 68 varieties enthralled the tourists.
Besides, the visitors also enjoyed water features like a high-rise fountain on the top of the terraced garden and waterfalls this season.
Pertinently, earlier this month Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a tweet said that Jammu and Kashmir is beautiful, and even more so during the Tulip season.
The Tulip garden was opened in 2007 with the aim of boosting floriculture and tourism in Kashmir. It is built on sloping ground in a terraced fashion, consisting of seven terraces.
While Tulips are normally associated with the Turks and Dutch, Kashmir is fast catching up with this craze to somehow squeeze itself into the exclusive zone of Tulip-growing regions of the world.