Gujarat beckons - from salt desert to Gandhi trail

The 10,000-sq km stretch of the vast salt desert in the Rann of Kutch in northern Gujarat along the India-Pakistan border gleams like polar ice caps in the full moon light - eerie and white.

The night is chilly and a motley band of Sindhi Maldhari musicians plays plaintive evening ragas on a variety of string instruments - bhorrindo, manjira, morchang, jodia pava and ravanhattho - that are as old as the Indus Valley civilisation which flourished in the region more than 5,000 years ago. The soft notes scatter in the wind and the salt.

Across the stretch - which was the bed of the Indus river 2,000 years ago till it changed its course and the receding sea which left behind sheets of crystalline salt - lies the Sindh province of Pakistan barely 50 km away.

The musicians, cattle herders by profession, trace their lineage to Sindh and their music is a crude form of Sufi melody.

\”Look at this beautiful White Rann, the most incredible salt desert, the only one of its kind, in the world. I want people across the globe to see it, especially on moonlit nights when it sparkles like diamonds. It is karmic. I keep coming back here time and again,\” Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat state, tells IANS with a flourish of his hand.

The area - with a population of 1.8 million - is also home to the legendary wild ass and Jurassic fossil zone overlooking the Rann. The sea fossils embedded in the layers of sedimentary rocks are nearly 70 million years old, says a local expert.

Gujarat is hard-selling itself as a global tourism destination like Kerala, Goa and Rajasthan. At the recent Rannotsav in the desert of the Rann of Kutch (Dec 1-3), the chief minister and senior state officials brought in ambassadors from 17 countries and a group of 20 journalists - along with a crowd of nearly 6,000 - mostly foreigners and domestic travellers from across the country - to sample the treasures of Kutch and the rest of the state as part of a mega tourism promotion exercise.

The state is seeking private investment to promote tourism on a hub-and-spoke model - like the way it has developed its industry.

\”A state cannot prosper without private investment. The world spends $7 trillion on tourism alone. I want Gujarat to get a slice of the tourism pie,\” the chief minister said.

The tourism promotion drive of Gujarat hinges on the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi who was born in the state, the myths surrounding the iconic Hindu deity Lord Krishna, 12,000 small and big religious festivals, the lions of Gir forest, numerous wetland bird sanctuaries (these account for one-third of all migratory activity of birds in the country), the largest habitat of Siberian flamingos in the world drawing 300,000 birds during winter, handicrafts, textiles, relics of the Indus Valley civilization and a vibrant culture.

\”Now that the state\’s industrial growth is firm on its track, my focus is on tourism. I am looking for private investors to pump in funds for big tourism projects across the state like the way we consolidated our industry. The government will just act as a catalyst to rope in investors and ensure requisite infrastructure and logistics so that the projects can take off,\” Modi said.

Outlining the vision for Gujarat as a mega tourism destination, the chief minister said, \”The state had opened up as a tourism destination in 2005 (declared the year of tourism) with a hub-and-spoke model\”.

\”Gujarat has been divided into eight tourism hubs which will act as nodal centres for tourists to visit the attractive destinations. But distances in Gujarat are huge, unlike other states, and not all destinations are habitable. The nodes will act as halts from where the tourists can fan out. Bhuj, for instance, is the hub for northern Gujarat,\” Modi said.

The chief minister wants to draw \”family, health, religious and adventure tourists to the state\”.

\”Tourism provides employment to the largest number of local people - right from the man who pulls a rickshaw to the tour operators. Tourism ensures overall development of an area,\” Modi said.

Statistics show that Gujarat drew 14.1 million tourists in 2008 and \”expects footfalls to cross the 1.7-crore (17-million) mark this year \”despite the apprehensions fuelled by the (economic) meltdown, the surge back home from Dubai, swine flu and the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks\”, according to senior tourism officials.

The government has launched several tourism projects.

A project to improve infrastructure at Dwarka and Bet Dwarka - an island - jointly with Reliance is on the drawing board, Gujarat Tourism Development Corporation chairman Kamlesh Patel said.

\”Dwarka and Bet Dwarka - Lord Krishna\’s capital and home respectively in Jamnagar district - will soon be able to accommodate more tourists for more than a day. Work will begin on the Dwarka Project in February,\” Patel said.

Dwarka, which draws 50,000 tourists and pilgrims on an average every year, does not offer quality accommodation. Tourists rush through the 11 ancient temples, including the shrine of Dwarkadheesh, and Bet Dwarka, within a day or two.

\”But the project is expected to change the landscape of the city which dates back to nearly 5,000 years,\” a senior tourism official said.

The annual kite festival scheduled for Dec 10-14 draws at least 100,000 tourists to the state, officials say.

\”The Navratri Festival in the state, spread across 40,000 destinations in 1,800 villages for nine days during Dusshera in October, draws more than a million tourists every year,\” Patel said.

Another important circuit which the state is working on is the \”Mahatma Gandhi trail\”, Gujarat tourism secretary Bipul Mitra said.

\”Right from Porbandar, Mahatma Gandhi\’s birthplace, to Rajkot, the town where he studied, and Ahmedabad (home to the Sabarmati Ashram) and Dandi (the venue of Gandhi\’s salt march), we have earmarked and upgraded 21 destinations with night halts so that tourists can walk down the stretch and stop overnight at the halts to experience the ethos propounded by the father of the nation,\” Mitra said.

The state is also developing 40 new destinations and 14 beaches across the state.

All the beaches currently are located at Mandvi on the Arabian Sea - the private retreat of the erstwhile rulers of Gujarat.

The state has set aside more than Rs.100 crore (nearly $22 million) on tourism development and \”has spent more than Rs.1,200 crore ($255 million) on infrastructure over the last three years,\” Mitra said.

In 2001, the Kutch region, along with Saurashtra, was devastated by a high-intensity earthquake that had its epicentre in Bhuj town.

\”The fact that we have been able to rebuild the region keeps the morale of the state government high. Nearly 800,000 homes have been reconstructed in Bhuj alone in eight years,\” said E. Srinivas, in-charge secretary of Kutch