SRINAGAR: Sonia Lohani chose scenic Kashmir for her honeymoon but she and her husband found themselves trapped on Wednesday as soldiers sealed off this Himalayan lake city during peace talks called by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
“It’s a mess out here. We should’ve gone to Italy instead and had a decent honeymoon,” grumbled her Britain-based groom Sanjay.
Troops have imposed a huge security clampdown on Kashmir’s turbulent summer capital for the two days of talks, which Muslim militants have vowed to disrupt.
Nonetheless a grenade thrown in a residential area wounded five people, police said.
Some 13,000 Indian and foreign tourists were stuck in Srinagar, by official count, waiting for the military siege to lift.
Kashmir Tourism Director Farooq Shah was working flat out to ease the discomfort in a city that sells itself as a honeymoon paradise to millions of Indian newlyweds.
“There is some inconvenience as security is everywhere but we are trying to help our guests,” Shah told AFP.
Combat troops patrolled the venue for the peace talks on the banks of the Dal Lake, which has been declared out of bounds.
“We feel like we are in an aquarium ... it’s eerie,” said Sujata Banerjee from the eastern Indian city of Kolkata.
Tourism chief Shah did manage to obtain a military clearance for limited travel for bona fide tourists in Srinagar, but that did not placate Banerjee.
“We are now planning an extended honeymoon somewhere else... if only we could leave this wretched town,” she said.
Owners of the 550 privately-run houseboats which provide exotic holiday accommodation on the lake also voiced their displeasure.
The main access road to the lake was barricaded on Wednesday after a deadly string of attacks this week by Muslim militants fighting Indian rule over Kashmir.
And militants enforced a general strike to protest the roundtable talks, closing what was left of the city’s amenities.
“Since yesterday, there are huge problems as we cannot oblige our guests demanding boat rides on the Dal and when we try to venture out we are cursed by soldiers,” said Abdul Rashid, a member of Kashmir’s Houseboat Owners’ Association.
“There is 100 per cent occupancy and there is not much for these tourists to do except for sit and fret and today some of our guests are stranded and cannot even reach the airport,” he said.
Hotels and restaurants were also complaining about the stifling security, but some tourists did manage to get out of Srinagar for nearby mountain destinations such as Gulmarg, Sonarmarg and Pahalgam.
“This was not an appropriate time for the roundtable in Kashmir and the venue should have been somewhere else,” Hotel and Restaurant Owners’ Association president Habibullah Mir told AFP. Mir said some 5,500 rooms in Srinagar’s hotels and houseboats were full of tourists.—AFP