PRIDE OF KASHMIR
Every year in the month of April, the Indira Gandhi Memorial Tulip Garden hosts Asia’s largest tulip flower show that showcases over 48 different kinds of tulips spreading over 30 hectares. Ranging from simple white tulips to blushing pink, from hybrid double colors to the rare and exotic Night Queen, this tulip garden attracts hordes of tourists every year, thereby enabling the organizers to showcase more of Kashmir with stalls that sell handicrafts along with local musicians to entertain the audience with both folk and rock music. The festival is held every year during the onset of spring in the valley.
The flower enjoys the climate and the soil and the inhabitants treat it with love and affection. In turn, it rewards them a bountiful bloom of one of nature’s most beautiful flowers. As the month of April knocks the door of nature, the Indira Gandhi Memorial Tulip Garden, situated in the foothills of the Zabarwan range in Srinagar, overlooking the Dal Lake, plays host to Asia’s largest Tulip Flower Show. Unseasonal rain in the first week of April in Srinagar never dampens the spirits of tens of thousands tourists, tulip lovers from around the world who come to Srinagar to celebrate the onset of spring and to see the world’s most beautiful flower. The tulip garden, which is built on a sloping ground in a terraced fashion, has seven terraces. It was inaugurated in 2008 and is spread across 30 hectares.
The Annual Tulip Festival showcases about 48 varieties of tulips and has several lakhs of flowers in bloom. They range from simple whites to blushing pinks, from fiery reds to golden yellows, from hybrids with double colors to the very rare and exotic near black tulip, the Night Queen. The Srinagar Tulip Garden and Festival was previously adjudged (in 2014), as the second best tulip garden in the world by the World Summit Tulip Society. Along with the spectacular flower show, which attracts tens of hundreds of tourists, the organizers – the Department of Horticulture/Floriculture, Government of Jammu and Kashmir puts up stalls to showcase and sell local handicrafts.
The tulip festival is an annual celebration that aims to showcase the range of flowers in the garden as a part of tourism efforts by the Government of Jammu and Kashmir. It is organized every year, during the onset of spring season in Kashmir valley. The festival gives tremendous opportunity to the locals and acts as a source of livelihood for them. This festival is the pride of Kashmiri people as they tend to showcases their specialties in front of the tourists who come from every corner of the world.
