Gulmarg Goes Smart, Sustainable

With high-tech tools and local wisdom, Gulmarg is setting the stage for a new kind of Himalayan tourism.

- Aashiq Hussain Andrabi

The rules are finally catching up with the rush in Kashmir’s postcard-perfect tourist town. Over the past few weeks, teams under the Gulmarg Development Authority (GDA) have launched a sweeping crackdown, sealing and seizing illegally built hotels, shops, and other encroachments that have crept into the fragile alpine zone.

Leading this action is Tariq Hussain Naik, the JKAS officer at the helm of the GDA. For him, this isn’t just an anti-encroachment drive.

"It’s a turning point," he says. “Encroachment is an environmental theft. Every inch of land taken without approval erodes the future of Gulmarg.”

With over 1.5 million visitors each year and 15,000 on peak days, the pressure on Gulmarg's ecosystem is enormous.

For years, lax regulation and unchecked expansion chipped away at its balance. Now, Naik is reimagining how high-altitude tourism should work in Kashmir.

Under his watch, the focus has shifted from footfall to foresight: geotagging tourists, zoning the recreation core, regulating guides, enforcing construction norms, and rolling out Al-backed permit systems.

The goal is bold, make Gulmarg South Asia's smartest and safest alpine destination, where safety protocols mirror air travel, and every season is managed, not just marketed.

A 2008-batch officer with a historian’s eye and a reformer’s drive, Naik sees Gulmarg not as a trophy town, but a living system.

In this conversation, he lays out how enforcement is just the first step, and why Gulmarg's real transformation will be led by locals, backed by tech, and rooted in sustainability.

Let's start with Pahalgam. It wasn't just tragic. It really rattled people. From your end, what changed after that?

A lot changed. It was a targeted terror attack. And it exposed something we'd never dealt with head-on: how fragile our tourism setup really is. The loss shook everyone. But what came after that forced a rethink.