Moderate weather of Kashmir attracting foreign tourists

Vietnamese tour operators on a FAM tour to promote Kashmir

SRINAGAR, MAY 13: A group of leading Vietnamese tour operators today arrived in Kashmir on a 5-days familiarity tour to promote Kashmir’s unmatched beauty and landscape.

The tour operators are in Valley to get familiar with beauty, language, art, craft, people, food and cuisines of Kashmir to promote it among the foreign as an option to other Indian states which is sweltering under severe heat wave.

After recent successful visit of Thai travel agents, it is the second instance that Vietnamese tour operators evinced keen interest to promote Kashmir’s unmatched beauty and landscape.

One of the Asia’s leading tour operators Train Thi Minh Thao who is the Director of travel company Vietravel said she was amazed to learn that Kashmir has such a fine weather at this time of summer.

“Travellers from Vietnam visit many Indian states but due to increasing temperatures it is difficult to organize tours. We wanted to have an alternative and we found it in Kashmir’s moderate weather,” said Thao. After her visit to Kashmir, she feels convinced to promote the Valley’s natural landscape among Asian travelers.

“I feel overwhelmed with the way people are providing us love and warmth. Situation is totally opposite what is projected in media. We visited many tourist places and we didn’t find anything like that here,” she said.

The group leader of the Vietnamese travel agents Sumit Mathore of Delhi based travel agency Top Travels said he brings lot of travelers from Vietnam to India.

“The travelers visit mostly Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai and other states. They know India as a hot destination during summers but we wanted to show them some part of it is also cold and more beautiful. We brought them here so that they would enjoy the natural beauty and also enjoy cool weather,” said Sumit.

The travel agents are staying in Kashmir for two nights during which they will visit Gulmarg and Pahalgam while they will stay for third night at Kargil before heading for Leh for two more nights where from they will board flight to Delhi.

Director Tourism Kashmir Mahmood A Shah who welcomed the travel agents here in Srinagar said foreign travelers are visiting Valley in good numbers.

“We have every kind of tourism product here. We can attract travelers from any part of the country and of any taste. We just need proper promotion of tourism products and the FAM tours of these travel agents move in that direction,” said Shah.

He said the Vietnamese travel agents were surprised to see Buddhist sites besides other religious places here in Kashmir.

The FAM tour is being organized by Kashmir Vision Tour & Travels & Wangnoo Sheraton Group of Houseboats which also hosted a FAM trip for 26 tour operators from Thailand last month.

The tour operators had visited Pahalgam, Gulmarg, Sonamarg and newly developed Doodhpathri.