Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, was a busy tourist hotspot on Monday this week. Today, it’s a ghost town.
In the most recent attack in Indian-administered Kashmir in 25 years, alleged rebels claimed the lives of at least 26 people on Tuesday in the picturesque tourist resort, igniting fears of an escalation in India-Pakistani tensions.
The Resistance Front (TRF), a little-known armed group that emerged in the region in 2019, claimed responsibility for the attack. Tourists have been largely spared by armed rebels who are attempting to seize Kashmir from India in recent years. Tuesday’s killings have changed that.
Along the Liddar River, which passes through a picturesque valley, all hotels and restaurants have been shut down. The town, which draws millions of visitors each year, has emptied almost overnight.
Owner of a restaurant, Mushtaq Ahmad, 45, tells Al Jazeera, “I was so busy yesterday morning that I didn’t even have time to speak to anyone.” By Wednesday, he had been forced to close his restaurant, and now believes the outlook is bleak.
“We are forever condemned.” I don’t think the industry will recover now”, he says.
Arshad Ahmad, a different hotelier, claims that this year’s demand was overwhelming. Now, that has all changed.
He claims that “each of my 20 rooms” had been reserved for the month before. “But everything changed overnight. This morning, all of my customers left. They were sad, frightened, and terrified – and rightly so”.
Local Kashmiri pony rider and guide Adil Hussain Shah, 29, who lost his life trying to protect people, was one of the dead at Baisaran meadow, Pahalgam, a beauty spot popular with tourists.
Set amid panoramic mountains, women in colourful scarves and grey tweed pherans – long, traditional Kashmiri garments – stand outside the portico of Adil’s home in Pahalgam. They shiver against the beams as reporters from major newspapers and national television stations stream into this small, rural village.
“A woman whose father was killed told me that my brother confronted the terrorists and tried to reason with them not to kill innocents”, Adil’s brother, Naushad Shah, tells Al Jazeera at his home in Hapat Nar village in Pahalgam, where most of the people either work as pony riders or tourist guides, earning an income of up to $5 a day. His brother, Naushad Shah, reported to Al Jazeera that he was shot in the head and shoulder while trying to save the woman’s father.
Jammu and Kashmir’s Chief Minister Omar Abdullah attended his funeral on Wednesday and praised his bravery.
There is no religion in terrorism. We have always taken care of tourists and have been their support in the high mountains. Naushad, crying, declares, “This tragedy will hit us in the worst ways.”
A massive exodus
Amid the rising tension following the attack, which has prompted a strong response from India – including suspension of a key water-sharing treaty and the closure of the mainland border crossing to Pakistan – thousands of tourists across Kashmir have packed their bags and were seen rushing to the airport.
As she hopped a cab in front of the airport with her family, 45-year-old Himani Sharma, who was staying at a hotel on the banks of Dal Lake in Srinagar city, tells Al Jazeera as she left for her home there on April 21st. “I had come here on April 21 and planned to stay there until the 28th.
“My two kids and husband are scared”.
In response to an increase in airfares, the Indian government issued an advisory mandating airlines to assist travelers, citing “unexpected demand from tourists seeking return to their homes” and abolition of cancellation and rescheduling fees.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah wrote, “It’s heartbreaking to see the exodus of our guests from the Valley after Tuesday’s tragic terror attack in Pahalgam, but at the same time, we totally understand why people would want to leave”.
Due to landslides on April 20 in the Ramban area, which are located 150 kilometers (93 miles) from Srinagar’s main city, which caused the national highway, which is the main road link between Kashmir and the rest of India, to be closed, the situation is worse.
Abdullah said that while New Delhi is working to organise extra flights for people wishing to leave Kashmir, the highway between Srinagar and Jammu has been reconnected for traffic in a single direction.
“I have directed the administration to facilitate traffic between Srinagar andamp, Jammu,” Abdullah wrote. “This will have to be done in a controlled and organised way because the road is still unstable in places, and we are also working hard to clear all the stranded vehicles. We hope that everyone will cooperate with us because we won’t be able to at this time allow completely free movement of vehicles.
In Kashmir this week, people have come out in large numbers alongside regional politicians and trader guilds to protest against the killings.
On Wednesday, mosques in the southern Doda district blared out their condemnations on loudspeakers. Many hotels and residents are offering free lodgings for stranded tourists and are waiving cancellation fees for those leaving the valley in distress.
But this untimely mass exit by tourists has come as a major blow to local people, many of whom rely on the tourism industry. The 40-year-old Gulzar Ahmad Wani, a taxi driver, transports travelers from other parts of India to and from Pahalgam’s three most well-known resorts for up to $52 per day.
“They are brought to us by travel agents. In a typical day, I perform two back-and-forth maneuvers to three locations. One from 9am to 12noon, and the second from 1pm to 4pm”, he says.
All of his bookings have been canceled since the devastating attack, and the clients who had already arrived have since fled. Almost 90 percent of all tourist bookings in the region have now been cancelled, industry insiders say.
According to Wani, “what has happened is like pouring a vial of poison into the food that has just been prepared.” “This was the peak tourist season, and we were expected to keep this momentum and earn a decent income this year”.
In Laripora, a picturesque village encircled by the majestic pine-covered forests in southern Kashmir, Wani and his siblings live in a three-story house. But the structure is 40 years old and crumbling.
He had requested financial aid through the federal government’s credit-linked subsidy program Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana to make low- and moderate-income residents more likely to have access to affordable housing.
“I had even been selected to receive the assistance. However, he says, “It seems as though I can take it now because I won’t be able to squander the remaining funds to build the house.”
