Indian Tourism : Bleeding tourist spots

I happened to go to a trekking trip this summer in the beautiful mountains and valley of Himachal Pradesh. Himachal Pradesh is aptly called as "DevBhoomi" meaning Abode of God .. With its high mountain ranges ,lush green meadows and perennial snow cover at peaks, this place is nothing short of what actual heaven would be like...Naturally it attracts huge amount of tourists from every corner of country plus many foreigner tourists as well ....People find peace here away from hustle bustle and crowd of city life.. They come here to relax and to shrug off their tiredness from routine life..

 But sadly enough, rampant commercialization and over crowding of these tourist places has taken its toll on almost all aspects of a good tourist place... No longer will you find neat and clean pathways, crystal clear springs , sounds and sight of beautiful birds, wild dense forests, clean and green meadows, general low decibel level and very few crowd around.. Many places have become almost as dirty and as crowded as cities in plains... These places have lost its charm and no longer offer the same experience as they used to in past because of which they became famous in first place...

   Here I would like to share my 2 experiences of Manali which are 4 years apart with the help of some photographs...In 2010, I went to Manali with my friends .... Mall road here was very beautiful, spacious ,clean ,sparsely crowded and had some artistic shops which offered specialties of HP... It was pleasure taking long strolls on this stretch..

Mall Road in front of Van Vihar 2010

 We also went to Solang Valley which was a lush green grassland surrounded by a layer of Pine forests and snow peaked mountains... It had a few activities like paragliding and zorbing going on and a few canopies offering food etc....

View of Solang valley 2010

   

     I happened to go to the same place in 2014 and I could not believe my eyes .... The place which had offered me so much peace and joy has succumbed to the pressure of crowd and commercialization... We faced half an hour jam at the entrance of Manali ... Rows and Rows of yellow number plated taxis were stranded in now congested lanes of Manali looking for some meager space to get parked...Constant honking and screaming of vendors made the craving for silence a distant dream... Anyhow we got past the Mall road and made our way towards Solang valley... On the way, a shepherd along with his herd of approx 500 goats and lambs started walking in the midst of road...It took us more than 20 minutes to make our way through that herd and get going ahead... When we reached Solang valley, I had the shock of my life... Once beautiful and green grassland had been turned into a barren patch of land with millions of people jostling for hundreds of so called "adventurous activities"... ATV biking,reverse bungee jumping , paragliding , zorbing, horse riding,a dozen types of swings all taking place within less than half an acre of land and without even basic safety arrangements... More than hundred eating joints had come up and vendors screaming at top of their lungs to attract tourists... Our great Indian "highly educated" people wearing big sunglasses were littering around shamelessly....

A view of same Solang valley 2014

Activities at Solang valley 2014

 It had started feeling like "Mata ka Mela" which takes place in every town of North India during Dussehera...Feeling nauseated we returned back from there without enjoying... Then we headed towards Mall road which has now tuned into Kamla Nagar market of Delhi complete with over crowding,congestion,traffic jams and hustle bustle....

Same Mall road in front of Van Vihar 2014

Till now we were completely upset and had lost all our hopes on Manali ...But it pained greatly to see a beautiful land deteriorating like cities of plains under rampant tourism and over crowding....Condition is same at almost every tourist place, be it Mussoorie, Shimla, Goa or Kerala..   We people are equally responsible for this as govt... We (most of us) don't think twice before throwing plastic wrappers of chocolates, Lays, Kurkure, Toffees on the streets... Govt doesn't know the word "maintenance" and allows hotels, restaurants to mushroom around the city recklessly... There is no consideration towards safety issues and proper equipment before licensing for adventure sports leading to frequent mishaps and deaths...

 Having counted all the problems,below are a few suggestions to make our tourist spots viable for long haul:

1. Only a limited no of hotels and restaurants should be permitted to open in any spot... It will reduce the commercialization and automatically reduce the tourist burden.

2. Govt may start issuing passes or permits to enter into a particular tourist place as per the capacity of that spot... No person other than those holding permits should be allowed to enter into that place as tourist...

3. Travel tickets,hotel room tariff should be made high at tourist spots so that not everyone can go there..

4. There must be strict fine over those who are found littering around and throwing garbage relentlessly on roads..

5. For adventure sports, licensing and safety protocols should be more strict and rigorously followed...Safety arrangements for water sports in Goa are actually laughable...

6. Religious and historic places of plains like Mathura, Agra,Lucknow,Gwalior Chittorgarh , Agroha,Jodhpur etc should be developed much more efficiently so that they can emerge as viable options to already famous tourist places of mountains and beaches...

 

   Something has to be done urgently to save our tourist places and preserve their old charm else that day is not far when we would have exhausted all the places to more than their capacity and would have made our beautiful land India a dirt land...