ABOUT

Tulip Festival in Kashmir celebrates the blooming season of the magnificent Tulips. Indira Gandhi Memorial Tulip Garden adds to the natural beauty of Srinagar. Nestled on the foothills of Zabarwan Range, the largest tulip garden in Asia presents a stunning view of the Dal Lake. The seven terraced garden was built with the intention to promote tourism and floriculture in Kashmir. Tulip Festival is hosted in Kashmir Valley during the onset of Spring Season.This is a story worth telling. There was once a flower that wandered around the world, but was unable to find itself a home, the flower bulb wandered about in Persia, China, and Turkey, until it finally landed up in the beautiful valley of Kashmir, thanks to unknown benefactors, who planted it there. The flower enjoyed the climate and the soil and the inhabitants tended it with love and affection. In turn, it rewarded them a bountiful bloom of one of nature's most beautiful of flowers. This is the story of the flower - the magnificent tulip. Come April, and the Indira Gandhi Memorial Tulip Garden, situated in the foothills of the Zabarwan range in Srinagar, overlooking the Dal Lake, plays host to Asia's largest Tulip Flower Show. This year, the annual tulip show was held between April 1 to April 15, 2017. Unseasonal snowfall and incessant rain, in the first week of April in Srinagar did not dampen the spirits of tens of thousands of tourists, tulip aficionados, connoisseurs, fans, devotees, and tulip lovers from around the world who came to Srinagar to celebrate the onset of spring and to see the world's most beautiful flower. The tulip garden, which is built on a sloping ground in a terraced fashion, has seven terraces. It was inaugurated in 2008 and is spread across 30 hectares. The 2017 edition of the Annual Tulip Festival showcased about 48 varieties of tulips and had several lakhs of flowers in bloom, in a rainbow of colors. They range from simple whites to blushing pinks, from fiery reds to golden yellows, from hybrids with double colors to the very rare and exotic near black tulip, the Night Queen. The Srinagar Tulip Garden and Festival was previously adjudged (in 2014), as the second best tulip garden in the world by the World Summit Tulip Society. Along with the spectacular flower show, which attracted tens of hundreds of tourists, the organisers - the Department of Horticulture/Floriculture, Government of Jammu and Kashmir - had put up stalls to showcase and sell local handicrafts. The added attraction this year was a live band that featured local Kashmiri artistes, who entertained the audience with both folk and rock music. The tulip festival is an annual celebration that aims to showcase the range of flowers in the garden as a part of tourism efforts by the Government of Jammu and Kashmir. It is organised every year, during the onset of spring season in Kashmir valley. It is usually in the months of March or April that the Garden brims with Tulips all around. The festival lasts for 15 days as the flowers continue to cast their magical spell. However, the dates of commencement of Tulip festival are highly affected by the weather. So if you’ve missed the Tulip Festival of 2017, you can get ready to be a part of it in 2018 upon knowing the starting dates of the fiesta.