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India Ground Report: Asia's largest tulip garden in Kashmir with 13 lakh flowers but no visitor

The Tulip garden in Kashmir touted as the largest tulip garden in Asia has over 13 lakh tulips at full bloom this season, but there won't be any visitor to witness this beautiful scenery. The garden was supposed to open to the public in the first week of March but has been closed due to the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak in the country.

The COVID-19 crisis across India has made all the public places shut for at least until May 3, 2020. The virus that was reported on January 30 in India, has now infected over 11,900 people in the country with claiming close to 400 lives.

The number of tulip flowers this year has increased by over 1 lakh flowers compared to last year. A water canal was also made to keep the attraction of the visitors.

An official said there were over 3.5 lakh Indian and foreign visitors last year and they were expecting around 4 lakh visitors this year but the coronavirus has left the garden vacant.

Zee Media Bureau|

Updated:Apr 15, 2020, 07:23 PM IST

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Tulip Garden with over 13 lakh flowers

The Tulip Garden in Kashmir that has over 13 lakh flowers this year is one of the main attractions for the tourists in Kashmir. But this season, it has been closed due to the coronavirus pandemic outbreak in the country. The closure of the Garden caused a loss of about Rs 100 crore to the tourism industry. This year, the flowers were increased by over one lakh compared to 2019.

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Tulip garden is situated on banks of Srinagar's famous Dal Lake

Situated on the banks of Srinagar's famous Dal Lake, the maintenance of the tulip garden and to bring tulip bulbs to grow costs about Rs 60 lakhs. The garden's authority had planned to keep it open for 40 days so that at least 4 lakh people including locals and tourists would come to see the garden.

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Beautiful tulip flowes

The Tulip flowers in Asia's largest Tulip garden increases the beauty of the Kashmir valley, but at a time when Asia's largest tulip garden in Kashmir was ready to attract millions of people with its beauty, the COVID-19 faded the color of these flowers.

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Flowers in full bloom

Tourists visiting Tulip Garden do not only see the garden but also the houseboats, shikara ones, tour operators, cab drivers, hoteliers and many other areas near the Tulip Gardens.

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Tulip garden

This year, the department decorated the garden on the "Cherry Garden Theme" on the lines of Japan to make the garden more attractive. Out of the 13 lakh flowers, there were over 55 different varieties of the Tulip, four more varieties than the last year.