Keran Heritage Centre opens at Pharkian Gali for LoC village tourists

A heritage centre for visitors opened at Pharkian Gali in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara district on Wednesday, 4 November 2026, on the road to the border village of Keran. The Keran Heritage Centre was set up by the Army's Chinar Corps with CBC Corporation India Pvt Ltd and the Umang Foundation. It has a gallery on the history and culture of the Keran valley, a national flag site, an artillery gun display, landscaped paths and a café looking over the valley. The organisers said more than 55,000 tourists have visited Keran so far this year.

Keran lies on the Line of Control (LoC), the line that divides the parts of Kashmir held by India and Pakistan. The Kishanganga river, known as the Neelum in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, runs between the two halves of Keran, so visitors can see villages on the other side across the water. It has been opened to visitors and promoted as part of "border tourism", in which remote frontier villages are opened to tourists so that local families can earn from homestays, food and guiding.

The new centre is a step from simply letting tourists in to giving them a place to stop and learn. Pharkian Gali lies on the road from Kupwara to Keran, which visitors take on their way to the valley. A gallery, a viewpoint and a café on the pass give travellers a reason to stop, and give local people a place to sell. That is why the district administration framed the opening as a livelihood project as much as a tourism one.

The 55,000 figure should be read with care. It is the organisers' count, and the reports do not give the figure for earlier years, so the growth cannot be measured from them. The sources also differ on when Keran was first opened to visitors: some reports date it to 2023, while older accounts place the opening of the border area to tourism in 2012.

Peepals calculation: If the 55,000 visits are counted from 1 January to 4 November 2026, a span of 308 days, Keran has drawn about 179 tourists a day on average (55,000 ÷ 308). Travel guides put the main season at roughly May to October, so busy days will see more than this average. Our calculation from the reported figures.

Short-term: Travellers heading to Keran now have a stop on the way with a gallery, a viewpoint and a café. Visitors to this border area should confirm the current permission and access rules with the Kupwara district administration before they travel, as the area is close to the LoC.

Long-term: If visitor numbers keep rising, the centre could support more homestays, food stalls and guiding jobs for families in the Keran valley, which is the aim the district administration has set out.

Who is affected: Residents of Keran and nearby villages who earn from tourism, travellers looking for less-visited places in Kashmir, tour operators in Srinagar and Kupwara, and the district administration that manages access to the area.

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