Internal tourism is having a heyday in Pakistan, where the country has seen domestic tourism numbers in Gilgit-Baltistan province alone jump from 250,000 in 2014 to almost 700,000 in 2016.
Domestic tourism is boosted by things like skiing in Swat, a region of the Himalayas that have been called “Pakistan’s Switzerland.” There, people can ski and enjoy kebabs and other traditional Pakistani food, an international ski tournament is held each January, and new hotels are being built. You won’t be able to get après-ski hot toddy, though, because this is an alcohol-free region.
For many people who visit Swat, it’s the first time they’ve ever seen snow, and it’s an opportunity to engage in a sport that is pretty rare in the rest of the country.
The region was ruled by the Taliban from 2007 through 2009; they declared skiing “un-Islamic” and banned the sport. But since the militant group was driven out by the army, things have changed dramatically in Swat.
“Because of the larger number of local tourists, no one is really feeling the pinch of not having foreigners,” Siraj Ulmulk, a hotel owner in Chitral, a region bordering Swat, told Reuters.
And it’s a good thing for Pakistan’s tourism industry that more people are traveling around the country, because only about 2 percent of the tourists at Gilgit-Baltistan are foreigners.
Another factor in the domestic tourism boom is that Pakistanis have a great deal of trouble getting the visas that will allow them to travel abroad. Part-time travel bloger Saira Ali, for example, started exploring her home country after the U.S. denied her a visa.
“If my visa had not been rejected, I wouldn’t have seen Pakistan,” she said.
But that security still feels necessary. While things are starting to return to normal in Pakistan, violence is still a definite possibility. Recent attacks in all four provinces and two of the nation’s largest cities killed almost 100 people, reminding everyone that threats like the Taliban are still very much real. But despite this, Pakistanis are traveling to see their country in greater numbers than they have in recent memory.