ABSTRACT

Most literature on tourism in conflict areas has focused on aspects of ‘dark tourism.’ Studying tourism in Kashmir – where a violent conflict has endured for more than a decade – however, introduces a variant perspective. With the return of some ‘normalcy’ in the region, domestic tourists from India are returning there in large numbers – but the return is to sites of scenic beauty rather than of bombings and incarceration. Even though the conflict has – and continues to leave – physical reminders, the Kashmiris and the tourists, the hosts and the guests, both seem to largely ignore this. Their return is based not on remembering the violent past, but rather on evading it. Though with the valley swarming with security forces and other physical reminders of the conflict which cannot be ignored, the tourists and the hosts seek to make it as marginal as possible. None of the sites of violence are specifically visited or highlighted, and all attempts are made to make it appear as though these intervening years of violence have not changed the valley, and it remains simply the paradise it always was. However, this denial – of the conflict and thus also of the aspirations of the Kashmiris – creates peculiar situations, ambivalences and paradoxes, which I discuss in this chapter.