Sunday, August 27, 2006

I think i must table it here

This has been much to the reality of everyone and as a concerend citizen of my beautiful yet neglected howmetown "Leh". The writing below was in a portal of Ladakh and i had to let you know about what's all happening and so thought to take your time to let you all know:
"There are strong grudges among the people in travel business in Ladakh against the state government for its, alleged, dubious role in impeding the fast growing tourism here, which has touched new heights in the recent years.“The list of complaints is endless, however, to point out some immediate problems I would like to begin with the permit system,” said Tundup Dorjey, General Secretary, All Ladakh Tour Operators Association. The unnecessary rule of traveling in group of four in restricted areas cause serious complications to everybody including tourists and administration showing more strictness in issuing the permits has added to the problem, he added. Another major impeding factor, he raised, was the restricted flight operations to Leh and government’s apathy in this regard, although, many low-cost airlines have been added to the flight operations in the Kashmir despite the poor state of tourism in the trouble-torn Valley. A delegation met the Union Civil Aviation Minister, Praful Patel last winter to take up this matter and they were promised about reduction in airfares, however, on the contrary there has been sharp rise in the fare. One of the delegation members Tsering Namgial, Joint Secretary, ALTOA said, “In 2004 there was sudden surge of domestic tourists visiting Ladakh but, in the following year this encouraging trend sharply fell due to the curbing of Indian Airlines flight operations between Leh and Jammu and Leh and Srinagar.” There was unprecedented 40 percent reduction in domestic tourists with the record 13000 figure of 2004 going down to 7000 in the following year.He said, the government cannot jeopardize the tourism potential of Ladakh by stopping the flight operations and it should stop such discriminatory policies against Ladakh. Here also brought out another matter of a CD containing a documentary titled ‘Srinagar to Leh’ produced by the J&K Tourism Department. He said, the visuals in the CD are completely mis-representing and misinforming depicting such blunders as ‘Kargil: situated beside the River Indus’ and ironically there is nothing shown about Leh. Similarly, the bus fare from Srinagar to Leh is higher than from Leh to Srinagar, which speaks for itself the intentions behind such unreasonable fare system, Namgyal pointed out."....................
So, this is where i live and afterall it's everybody's concern, right folks?

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