advice, which deters most travellers by providing a list of recent security incidents in the region. Omar Abdullah, the UK-born Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, has lobbied the British High Commission in Delhi to relax the guidelines, but to no avail. “It’s a source of frustration,” admitted Abdullah, who has been in charge of India’s most sensitive state since the start of 2009. “Today, unfortunately, as a result of that travel advisory, people’s insurance is null and void when they visit here.” The last publicized case of foreign tourists being murdered in J&K was in 1995, when six westerners including two Britons were kidnapped by Al-Faran, a Kashmiri militant Islamist group. Only one escaped with his life. “You’ve had British citizens killed more recently in countries that you still haven’t stopped people from visiting. I mean, how many British citizens did you lose in 9/11? Did you stop people from visiting New York? You’ve lost them in Spain, in Bali; tell me where you haven’t lost them,” said Abdullah. “We’ve lost Indians in London. There is still a possibility that al-Qaida could do something stupid like they have done in the past, but we haven’t stopped Indians from travelling to London. There is no reason to single out Jammu and Kashmir, or even Srinagar, as an unsafe destination.” Germany relaxed its guidelines for those