Kiran Chaturvedi - Incredible India: Time to shift focus from consumption
Kiran Chaturvedi, who runs an eco tourist a lodge in the
Garhwal hills of Uttarakhand, witnessed the horror of the recent Uttarakhand
floods. She writes how preparing for disaster management in the context of
sustainable tourism is an urgency now more than the necessity it always was.
Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe - Anatole France
This line captures fully the essence of travel for me. Every
time I travel, I feel this connection, this oneness with the rest of
creation.Travel provide me a release, immense joy, freedom and a sense of
expansion. Over the years we have travelled, interacted and lived in
the mountains and other off beat locations and arrived at our own understanding
of these places and our own view of tourism’s place in the overall scheme of
things. When I focus on tourism in the Himalayas , what
strikes me is the contrast between the grand beauty that pulls in visitors, and
the painful reality of the lives of locals. A fragile yet bountiful eco-system
is now nurtured by a weakening social set up. The majority of rural people seem
stuck in a hopeless spiral of no escape from the drudgery of difficult lives of
thankless toil.
The Himalayas are a special place,
with special needs and a specific lifestyle built around its realities. Today,
in our mad rush to the hills for our recreation and repose, we seem to be
overlooking this to our own peril, and the consequence could be long term
damage to the hills and their inhabitants. The recent floods in parts of Uttarakhand have further
brought home the plight of the natural and human resources of the hills, if
left to the random march of unsustainable, unmindful development. We had barely
started commercial operations at our guest home venture this year when the
floods struck. While we are very fortunate to have had no adverse impact of the
floods, the heavy rains were felt with all their force at our location as well,
and our guests had to cancel their treks due to the washing away of connecting
roads to the trek locations. However, the biggest impact on us was the chain of
thought it led to, and the introspection, research and ideation that followed.
The contrast between our least visited part of Garhwal and
the regions suffering floods was the first thing to strike us. Our area is as
of now, very pristine, remote, known only to locals, and there is no outside
footfall except the few visitors we have brought to the region. Moreover, we are
on a ridge – a very safe and flood free location , as all the rainwater rushes
downslope. So while we were safe due to a fact of geography, the rest of the
story was disturbing indeed. As we moved out of our ridge location, we noticed
that wherever tree cover is not present, on slopes, due to overgrazing, road
blasting or timber cutting, landslides quickly blocked the roads.There was some
slope sliding and house collapses closer to the local town, which is hugely
overbuilt and unregulated. We shudder to think of the implications if it were
to develop into the kind of place that the whole Kedar
Valley
