Listen to this article:

Summer is here, and with that our already run down hill stations and roads are alarmingly over trampled upon by pilgrims, holidaying families and trekkers. The spruced up highways leading to the hills have made travel faster, but not as pleasurable as Bollywood films and OTT serials would have you believe. Several years of unusually heavy rains and cloudbursts have brought about huge landslides and disfigured the hill sides repeatedly. After each such natural calamity, the governmental machinery tries to alter scenic routes. But the bypasses may still let loose boulders come the next cloud burst.

No one can guarantee road safety during the famous Char Dham Yatra but it has not stopped the barrage of ads urging tourists to visit the holy Himalayan belt. The tourists, weary after a long hot ride, may suddenly see road barriers at several important junctures. The police guards manning them do not wave you in but tell you warily, sorry, no getting beyond this point, the town beyond is full! Those driving their SUVs may heave and whine, “why ? why ? why ? When will you hill folk learn to manage your tourism business like Goa and Rajasthan ?”

Actually the hill stations they are headed for, were not created organically by the natives who lived in the central Himalayan region and followed a simple lifestyle, using forest produce and what little their fields could grow for sustenance. It was around 1820-1920 when the official India based representatives of the then vast British empire entered the hills and were greatly charmed by some scenic areas that could be developed for leisure activities. Later their agenda also stretched to assess the commercial potential of vast forests full of precious wild........

© The Wire