Tourists double at Gir this Diwali

Gir forest, the only sanctuary of the Asiatic lion in the world, has set a record of sorts.

Nearly 1,000 visitors have toured the sanctuary in a day every day since Diwali, after the forest authorities increased the number of tourist permits to meet the rush.

Not just locals, the number of foreign tourists too has gone up, which indicates that the aggressive marketing of the lion abode taken up by the Gujarat government in the last one year, has worked. Sandeep Kumar, deputy Conservator of forest, Sasan, estimates that the number of foreign tourists has gone up by nearly 20 per cent compared to earlier years.
Kumar attributed the huge influx of visitors to the ‘Khushboo Gujarat Ki’ campaign featuring superstar Amitabh Bachchan by the state tourism department.
The forest officials took extra care to ensure that the visitors did not return without seeing lions, as the ad films showed the superstar amid a pride of the wildcats. “The department had identified two Additional routes apart from the existing ones. Each of these routes had a carrying capacity of 30 vehicles and thus the 90 permits issued daily were increased to 150,” said Kumar. This time 80 per cent of the visitors got to see lions. The forest has 459 lions according to the last census.

The forest department has now decided to issue more permits during festivals like Navratri, Diwali, Christmas and Uttarayan. The permit system was started only in 2000 when it was decided to have only 30 vehicles per day moving on a particular route. Only 90 vehicles carrying a maximum of six adults were allowed inside the sanctuary going by this average, the number of tourists that the forest saw this sea son is a record, and many of them had to return because the permits had exhausted.

Neeru Madan, a resident of Satellite in Ahemdabad, says hardly ten per cent of the tourists were locals. She sighted two lions during the trip. Archana Sharma, a resident of Meerut said, “We had also put up in the camp and we got the first trip in the morning. We sighted a pride of lions with two cubs.”

Courtesy:- Times Of India, Ahmadabad, Thursday, 11th Nov. 2010