hyderabad a string of calamities government orders and debates over the need to curb the carrying capacity of the mountains notwithstanding the footfall of char dham pilgrims from telangana is set to double this year from one lakh in 2022 to two lakh now at least thats what data sourced from the uttarakhand tourism centre in hyderabad suggeststhe booking site has been flooded with registration requests since it opened for public on february 20 the char dham yatra is held in two spells between april may and june and september october and november they also say that the traffic from telangana and andhra pradesh is always among the highest in the country on an average 50 to 70 pilgrims are enquiring about packages and other facilities every day we open 500 online slots daily and right now we are blocked till june said virender singh rana incharge of uttarakhand tourism office in greenlands while almost all prospective pilgrims are asking about weather conditions it isnt a deterrent for anybody he saidin fact according to rana the current footfalls are likely to double once the 900km long highway network under the char dham highway development project is completed a ropeway project connecting the char dham circuit is also under active consideration he saidand those signing up for the yatra comprise people across all age groups we have decided to book only after thoroughly going through imds forecast there is no prediction of any rain during the april to may period said t narayana murthy a senior citizen from kukatpally who is going on the yatra with his wife we are not worried about calamities as the uttarakhand government is making suitable arrangements said murthy who is going on the yatra for the first timeanother couple from vanasthalipuram has registered for the yatra for the second time after a gap of a decade we are going to char dham lots of changes have happened in the past of 10 years and we are looking forward to a good experience said bn venkateswarlu a retired health department employeegiven the demand more than a dozen tour operators across hyderabad are working overtime to book tickets and accommodation for registered pilgrimsthis year we received tremendous response from pilgrims for the yatra so far we have helped around 30000 pilgrims book tickets and accommodation online under different packages said av praveen kumar joint managing director southern travels which has branches in telangana and ap