Understanding the Bio-Cultural Wealth of Nanda Devi National Park
Attention Please!
In case you landed here while searching for a trek package for Nanda Devi National Park, we request you to prolong your stay for few more minutes. We know you are accustomed to crisp keyword based ad campaigns showing glossy images with ratings and price first. While the power of images is undoubtedly unquestionable, a destination is more than a image. Since you will be investing your time and money, there is no harm in knowing a bit more about the history and culture of the area you are planing to visit. Especially when the information is coming from the community, who inhabit that area.
First things first!
This is a promotional piece of writing to convince the prospective responsible travelers to visit our area and give us an opportunity to organize their trek in our Nanda Devi National Park region.
Prologue Dramatis!
After wasting days and days to learn the so-called art of creative writing (SEO centric), from the online Google University; tutorials on top 10 to top 26 ways on ‘How to strategically throw ‘bread crumbs’ to lure the prospective clients to your online ‘Point of Sale (POS)’. We said, ‘what the heck’, where is the need to glossify, as we are what we are (the only intelligent choice), besides why to create space for a tourism researcher to write a research paper on the impacts of ‘glossification’ on cultural and natural capital of our region. Not that we are in a position to hire a skilled content writer for our blog, so Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the prologue to our blogging attempt (read marketing!).
Let’s define the Product (Destination)
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Sitoon Idols in a sacred cave in Lata.
A reenactment of the exile of Lord Rama.
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You might be wondering why we are so much obsessed with the negative impacts of tourism when every fifth online startup in India is focusing on tourism. The reason is, such online aggregators are least interested in the sustainability of the destinations, while we as a native community would like to focus on sustainable and equitable tourism. There are lots of studies on the negative impacts of online enterprises selling tourism products, for instance the case of Airbnb. It’s not about drawing inference from a case study alone. Our region has also suffered from the unrestricted mountaineering, which eventually resulted in the notification of large part of our sacred lands as a National Park in 1982 and an initial ban on human entry for 10 years, which is mysteriously still continuing in 2018. Long story ahh…read more ......This also reminds me about an old letter that my father wrote to a conservationist explaining his grass root perspective from Ground Zero.
Nanda Devi National Park ___ Our sacred mountains
In 1982, large parts of our sacred mountains were notified as a National Park. Since time immemorial, our ancestors regarded the peak of Nanda Devi as the Patron Goddess of our region. While there were valid reasons behind this notification, our summer dwellings at Dharansi were also included within the core-zone of the Nanda Devi National Park. Part of the reason was in the inability of the Uttar Pradesh Government to understand the transhumant lifestyle
of our community. The due procedures required during the notification process were never followed, and the local forest officials misguided our elders through false promises of jobs and alternate grazing pastures. The centuries old tradition of offering prayers to Dubri Devi at Dharansi before collecting Brahma Kamal (Saussurea obvallata) was forcefully stopped. Incidentally, this happened after a couple of years, when our community fought with the Forest Department to save forests. You must have heard of the Chipko Movement, our region was in the forefront of the Chipko. The same Forest Department which was just an agency for the commercial extraction of the forests during 1970s, returned in its new avatar of the 'sole proprietor of bio-diversity conservation', in 1982. Well the Chipko boomeranged on us! This is the social history of the Nanda Devi area, which you won’t find on your Google search results while searching for a trek package to our area.
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| Nanda Devi from Gorson, November 2006 Image by Kainthola |
Nanda DeviNational Park is a natural wonder with vertical landscape, deep valleys and gorges towered by a complex of mighty Himalayan peaks, and remained out of bound of the humanity before the 1934 successful attempt by Shipton and Tillman. Within the 620 + sq km core zone of the Nanda Devi National Park lies the inner Sanctuary, a glacial basin surrounded by a ring of peaks between 6,000 metres (19,700 ft) and 7,500 m (24,600 ft) high, and drained by the Rishi gorge. The park is a natural habitat of numerous large mammals including Musk Deer, Snow Leopards, Himalayan Tahr, and Himalayan Black Bears and over 100 plus species of avian fauna with more than 300 species of alpine flora.
To appreciate the physiography of the Nanda Devi, we suggest you to watch the Google Earth Fly Through tour on YouTube, produced by Ron. B
You will find tons of videos and thousands of images of the Nanda Devi National Park region but relatively very less information about the people who inhabit these blessed lands. The guys who are offering our mountains as a destination are totally unaware of our culture, our history and not bothered about our struggles and aspirations. Frankly, its pretty easy to hire a team of content writer and photographer to what they claim as, 'officially documented trek on their websites'. Culture and history is not their forte as it requires more than SEO optimization while selling the entire destinations from Kashmir to Arunanchal. The aggregator based online tourism has reached its saturation levels. There is no point in challenging this trend as we are confident that the tide will gradually change from high volume 'meadow trampling' treks to low volume immersive experiences. There are couple of ethical and legal issues concerning the present state of adventure tourism in Indian Himalayas. Here is the link to our open letter addressed to responsible travelers !
