Dear Editor,
Chaired by CM Mufti Mohd Sayeed and Dy. CM Prof. Nirmal Singh along with high profile officers of all department at Patnitop on 14th June 2015 took many decisions for attracting tourists including-Rope-Way, Multiplex, Amusement Park, Toy Train etc.
Let them all know that a tourist is certainly not interested in Amusement Park and Toy Trains or Multiplex but enjoying natural beauty, the trees, the clean and cool air, walking tracts, village life along with local fruits, food, rarely available herbs, birds and animals, spring water, locally available handicrafts and artistic works and like to meet or discover people who have some exceptional achievements in the field of art, culture and science including schools around. Children will also act to follow the suits and will have lifelong effects to become learned and responsible citizens.
Amusement Park and Toy-Train at Hazooribag-Dussehra Ground Srinagar, established with fun fare and one with multiple laptop games established at Mansar-were never needed, therefore badly failed to attract even children. None of them have learnt any lesson from failures of their poorly planned venture and thought there were unwanted unnecessary projects. Visit to Lake is watching fish, tortoise, duck, lake plants rather than distracting children to artificial artifact which they see in plenty at Google: They want to touch a fish, see eggs, identify birds, see a nest on tree, leaves without worrying for even food not to speak of its quality as I have observed during my lectures and picnic of school children at Patnitop and Sanasar several times. Yes the International Yoga centre and University Mantalai will automatically attract students and teachers from all over the world for studying such natural environment best suited for Yog along with Herbal Garden already existing and all conceivable daily requirements will automatically bring change in the area.
On the other hand they should concentrate more on various fruit plantation and propagation of natural wild fruits so that the fruits produce of farmers is purchased by tourists to improve the financial condition, give recognition and further training to update them, which would booster local artists already searched and honoured by Duggar Heritage Society, Udhampur.
Introduce new birds like peacock and many animals which can be had from Ahmadabad Zoo which I personally visited and enquired for such supplies as also from Agriculture University, Haryana. All these measures will boost economic growth of the locals and obvious the tourism too.
Are these advisors listening?
Dr. K. C Sharma
Surgeon Specialist, Udhampur