Tulip Garden from an Oriental Tale
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Tulip Garden from an Oriental Tale

It’s hard to imagine a million tulips, like a million red roses from the popular song by the Russian pop diva. However, you can take a short vacation and fly to the Kashmir Valley in early April, where countless flowers of multi-colored tulips swing in the spring wind on the banks of the picturesque Dal Lake against the background of the blue-dark Himalayan hump at an altitude of over 1,700 meters.

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It is here, in the summer capital of the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, Srinagar, that the largest tulip garden in Asia opens for visitors in early spring - a place of pilgrimage for those who admires this beautiful flower, a native of the steppes and foothills of the Crimea.

The wild representatives of the genus Tulipa (Tulip), which has up to 140 species, spread far and wide, from the Pamir and Tien Shan to Spain and the Sinai Peninsula, over the 10-15 million years of their evolution. However, the Crimea is the birthplace of species used in breeding the garden tulips, the first samples of these flowers were exported from the Crimea Peninsula to Turkey in 1225. It is known that at that time, over 300 thousand tulip bulbs were collected in the vicinity of the town of Kefe (Feodosia) and sent by the Black Sea to Istanbul.

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Ten years ago, in Kashmir, a 30-hectare ‘tulip paradise’ where more than two million bulbs of over 60 varieties are planted annually was laid on the former fruit plantations. It was named after its founder, Sonya Gandhi, the leader of the Indian National Congress and the widow of former India’s Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. The seed material was brought here from the Netherlands, which, in turn, received the original varieties from Turkey that was successful in cultivation and breeding the Crimean flowers.

Since then, the tulip garden has become a real jewel of the Kashmir Valley and a popular tourist attraction. Despite the short flowering period of only about three weeks, the tulip garden began to make quite a profit to growers thanks to the cultivation of the most popular varieties for sale. Local experts assure that Kashmir is able not only outperform the Netherlands, but also compete severely with other states, since it has a more suitable climate and all the flowers grown there are of much better quality than those in other countries. They say that their products are already exported to foreign countries, markets and are in high demand in Europe, the Middle East, Australia and Japan.

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It's easy to visit the garden as it is located in Srinagar - just a 15-minute drive from the centre of Srinagar - and it is open every day from sunrise to sunset until April 25. The best time to admire these beautiful flowers of all shades and various shapes is early morning or late evening. You need to prepare yourself to stay for, at least, two hours here

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