PHOTOS: IRRESISTIBLE tulips, Kashmir's latest pull

Kashmir tulip garden, billed as Asia's biggest, has had a bountiful of visitors crossing over a lakh in just three weeks after it was thrown open to public on March 29.

The garden will attract more visitors for the next week also as the tulips would continue to be in full bloom.

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At over 5,000 visitors a day for first three weeks, the garden seems to have plentiful of admirers, both locally and from outside.

The visitors included celebrities from the corporate sector and politics, which included Reliance ADAG chairman Anil Ambani and Gautam Singhania of the Raymond group.

Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad -- whose blooming brainchild the garden is -- was another high profile visitor to the garden located in the foothills of the Zabarwan mountain range.

The garden has lived upto the purpose with which it was laid out initially at over Rs 1 crore cost of surely advancing the tourist season in the Valley by over a month which otherwise would pick up only around middle of May.

The visitors to the garden included a considerable number of domestic and foreign tourists this year who admitted that they have come to Kashmir this time of the year only to visit the garden and see the tulips live.

"The expansive spectacle of tulips of different hues was mesmerising indeed and worth our affording cost. It was like a dream coming true for me seeing the tulips live which otherwise I had seen only in movies," said Neelam Kapoor, a tourist from Mumbai.

The encouraging response both from locals as well the tourists is egging on efforts to further expand and beautify the terraced garden from its present area of 12 hectares to 35 hectares.

The number of tulips imported directly from Holland, the home of tulips, is also going to surge from over a million to three million.

The garden has generated revenue of Rs 85 lakh this year setting a new record.

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