Mass Tourism from mainland leading to unfortunate accidents in snowy region
By Anjan Roy
The Chinese authorities are behaving in an extremely insensitive manner and destroying the Himalayan ecology while at the same time putting people at the risk of a frozen death.
A Chinese government mouthpiece had proudly announced that last year more than half a million people from the plains had visited the high mountains. This would leave an indelible footprint of mass tourism on the Himalayas.
One notices that with development and much greater financial muscle, China is able to undertake ambitious projects. But unfortunately whatever China does has an element of obscene show of newly acquired money and might and lacks the fineness of a mature country.
Its moves in the Himalayan mountains are damaging to the ecology of these great mountains. The attempt to build a dam upstream reaches of the river Brahmaputra is one to cite, which would affect the entire course of the river including its lower reaches. In case of allowing tours in the high mountains, China has been equally unconcerned about the deleterious implications.
Historically, the Tibetans had been very cautious in allowing people in the high mountains, let alone opening up the highest peak on earth to submitters. The Tibetans believed the Himalayas were seats of Gods and Goddesses and forbade making trips to the peaks.
All that has changed since Chinese took control of Tibet and the high Himalayas and pursued their crass developmental attitude. They also wanted to swamp the Tibetans plateau with Han Chinese to wipe out the quaint and centuries old Tibetans history and culture, including their reverence for the Himalayas.
China’s crass tourism bid in the Tibetan Himalayas were now reaping their bitter harvest.
China’s crass tourism policy in the Tibetan Himalayas have led to unfortunate developments in the v recent days. No less than 300 people were reported to have been caught in a snow blizzard in the eastern slopes of Mount Everest and rescue efforts are on. However, already there have been several deaths and many more are suffering from hypothermia.
The disaster with the tourists began last Saturday when the snows started falling. Some of the video clips show the drift of snows on the slopes from inside a tent and it was clearly visible how the snows were rising over the land outside the tent windows.
Even on Monday there were reports of another some 200 were stranded in the slopes above 16,000 feet. Mountaineering gadgets and high tech devises came to no use in the bitter cold and storms in the high slopes.
Many of the tourists have said that the temperatures had gone down too low and it was stormy they could not get a wink of sleep even inside their tents. The tourists had got soaked as well as cold, and many started showing signs of hypothermia.
As a huge number of tourists hovered into the Himalayas in the Chinese festival period around October 1, they had started trekking in the upper reaches in the eastern slopes in Tibet.
In Nepal, on the other hand, the mountaineering permits are usually stopped with the beginning of the rains. Nepal being used to the Himalayas, were aware of the mountain’s weather cycles traditionally and they followed their centuries old practices.
The Chinese authorities, unfamiliar with the Himalayas and mandarins from Beijing sought to translate their uniform crash development models to Tibet and even the mountains. The result was the disaster.
After taking over Tibet and bringing huge number of Han Chinese into the Tibet autonomous region, Chinese sought to bring the same kind of mindless development into the fragile Himalayan areas of Tibet. The mainland Chinese have built extensive tourist facilities to encourage tourism in these areas above 16,000 feet.
The result is that untutored people were thronging these highly sensitive and difficult terrains which are upsetting the balance of the areas. The mountains could hardly bear the burden of mass tourism who demand every kind of facilities in an areas where none of that could be set up.
The higher reaches of the Himalayas are bereft of much vegetation, these areas are prone to excessive snowfall with temperatures plummeting to minus 30 degrees in the night. Besides, these areas are constantly visited by fast winds which even worsen the temperatures.
Mount Everest and the Himalayas have unique weather cycles and they receive copies rains during the monsoon months with the monsoon clouds running across the length and breadth of the Indian sub-continent. The monsoon extends into the Himalayas as snow blizzards.
Even over a hundred years, in the 1920s, when the British had started eyeing the Mount Everest and “conquering” it, there were serious concerns about too many people converging on the area. Besides, the counting teams of the Royal Geographical Society were extremely cautious in their approach towards summiting the Everest. (IPA Service)
