Tourism astir

The problem now is there are insufficient rooms at budget level to cater to the average middle-class Pakistani tourist

Exactly a year ago I was preparing to leave for 11 days in Baltistan. It proved to be idyllic. Peaceful, a complete absence of tension, friendly and hospitable. And in the entire time I spent there I did not see one other foreign tourist. Perhaps I missed them. Was not sufficiently observant. But did not see one. There were plenty of domestic tourists to be sure, mostly from Punjab seemingly but ‘foreigners’ were apparently absent. Today as I start to pack for a holiday in Gilgit, Nagar and Hunza — the ‘other side’ compared to where I was a year ago — I am already aware from contacts old and new that ‘foreigners’ are back, not in the volume that they were in the late 1980s and 1990s but definitely back.

Booking my flights from Bahawalpur to Gilgit the PIA officer commented that I was lucky to get a seat on the Gilgit flight as they are booked to capacity often three weeks in advance — and that is in the low end of the season. Getting a hotel at mid-price was not that easy either, and it was only through an old (hotelier) friend that I was able to get a couple of nights kip before I headed off to Nagar — where it was busy but not at capacity.

There was a time during the peak of the summer holidays when this newspaper was reporting that such was the inflow of tourists that there was quite literally not a bed to be had, and the grounds of some schools were opened to allow makeshift camping for those families — and it was predominantly families — that could find nowhere to rest their heads. Things have slackened off now but it is clear that the local infrastructure was creaking.

So why? Talking to people who have made the trek north there was a recurrent factor — Babusar Pass is open to regular traffic through the summer months. It is now possible to drive on good quality roads northwards from Islamabad, up the Kaghan valley, over the Pass and then down to where the road rejoins the Karakoram Highway north of Chilas — cutting out completely the risky, indeed often dangerous, drive through Kohistan. For many that I spoke to this was the key element influencing their decision to holiday in the north. Most knew — or at least had a general awareness of — that there were mid-priced hotels, affordable, in Northern Areas (surprising how many still call it ‘Northern Areas’) and that there was a safe route to get there.

There were reports of hours-long traffic jams in Abbottabad through the summer, the narrow roads unable to cope with the volume of traffic, and the first whispering on the grapevine wondering about the impact of such an influx on Northern Areas generally. Whispers fattened up by the end of August to speak of problems of solid waste management in Gilgit town, human as well as the vast volumes of litter and general rubbish that untidy visitors carelessly discarded. And while a boom in tourism bodes well generally for a hotel industry that was literally on its knees three years ago; the problem now is that there are insufficient rooms at budget level to cater to the average middle-class Pakistani tourist.

The high-end hotels still had capacity even at the height of the summer. They were all built or developed at a time when foreign tourists were where the money was. They also benefited from the endless conferences and workshops organised by the heaving NGO sector — I should know as I was one of those doing the organising at the time!

Today’s foreign tourist in the area is a notch or two up from basic poor backpacker status, but a long way from being able to afford the luxury end of the market. What survive of the backpacker joints now find themselves catering to a different sort of clientele — jam-packed with Punjabis and a scattering of foreigners.

So off I go. There are promises to visit some of the projects I was instrumental in setting up in the 1990s and still going strong, but mostly it is going to be gazing at a far horizon, book in my lap. Tootle-pip!

Published in The Express Tribune, September 8^th, 2016.

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