Kolkata, July 6, 2013: For all but one of the 24 States being represented, the usual paraphernalia in stalls to promote tourism was all there at the commencement here on Friday of the 2013 Travel and Tourism Fair, touted as one of India’s biggest travel trade shows; the sole exception was Uttarakhand, otherwise a popular destination for both tourists and pilgrims alike.

 In the place of a stall for Uttarakhand, there stood a table on which sat two boxes for donations for relief work in the landslip-and-flood-ravaged State.

 “After the natural disaster that struck the hill State last month, it is time now to rescue and provide succour to the thousands affected there, not for promotion of tourism,” said a member of the event’s organising committee.

 Uttarakhand Tourism, one of the Fair’s lead participants over the years, pulled out in view of the situation there, according to officials.

True that the disaster has taken a severe toll on tourism in Uttarakhand but there was a message from a hotelier from there who would otherwise on such occasions be busy taking questions from prospective tourists about details of which place to visit, where to be put up and at what cost.

 “What has been left out in the constant media coverage of goings-on in Uttarakhand ever since the natural tragedy is that the process of returning to normality is on in earnest,” said Ajay Bhargava, Public Relations Officer, Uttarakhand Hotel and Restaurant Association.

Emphasising that there was no need for prospective tourists to Uttarakhand to feel insecure, he said: “We have children back in several boarding schools across the State. Their parents have sent them back.”

Just a few months more

For another hotelier from the State, it is just a matter of a few more months “for Uttarakhand to be back on its feet.”

“The boarding schools in Mussoorie, Dehradun and Nainital are all operational now… Come Dussehra and things will have looked up,” said Captain Kamaljit Singh representing a hotel in Mussoorie.

“The number of tourists has definitely gone down after calamity but this is limited only to certain restricted areas such as the Kedarnath valley,” he adds. For him and perhaps many others in the tourism sector, things are not so grim after all even though what the State has gone through has been nothing less than traumatic.

Source: The Hindu, DT. July 6, 2013.