Carpet of tulips to greet visitors in Srinagar from tomorrow

SRINAGAR:   From Thursday, Srinagar’s Dal Lake area will surprise you with colours and fragrance unique to Kashmir: A flower carpet of about 15 lakh tulips in a variety of hues is set to greet you at Asia’s largest Tulip Garden spread over 30 hectares on the banks of the lake as it opens for public on March 25.

There’s more: Tulip Festival awaits you in the first week of April. Farooq Ahmad Rather, Director, Floriculture, told this newspaper that a record number of 15 lakh tulips of various colours will bloom in the garden this year.

The tulip bloom is expected to last till end-April. Rather said his department has planted early, mid, mid-late and late varieties of the flower to ensure that the garden remains open for a month. “We have planted 62 varieties of tulips, which will give a new and even more picturesque look to the garden,” said an official. Hardly any tourist witnessed the tulip bloom last year and the gardeners’ hard work remained unnoticed and unappreciated as the garden remained closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Rather said adequate measures have been taken to ensure that Covid protocols are followed this year. “We won’t allow anybody to enter without wearing a mask. Thermal scanners will also be put up and the visitors will be requested to follow social distancing within the garden premises,” he said. Hand sanitisers will also be available.

The director said he hopes a large number of local, domestic and foreign travellers will turn up at the garden, which was thrown open in 2007 by then Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad. “We expect VIPs to visit the garden during the Tulip festival, which will lead to a boost in tourist arrivals in the Valley. Overall, all tourism stakeholders — hoteliers, house boat owners, shikara wallas, ponywalas, shopkeepers  all of them will benefit because of the Tulip festival,” said an official in the know.