A senior police officer stated that approximately 80,000 to one lakh tourists are anticipated for the New Year’s celebrations in Shimla, where nearly 1.5 lakh tourists visited over the Christmas holiday.

“We will organize the December 31st carnival in the same manner as previous years’ Christmas and winter carnivals. Sanjeev Kumar Gandhi, Superintendent of Police in Shimla, stated, “We had almost 1.5 lakh tourists on Christmas and we are expecting 80,000 to one lakh people and nearly 2,50,000 vehicles at year’s end.”

“We have made arrangements at the main tourist points in Shimla, the Ridge, Kufri, Narkanda and other places. We have CCTV and drone monitoring for both traffic conjunction and also the human movements. We are trying to ensure security, safety and traffic arrangements, and we are guiding the tourists also,” he said.

The tourists are rushing for winter carnival and New Year celebrations in the hills here in Himachal Pradesh.

“This new year we have come here with the hope of snowfall. The mountain view is very good. Due to the tourist inflow, it is taking a long but we are enjoying it,” Gulshan, a tourist from Noida said.

Additionally, the tourists claimed that hotels were charging three times as much because of overcrowding.

“The high volume of tourists here caused us to have trouble booking hotels. We were disappointed to learn that the hotel rates had increased threefold. We had a great time and are looking forward to visiting more stations here,” UP visitor Anchal stated.