The hotel-boat of the Dal Lake struggling to regain lost tourism

Srinagar (India), December 26, 2008. - They say it is heaven on earth, and yet languishing tourist hotel-boat Dal Lake in the heart of Indian Kashmir, are the best picture of the twenty years conflict in the region.
Located in Srinagar, the Kashmiri capital, in the warmer months, in the Dal lake boat there are 900 homes that are reached by boat known as "shikara", a kind of gondola that sails on the calm waters-too alone.
"Hopefully, the current occupancy rates hover around 20 percent. It seemed that this year's campaign would be very good. The truth is that the protests of recent months have affected us, "says Efe one owner, Altaf Dongola.
His house boat inside the lake, is tastefully decorated but empty of customers walk because as Dongola to the instability that has suffered in recent months, the Kashmiri capital, one of the most powerful places where the independence movement.
After a promising first half of the year, summer cashmere was the scene of riots between Hindus and Muslims, on account of a government transfer of land to the organization that manages the pilgrimage of the Hindu temple of Amarnath.
The clashes, which caused 40 deaths, led to the election campaign, boycotted by separatist Hurriyat Conference and marked by strikes and curfews of the security forces, which are hundreds of thousands.
"We expected to receive large numbers of tourists and so it was until June, but the riots and elections have been reduced to virtually zero arrival," he acknowledged by telephone the director of regional tourism, Farooq Shah.
According to his data, the whole region has recorded 1.1 million arrivals this year, almost double the 600,000 the previous year, although only 50,000 of them from abroad.
"People hear news of the Kashmiri conflict and feel afraid to come. But here is now very quiet, nothing to do with the worst of the insurgency in the 1990s, "says Dongola.
Match between India and Pakistan, Kashmir has been twenty years as grass of insurgent activity and the excesses of the Indian security forces, too expeditious in rural areas, according to different sources.
"The violence was such that the tourism sector could not resist. In that period many friends, and I among them, we had to go to New Delhi to Srinagar because here there was not a job, "says a tour guide at the lake.
Although India claims that only 800 insurgents remain active throughout the region, Srinagar remains a martial by the massive presence of soldiers and paramilitaries, a feeling only broken by the tranquility of the lake boat houses.
"There has never entered the army, among other things because not needed. People come to relax with the view of the mountains and clean air that is missing in the city, "is encouraged in his curious gondola Dongola.
In a striking yellow and comfortable padded seats, the slow "shikara" is the only means of access to these attractive hotels, whose owners are struggling to attract tourism that is reluctant to return.
During the election campaign just ended, the leaders of the major parties have pledged to work hard to improve tourism infrastructure and reduce violence, two of the claims of the hoteliers.
A third factor however escapes their control: reducing tension between India and Pakistan after the Mumbai attacks in November, attributed by the first Kashmiri separatist group Lashkar to-e-Toiba, operating from Pakistani soil.
Kashmir is the axis on which are pivoted relations between the two nuclear powers since independence and partition of the subcontinent in 1947.
Its soil is a victim of several wars since and most of its people, nostalgic for his "paradise" lost, still struggling to reverse Bill Clinton's definition of the territory in 1999 gave "the place, he said most dangerous the earth. "

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Thematic area:

1. Regional elections end with less violence in Kashmir
2. Indian Kashmir voting begins for the Assembly, with separatist boycott
3. The political conflict is gripping the economy of Kashmir
4. India and Pakistan open historic trade routes in Kashmir
5. The National Conference is imposed at the polls in Kashmir