Before we conclude this post with defining the salient features of our Nanda Devi National Park Trek offer, we would like to share a full length documentary on our struggle for Community Owned Tourism. Produced by Jade Ajani and David Meek, its a process documentation of our 'Inaugural All women's Trek' (2006) involving various stakeholders.
Documentory : Janadhaar-Livelihood issues in the Nanda Devi National Park, India
Introducing the Nanda Devi National Park Interpretive Trek
Interpretive Trek vis-à-vis other trekking options
Interpretive treks are value added outdoor nature trail products designed to engage the visitors by providing information on the natural and socio cultural history of the destination. The interpretation continues as the visitor trek along the trail route. An Interpretive trek is designed to deliver what a visitor actually seeks from a destination.
Interpretive Nature and Culture trail to Nanda Devi National Park
The Interpretive Trek to the Nanda Devi National Park has been designed to take control of the tourism operations in the forests and meadows legally owned by the Gram Sabha of Lata under the Van Panchayat Rules (2005). As a community institution, "Van Panchayats in Uttarakhand were born out of conflicts and compromises that followed the settlements and reservations of forests in the hills at turn of the last century".
Some statistics to share !
Uttarakhand covers an area of 53,483 Sq Km which is 1.63 % of the total geographical area of the country. Statistics suggest that over 60% of the total geographical area in Uttarakhand is under forest cover. This is based on averages, however the total forest cover in the mountain districts is much higher. Out of the total forest coverage over 13 % is under the Van Panchayats.
Uttarakhand is a popular adventure tourism destination, which involves usage of the wilderness and landscape of the forested areas including the entry inside the natural wealth owned by the local communities under Van Panchayats. While there is an increase in the footfalls of adventure lovers creating economy of billions, the share of the local community is insignificant and its more like a deal between an online aggrigator and adventure to conduct a trekking service without the consent and involvement of the actual owners of those meadows/forests. One one hand the online aggregators are making huge profits, there is an exodus from the very villages where the tourism boom is happening. The recent report by the State Governments' Rural Development and Migration Commission indicates that over 700 villages in the Uttarakhand's mountainous region falls under the category of Ghost Villages, with 100% out-migration. The lack of livelihood opportunities is creating a severe economic distress resulting in the sale of land to builders and colonizers.
The Interpretive Trek is a humble initiative to address some of the aforementioned issues of livelihood and bio cultural conservation of the Nanda Devi National Park region in Niti Valley of Uttarakhand. Interpretive Trek is a value added offer to showcase the cultural and physical landscape of the Nanda Devi National park. Its a creative response against the invasion of the common social and environmental space by the forces of irresponsible tourism.
Interpretive Trek Package to Nanda Devi includes:
The trek dates are open from 29th April to 17th June 2019. Its designed as a low volume event with maximum 15 pax intake a day. For further details plz visit our website:
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| Image Source: Jagran |
The Interpretive Trek is a humble initiative to address some of the aforementioned issues of livelihood and bio cultural conservation of the Nanda Devi National Park region in Niti Valley of Uttarakhand. Interpretive Trek is a value added offer to showcase the cultural and physical landscape of the Nanda Devi National park. Its a creative response against the invasion of the common social and environmental space by the forces of irresponsible tourism.Interpretive Trek Package to Nanda Devi includes:
- Community led trek to the Nanda Devi National Park
- Visit to the Interpretation Center on bio-cultural diversity
- Interpretive trail to Lata Kharak and Saini Kharak meadows
- Stay at Shepherds Lodge Devangan on the first and last day
- Home Stay at Tolma and camping at Kanook and Lata Kharak
- Pick up and drop arrangements from Haridwar/Rishikesh and Dehradun airport
- Souvenir shop
- Village visit and interaction
- Access to the NDI library
The trek dates are open from 29th April to 17th June 2019. Its designed as a low volume event with maximum 15 pax intake a day. For further details plz visit our website:
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| Sitoon Idols of Lord Rama, Sita and Laxman Celebrated every 14 years in Lata |
Epilogue: As advised by the online SEO tutorials we have tried to include all the relevant keywords to make this post appear on the first page of Google search. We are aware that it is not possible without adsense, which is out of our budget at the moment. Only few of the blessed ones will be able to reach this page which is fine as our appetite for numbers is relatively small.
Some two decades ago we started our journey with a dream, and this post is a reflection of that dream !
See You Soon !
trekà bientôt
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Nic ine
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