Tourists at M.G. Marg in Gangtok. Picture by Ashit Rai

Gangtok, May 23: Nearly 1.3 lakh domestic tourists have visited Sikkim from January to April this year. The Sikkim tourism department said only twice the number visited the state in the whole of last year.

Political turmoil in Darjeeling, a hill station located in Bengal where the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha is agitating for the separate state of Gorkhaland, and Tibet being shut out to foreigners, seem to be the primary reasons for the huge inflow of domestic and international visitors, some tour operators claimed. The secretary of the state tourism department, S.B.S. Bhadauria, however, put it down to Sikkim’s growing popularity as a tourist destination. “We have managed to put our state on the tourism map of India.”

A section of tour agents agree with Bhadauria. “Turmoil in Darjeeling alone cannot be the only factor. The trend was that anyone who visited Darjeeling would come to Sikkim. It is only that this time, they are visiting Sikkim alone and not Darjeeling too,” said a tour operator. The last three months have seen over 20 per cent increase in visitors compared to the same period last year.

In April, 56,000 domestic tourists and 2,500 foreigners visited Sikkim. The number is expected to double this month. According to data available with the state tourism department, around 4,600 international tourists have visited the hill state in the first of the two tourist seasons that is yet to end. The first season is from April to June and the second from September to November. For some years now, the government is also promoting winter tourism. Last year, 17,837 foreigners had come to the state.

A.K. Chaki, a visitor from Calcutta, said: “We were told about the accommodation problem even when we enquired from Calcutta. But we were determined to go ahead with out plans. Our agent had arranged for rooms although we had to defer our trip for a few days and even cut it short,” said Chaki.

Prem and Anjum Patil from Ahmedabad had to wait for two days before they could get a vehicle to take them to Changu Lake, located at 11,000ft. “In two days, we had made enquiries with seven agencies. All of them said their vehicles were booked,” said Prem.

Blue Sky Tours and Travels listed seven groups from Germany and Switzerland who were forced to cancel their trip to Tibet after the Chinese crackdown there, and visit Sikkim instead.

Bhadauria said in order to sustain the boom, it was necessary to decongest Gangtok, the state capital, and its surrounding areas by diverting tourists to other districts. He said a meeting with Travel Agents’ Association of Sikkim would be held soon to discuss this.