London:
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah took time out from the rough and tumble of state politics to visit the World Travel Mart in London, the world's leading travel business market, where 202 nations from across the world vie for travel business.
He was there to promote tourism in his state, providing the much-needed star power in an otherwise incredibly dull and unimaginative India pavilion at the mart.
The Jammu and Kashmir stall looked quite deserted at the World Trade mart in London as all the J&K tourism officials were occupied elsewhere, waiting for their CM Omar Abdullah to arrive.
Boring brochures, unimaginatively designed, the rather forlorn looking India pavilion clearly could do with some attention from the 50,000 plus visitors at the world travel mart.
The only part of the Incredible India pavilion that had people interested was the area where women were applying henna on women's hands.
It was left to Omar Abdullah to inject some enthusiasm.
"There hasn't been bad news coming out of the state for a while and we need to focus on the good news. We've already have half million visitors come to the state and we need to improve that," he said.
When asked what he thought of the fact that the J&K stall had been lying vacant while everyone was waiting to receive him, he laughed and said, "Just goes to show we're very open and there are no security issues".
The swine flu scare, Mumbai blasts and the global recession hit the flow of foreign tourists going to India hard. The numbers were down by 17 per cent in January this year compared to last year.
But the global outlook for tourism is optimistic for the next year as the world economy starts to recover.