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1.3 million tulips bloom amid lockdown in Kashmir, tourists miss chance to behold the sight
2.58 lakh people had visited The Tulip Garden in 2019
The 1.3 million tulips that have bloomed in one of Asia’s largest tulip gardens in Kashmir make for a spectacular sight. Sadly, these dainty flowers will wither away in a week with neither tourists nor locals getting an opportunity to appreciate their beauty due to the lockdown imposed to check the spread of the novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19).
The 30-hectare tulip garden at ‘Siraj Bagh’ has transformed into a sea of colour but looks desolate without any visitors.
Director floriculture Farooq Ahmad Rather said, “This year, we had increased the number of tulips to 1.3 million. We were hopeful that the garden will give a fillip to tourism. However, Covid-19 wrecked havoc on our plans. The tulips have started withering and within the next week or by the end of this month, the flowers will fade away.”
Located on the foothills of Zabarwan Mountains along the banks of the Dal Lake with over 55 varieties of red, yellow, pink tulips, the tulip garden had bloomed around the same time last year with around 1.2 million bulbs attracting 2.58 lakh visitors. Of the visitors at least one lakh were outsiders.
People would look forward to the Tulip Festival, an annual event, which showcased the large variety of flowers and promoted tourism in the state
In 2018, around 1.9 lakh people had visited the garden.
“This year we had increased varieties of tulips, increased the area of the garden and had formed interesting patterns hoping for a heavy footfall but there is no one here to appreciate the fruit of our labour,” Rather said.
The department annually spends Rs 70 lakh on its maintenance.
“The tourist season began with the Tulip Festival and lasted a month. The garden brought business to hoteliers, transporters, traders and houseboat owners,” he said, adding that the gardens brought hundreds of crores to the tourism industry.
The department hasn’t suffered much of a loss but the tourism industry has been severely hit.
KASHMIR’S CONNECTION WITH TULIPS
Kashmir’s connection with tulips dates back to hundreds of years. Initially, the flowers were grown on muddy roof tops. As time passed, the tulips were grown in kitchen gardens and flower beds when in 2005-06 the then government decided to turn the ‘Siraj Bagh’ in Srinagar into a Tulip Garden.
Around 20 hectares of the 30-hectare garden is covered with flowers. The Tulip Garden had opened in 2007 on a slope with multiple terraces. It overlooks the scenic Botanical Garden. The tulip bulbs were brought from Holland and other European countries. Besides tulips, others flower such as hyacinth, pansy, daffodil and ranunculus add glamour to the garden.
The life-cycle of a tulip flower is 15 days but officials had increased the span of the overall bloom by adding late-blooming varieties of tulips.
“We have early blooming and mid-blooming tulips and now we have added four new varieties of late blooming tulips so that the garden remains open for a month,” floriculture officer Shayeq Rasool had told HT last month.
Tourism nosedived last year after the Jammu and Kashmir government issued a travel advisory asking tourists and pilgrims to leave a few days before the central government revoked the special status under Article 370 of erstwhile state and split the region into two union territories on August 5. For months, restrictions remained in place with no phones and internet as the region remained shut.
Though the restrictions were later removed, phones restored and the travel advisory revoked, but the tourists did not visit the place. Now, with the Covid-19 lockdown, Kashmir’s tourism has been hit again.