Peak tourist season
According to official figures, more than 23 million tourists visited the Indian-administered region of Jammu and Kashmir in 2024, and this year, the figures had been expected to rise even higher. However, there have previously been negative impacts to tourism.
In 2019, when Article 370, which previously granted autonomous status to Jammu and Kashmir state, was revoked, a major clampdown on Kashmiris by the Indian government took place, with police and paramilitary forces deployed in large numbers to prevent protests. The internet was suspended, people were imprisoned, and government critics were later detained on “terrorism” charges. Tourism figures dropped off and continued to be flat throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, numbers have increased in recent years, thanks to government promotional campaigns.
Pahalgam is one of Indian-administered Kashmir’s most popular tourist destinations, with breathtaking landscapes perfect for photography, trekking, pony rides, fishing, river rafting and nature walks. There are numerous lakes, pine forests, and vast meadows there.
The place is also politically significant for New Delhi as it serves as a base camp for the annual Amarnath Yatra, one of the holiest pilgrimages for Hindus in India. More than a monthlong pilgrimage is made possible by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims each year through the high meadows.
The area has also long been a favourite Bollywood filming location, and features in classics such as Betaab, after which one of the nearby valleys too is named.
The Indian government has been accused of trying to make it seem as though Kashmir had returned to a state of normalcy in response to its efforts to restore tourism.  , One parliamentarian even called tourism a “cultural invasion” and accused the government of politicising tourism in a region where critics can still be arrested using draconian laws under which a person can be held in detention for lengthy periods of time without a trial.
Fernand de Varennes, the UN special rapporteur on minority issues, also criticized India for organizing a G20 meeting in Kashmir in 2023, calling it “a harrowing decision to institutionalize what some have called a military occupation” and portraying it as an international “sea of approval.”
Given its significance in the region, the area is heavily patrolled by the army, paramilitary troops, and local police.
At entry points, there are several security checkpoints, and during the annual Hindu pilgrimage, which is scheduled to begin on July 3, security is increased with the use of drones, surveillance equipment, and road checks. Against that backdrop, Tuesday’s attack has shocked , locals and visitors alike.
The government is obligated to hold the government accountable in a situation where normal life is heavily regulated. This incident has hurt the locals most, we are in grief”, a local handicraft shopkeeper in the main city of Srinagar tells Al Jazeera, requesting anonymity.
‘ Taking us back to the 1990s ‘
When Mir Imaad noticed helicopters whirring overhead, he was taking pictures of the vibrant tulip buds adorning his hotel in Pahalgam on Tuesday. He says the unusual activity caused him to suspect that something must be amiss. Then, someone returned a female visitor to our hotel to her room. Her husband had been killed in the attack”, the 31-year-old hotelier tells Al Jazeera.
By the following day, thousands of tourists fleeing the airport in taxis through the sprawling mustard fields, where they were crammed with their belongings.
Meanwhile, mass cancellations by tourists have put about 500 hotel owners in Pahalgam in a fix. Others are doing the same as Imaad, who has provided $2,400 in refunds.
“We hired skilled professionals over the last few years. The catering staff and our chefs are among the best in the area, says Imaad. “This hotel was built in 1938 and had a huge reputation to which we had to live up. However, we are now confronted by a staff member who is genuinely uninterested. I don’t know what will happen now”.
Economic experts also think that Kashmir’s news of the attack will deter direct investment. “The precursor for good economic activity is how much good news is coming out of the state”, says Ejaz Ayoub, a Srinagar-based economist. A positive attitude toward investment increases as tourism grows, according to the saying. In the last three years, the investment ratio in the region’s GDP has increased – albeit marginally”.
Ayoub also believes that the tourism boom won’t alter the way the region’s economy is being depicted in the mainstream Indian media.
“Tourism’s overall contribution to our GDP is marginal. Only 1% of our GDP is made up of the hotel industry, which is $324m annually in this region. When considering the trickle-down effect through the secondary and tertiary sectors, which includes tour operators or individuals associated with the gig-economy like the ponywallas, the figure can expand to $720m. However, that still accounts for a lot of the agricultural sector’s contribution.
Ayoub, however, said the damage to tourism will affect the collection of a form of indirect tax called Goods and Services Tax (GST). He continued, “Indirect taxation decreases as a result of lower trade volumes.
“Angry about the future,” the title of the song.
Abdul Wahid Wani, 38, a pony-ride operator, was one of the first people to reach the bloody scene to look for survivors on Tuesday after a friend in the police alerted him to the tragedy.
He climbed the muddy path leading to Baisaran meadow, where the carnage occurred. Since the route is rugged and uphill, only pony ride operators like Wani can carry people up to the beauty spot.
He claims that he couldn’t have personally lifted all the injured victims. So, he shot a video of the scene and shared it on a WhatsApp group with hundreds of his fellow ponywallas, as they are called. According to Wahid, “some of them arrived right away.” “That’s how we rescued them”.
The crucial evidence that police are relying on as part of their investigation into the incident is now the videos, which went viral all over India.
But while he is locally being hailed as a hero, Wani is plagued with anxiety about how he will earn a living from now on. The airport was crowded with the panicked tourists trying to board the first flight on their way out on Thursday, and the flights that came in Srinagar were almost empty.
Some Indian nationals have even put their plans to visit the Valley on hold. I intended to attend this year. But now, I won’t”, said Bhaskar Bhatt, who lives in New Delhi.
Wani called the current season the “best,” and he was making up to $11 per day, which is a respectable income in this sector.
“I could afford to get my children to study at a private school”, he said. Wai has a son who is seven years old, two daughters who are 14 and 11 years old, and two sons.
“I don’t want my children to suffer from the lack of education that I have. I don’t want them to play pony tricks as hardscrabblers.
