Bollywood movie dreams come true with a Swiss backdrop

ENGELBERG, Switzerland - For years, India's Bollywood producers and directors have favored the pristine backdrop of Switzerland for their films. The greatest of the Bollywood filmmakers, Yash Chopra, is a self-professed romantic who, in virtually all his films, includes scenes shot on location in this country's Alpine meadows, around its serene lakes and in its charming towns and cities, to convey an ideal of sunshine, happiness and tranquillity.

In the process, they have created an enormous curiosity about things Swiss in generations of middle-class Indians, who now earn enough to travel here in search of their dreams.

"No noise, no pollution, no crowds," said Kamalakar Tarkasband, 72, a retired army officer.

Swiss and Indian tourism officials are capitalizing on this obsession. The number of nights spent by Indian tourists, who come mostly in summer (few ski), has doubled in the last decade to 325,000, and the numbers continue to grow.

Mr. Tarkasband was traveling with a busload of other Indians who had spent the last 12 hours visiting movie locations around Switzerland. Most of the sites were from the 1995 Bollywood blockbuster "The Brave Heart Will Take the Bride," produced by Mr. Chopra and directed by his son Aditya Chopra.

On their 12-day tour, marketed as the Enchanted Journey and organized by the Indian affiliate of the Swiss travel agency Kuoni, the travelers watched DVDs of Bollywood film scenes shot in Switzerland while traveling from site to site. They posed for snapshots imitating their film favorites.

"This is the way Switzerland is positioned in our minds; it was the place for romance and natural beauty," said Sanket Shah, 21, from Pune, India, who got a degree in management and went to work as a guide for Enchanted Journey.

Raj Kapoor may have been the first Indian director to use foreign sites for shooting on location in Venice, Paris and Switzerland when he filmed his 1964 hit, "Sangam." But the entire bus knew the story of how Mr. Chopra spent his honeymoon in the Swiss resort of Gstaad. "He promised his wife on his honeymoon that every movie he made would have to have one romantic song or scene in Switzerland," said Rajendra Choudhary, 24, who also studied management in Pune and joined the Enchanted Journey.

Mr. Chopra, now 77, kept his promise. Most of the Swiss sequences are dream scenes in which lovers dance or romp on Alpine meadows strewn with flowers or roll in the snow. Now about 200 Bollywood films feature sequences shot in Switzerland.

Since Kuoni and its partners began the Enchanted Journey tours in April, about 55 groups have signed up. The company now plans to add a 15-day tour, individual customized film tours and honeymoon trips.

"It's dream tourism," said Marco Casanova, a Swiss businessman and partner in the tour group.

But not everyone shares the dream. For 23 years, Andr Gobat has managed the Hotel Cathrin, in the shadow of Mount Titlis. He acknowledges benefits to the town from the Indian tourism. For him, the contrast is not so much Indians or Chinese versus Germans and Dutch, but rather individual tourists versus groups. "We built a golf course, hiking trails, for private tourists," he said. "Group tourists don't use them."

Moreover, tour groups dine in their hotels and do not frequent local restaurants. "For me, the mixture is not as good as it should be," he said. "Go out in the evening; the village is empty."

The New York Times