Boating in Uttarakhand’s famous Naini Lake to resume from September 1

The decision to allow boating was taken in a meeting between officials of Nainital municipality and a boat operators committee on Monday.

 

Rudrapur(Agencies): Boating in the famous Naini Lake in Nainital will resume from September 1. Boating happens to be the chief attraction of Nainital. Tourists prefer to enjoy boating on a visit to the small hill station. Following the Covid-19 outbreak and lockdown, boating in Naini Lake was prohibited from March, an official said.

The decision to allow boating was taken in a meeting between officials of Nainital municipality and a boat operators committee on Monday.

“A meeting was held earlier also but the boat operators committee was reluctant to start operations due to lack of tourists. Now they are ready to operate as some tourists have started arriving,” Ashok Kumar, chief executive officer, Nainital municipality said.

According to officials of the Nainital municipality, 222 rowing boats and around 60 pedal boats ply in the lake. The livelihood of over 300 boatmen depends upon boating. They were sitting idle during the lockdown when hardly any tourists were coming to the state.

Kumar said, “It will be the duty of boat owners and boatmen that tourists maintain social distancing and wear face masks while enjoying boating. They will have to follow other guidelines during the booking of tourists and continuous sanitization of the boats.”

Ram Singh Bisht, president, Boat Operators Committee, Nainital said, “As some tourists have started to come in the last few weeks, they decided to start boating services and spoke to officials concerned about it. Also, it is not possible for us to stay away from our profession as it is our source of earning our livelihood.”