chandigarh from most angles chandigarh seems like a clean city which works like a welloiled machine providing a smooth life to its residents but there is another perspective giving shape to a whole new understanding of this capital of two states that of the city being a tourist destinationlong considered a gateway to hilly areas chandigarh is slowly manoeuvring its way into attracting visitors from all over india and abroad on its own steam citys tourism department officials stated that the pace at which people came here remained constant throughout the yearsources said winter months brought many tourists to chandigarh as they headed to experience snowfall in himachal pradesh and jammu kashmir that was apparent at sukhna lake on saturday as the cool weather got a lot of visitors to be thereaustralian couple jenny and john bawden were also at the lake jenny for whom it was the first trip to chandigarh said she was quite impressed with rock garden they would be in town for two days and plan to visit nainital laterjenny stated i wanted to see punjab especially as back home i work with people from this state and have very close relationships with them she added that the family of their relative peter magill was also with them on the tripsanju basumatary from guwahati who came to city to attend a medical conference said he liked the weather here which allowed people to move out his friend umesh biradar from hubli karnataka mentioned that he intended to visit shimla ut has its own plans to make the stay of its visitors worthwhiletourism deputy director vinod kalia said a weeklong celebration with the theme of song and dance mania is being planned to welcome the new year a meeting has been called by homecumtourism secretary ram niwas to discuss the final modalities for the event kalia added that occupancy at 41 city hotels which hovered at around 75 for most part of the year was expected to reach 90 in coming days as celebrations took offkalia said one reason for more tourists being in chandigarh at this point of the year is the various conferences that take place at medical institutions here which have hundreds of delegates from other cities in attendance manmohan singh kohli president of tourism promotion society of chandigarh mentioned this week has been good for the hotel industry with the t20 match at mohali and as new year approaches food and beverage sector will take precedence all in all it is a good time for hospitality industry as far as tourist inflow is concerned in september around 77991 domestic travellers and 2692 foreigners came to chandigarh october saw the number of foreigners almost double to reach 4774 while for domestic travellers the number remained more or less steady at 73507