The perilously mountainous desert crowning Jammu and Kashmir had been featured in movies before.

But the mainstream release of 3 Idiots – the highest-grossing film of its day – opened up the often overlooked corner of the country to a new generation of Indians.

In 2008, the year before the film’s release, 400,000 Indian tourists visited Ladakh – already a sizeable figure for a region that is home to about 200,000 people.

Three years later, those figures were almost quadrupled. They've shown no signs of slowing down since.

After 3 Idiots hit theatres, Pangong – the shimmering, turquoise 125km lake that served as backdrop for 3 Idiots’s soaring conclusion – rose to unprecedented popularity.

“It all started with that movie,” says Noori Noorjahan, an art restorer from Leh, Ladakh’s tiny, oxygen-starved capital.

Call it a testament to Ladakh’s stark, haunting beauty or to the film’s irresistible denouement, but seven years later 3 Idiots still ushers in thousands more tourists than the region’s fragile ecosystem can support.