Curbs eased, tourists throng Amritsar

Neeraj Bagga

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, July 12

After the lifting of lockdown and night curfew from Monday, tourists, especially from the National Capital Region (NCR), have started thronging holy city Amritsar.

Vehicles with registration numbers of Delhi and surrounding areas could be spotted in the parking bays and on roads around the Golden Temple complex.

Tejinder Singh, a tourist from Delhi, said: “My family used to visit the Golden Temple frequently. But travel restrictions were imposed following the second wave of Covid. They were waiting for the curbs to be relaxed to travel to Amritsar.”

Hospitality experts are of the view that earlier, travellers of the golden triangle tourist circuit used to spend at least two nights in the city, while due to Covid, it had now reduced to a destination of day trippers. A hotelier, Surinder Singh, said national tourist sites such as Jallianwala Bagh and the Attari-Wagah joint checkpost should be re-opened at the earliest. Both sites have been closed for the past over a year.

As the tourism season has begun and people are flocking to Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, the tourism sector here will get a boost for being on the way to these hill states. This will infuse liquidity in the tour and travel segments which was severely battered during the past one year.

Apart from NCR, a large number of people from Mumbai, Kolkata, Gujarat and southern states are visiting the town. A good number of non-resident Indians (NRIs) and international tourists, mainly from the UK, Australia, Canada and the US, who also visit here, are presently unable to come due to foreign travel restrictions.