Kerala’s temple with gold treasure vies with Golden Temple for tourists

CHANDIGARH: The tourist attraction of the Golden Temple in Punjab now has a competitor in Kerala’s gold treasure- rich Padmanabhaswamy temple whose treasure has been assessed to be 90 trillion rupees.
"The discovery of the treasure has attracted global attention and such are the crowds that locals have not been able to have a glimpse of lord Padmanabhaswamy," Suresh Kumar, deputy director of the Kerala Tourism, told The Times of India.
An average 30,000 pilgrims have been coming daily to the Padmanabha temple including Punjabis and foreigners since even local channels of Europe ran stories on the treasure of the temple found in its secret cellars under the supervision of the Supreme Court, he said.
The interest in Kerala from the region with its proud presence of the Golden Temple post the treasure discovery has increased so much that around 100 tour operators from Punjab have joined hands with their counterparts in Kerala during a partnership submit facilitated by Kerala Tourism on Thursday.
"The response this year was surprising as during the last three years, such summits did not find many takers," he said.
Another reason for a renewed interest in Kerala may be due to recession in Europe and value of Indian currency falling.
The falling interest in Europe seems to have generated a renewed interest in Kerala which is also an economy based on remittances like Punjab which has 2.5 million NRIs, mostly in Europe and America.
Suresh Kumar said the domestic promotion of tourism has followed a large number of Keralites also returning to backwaters due to global economic slowdown.
Tourism in Kerala has generated 10 lakh jobs and Rs 19037 crore of revenue from around 93 lakh tourists excluding 3.5 crore for Sabrimala temple alone. As many as 7.5 lakh foreign tourists have contributed Rs 3797 crore worth of revenue in foreign exchange. Around 25% of foreign visitors are from England alone.