Srinagar, Oct. 12 -- India has never suffered from a shortage of destinations. What it has occasionally lacked is the institutional imagination to make the world discover them, reach them, experience them and, most importantly, return to them.

Our civilisational inheritance is almost without parallel: ancient cities and living traditions, sacred landscapes and wildlife, architecture and crafts, cuisine and festivals, mountains and coastlines. Yet tourism is not created by heritage alone. A monument does not constitute a destination; a destination is an ecosystem. It is the road that leads to it, the story that precedes the journey, the hospitality that receives the traveller, the artisan who gives it authenticity, the technology that mak...