Announcing the dates for this year’s Chaar Dham Yatra at a press conference in Mumbai, Umakant Panwar, Secretary, Department of Tourism, Govt. of Uttarakhand revealed the state’s new developments. “We are rebuilding Uttarakhand. What we learned after the floods was that the destination has a limited carrying capacity, which we ignored in the past. We will be more careful this year and monitor traffic. We have a Tourism Revival Plan in place for the same,” he said.
Uttarakhand Tourism is building ropeways to battle any possible road problems. In addition, 29 heliports are under construction to facilitate chopper transportation. The seven daily night flights from Delhi to Dehradun are also expected to fuel footfall. The Tehri Lake, a man made lake, is a mega project, with an adventure centre to be built around it along with a floating restaurant and a floating restaurant to be added by mid 2014 and end of 2014 respectively.
The Vishnu Prayag meditation centre and new accommodation options on the yatra route have also been developed. Furthermore, Lansdowne now features log house accommodations for visitors. However, in keeping with the new focus to limit footfall as per carrying capacity, a cap has been put on 500 overnight visitors at a time. The day visitor numbers will have no limit, revealed Panwar.
Tapping a whole new market, Binsar, Tehri and Champawat are being opened for film tourism.
In a bid to attract traffic during the lean season, the Tourism Board is planning a Winter Chaar Dham and a Winter Carnival for devotees who want to visit the deities when they are brought down to lower lands during the cold season. “The dham usually closes because of the snow and the deities are carried downhill for the period. These places are accessible by road, and we hence want to woo tourists and thus encourage year round traffic,” said Sandeep Sahni, President, Hotels & Restaurants Association of Uttarakhand.
