(22 May 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Srinagar, Indian-Controlled Kashmir – 15 May 2025
1. Empty shikaras (boats) on Dal lake
2. SOUNDBITE (Kashmiri) Gulzar Ahmed, boatman:
++SOUNDBITE STARTS ON SHOT 1 AND IS PARTIALLY OVERLAID BY SHOTS 3-4++
“Where we are standing, there used to be a line of tourists waiting to take the boat ride. We row these boats because our livelihood depends on tourism. As you can see, no one is here now, and we are left without any business. We pray to the Almighty that tourism resumes as it used to, because we are left with no work."
3. Various of shikaras on lake, empty houseboats
4. Boatman using his phone on his boat
5. Various of empty chairs and tables outside a restaurant
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Srinagar, Indian-Controlled Kashmir – 16 May 2025
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Sheikh Bashir Ahmed, Vice President of the Kashmir Hotel Owners and Restaurant Association:
++SOUNDBITE STARTS ON PREVIOUS SHOT++
"After 7 May, it was nearly full. They started the war, then the cancellations started booming. Then everybody (tourists) said, ‘no, now there’s no way. We have to stop at this time’.”
7. Various of security on street
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Srinagar, Indian-Controlled Kashmir – 15 May 2025
8. Wide of locked gate of a restaurant
9. Close of locked gate
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Srinagar, Indian-Controlled Kashmir – 16 May 2025
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Sheikh Bashir Ahmed, Vice President, Kashmir Hotel Owners and Restaurant Association:
++SOUNDBITE STARTS ON SHOT 7 AND IS OVERLAID BY SHOTS 8-9++
"Tourism needs peace. Once peace is there, then only the tourism will start. And the peace is not going to be there, if nothing will happen, the problem is still there.”
STORYLINE:
There are hardly any tourists in the scenic Himalayan region of Kashmir.
Most of the hotels and ornate pinewood houseboats are empty. Resorts in the snowclad mountains have fallen silent. Hundreds of cabs are parked and idle.
It’s the fallout of last month’s gun massacre that left 26 people, mostly Hindu tourists, dead in Indian-controlled Kashmir, followed by tit-for-tat military strikes by India and Pakistan, bringing the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of their third war over the region.
Lines of colorful hand-carved boats, known as shikaras, lie deserted, mostly anchored still on Srinagar’s normally bustling Dal Lake.
“Where we are standing, there used to be a line of tourists waiting to take the boat ride. We row these boats because our livelihood depends on tourism,” said boatman Gulzar Ahmed.
Tens of thousands of panicked tourists left Kashmir within days after the rare killings of tourists on April 22 at a picture-perfect meadow in southern resort town of Pahalgam.
After the attack, authorities temporarily closed dozens of tourist resorts in the region, adding to fear and causing occupancy rates to plummet.
Graphic images, repeatedly circulated through TV channels and social media, deepened panic and anger. India blamed Pakistan for supporting the attackers, a charge Islamabad denied.
Those who stayed put fled soon after tensions between India and Pakistan spiked.
As the two countries fired missiles and drones at each other, the region witnessed mass cancellations of tourist bookings.
New Delhi and Islamabad reached a U.S.-mediated ceasefire on May 10 but hardly any new bookings have come in, tour operators said.
Sheikh Bashir Ahmed, vice president of the Kashmir Hotel and Restaurant Association, said at least 12,000 rooms in the region’s hundreds of hotels and guesthouses were previously booked until June.
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